An Immortal Lesson from A Christmas Carol
Dickens, mortality, and life as poetry
Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday’s from What then?
In The Christmas Carol, the word “humbug” is not so much a quaint sounding word as it is a psychological defense mechanism.
Ebeneezer Scrooge, speaking to his ruddy and breathlessly alive nephew, said the following:
“Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug!”
To those who say money does not matter, he says humbug! To those who say misery is a choice, he says humbug! To those who say everyone we come into contact with are “fellow passengers to the grave,” he says humbug!
Humbug, in the way Scrooge meant it, means accusing someone of spinning a web of deception to conceal what they truly think and feel. But he did not catch his nephew committing a random act of humbug. Actually, Scrooge’s accusation was proof he was deceiving himself—but not deliberately. As a reader, we realize we are looking at a man who has made it to old age and yet kept a locked door deep in the bowels of his own skull.
At either end of the human spectrum exists two radically different views of life: what life is on the one hand, and that life is on the other. The what-humans see snow as an annoyance that threatens order, while that-humans see snow as a raw white miracle bestowed upon them by Earth’s 23º tilt away from the sun. The one sees flesh as material for labor, a sack of skin and bones, a waste of resources; the other sees them as fellow travelers on the strange journey that is life. The one sees society as a mob, a mass, an opportunity to stand on a balcony above a sea of upturned faces waiting for orders; the other sees society as a grand spectacle it is a privilege to be a part of.
The irony of the what-humans is they never contemplate the human situation. Death gnaws at their subconscious as it does for all of us, but they refuse to wrap it in their hands and smile into it—that is, until they realize death is smiling back at them.
The cure to this ignorance is the mission of the Ghosts. The Ghost of Christmas Past asks them this: have you learned from your failures, sorrows, and regrets in your dealings with others in the past, or have you not? The Ghost of Christmas Present asks them this: will you fulfill the momentous potential of this moment right in front of you, or will you not? The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come asks them this: have you carved time out of your busyness to contemplate your legacy in the minds of those you will leave behind when you are soil and bones, or have you not?
Death is the end; there is therefore no better reminder that right now is a new beginning.
And thus the wisdom of Dickens’ is this: no matter what miseries we think we are condemned to endure this Christmas, it is worth infinite gratitude that we are alive to experience them.
For it is true “The task is life, but the adventure is poetry.”1
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Ernst Jünger
Merry Christmas!
And that spirit applies, regardless of religion.
Just volunteer for anything and you will experience “infinite gratitude that we are alive to experience them.”