By MSGR. JOHN MYLER
Culture Columnist
As a young boy, I’d lay on the family room carpet, eyes glued to the black and white TV, for a Christmastime showing of an old movie version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”
Through all the years and in all its forms — from Dickens’ original 112-page novella to the MGM film with Reginald Owen; from elaborate on-stage productions at the Rep Theatre to even the animated versions with Mickey Mouse and Scrooge McDuck, Mr. Magoo or the Muppets — each has always seemed to me to be like one of the sublime parables of Jesus.
Born in 1812, Dickens was a baptized Anglican and later became a Unitarian. When he was a boy, his middle-class family fell on hard times. The 12-year-old Dickens was forced to take treasured family books to the pawnshop; he was sent to work in a dingy blacking house and his father ended up in debtor’s prison.
In that short bit of biography are perhaps the seeds of the Dickens’ characters Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger and David Copperfield and the Cratchit family and their Tiny Tim.
And many others.
But it is the character of the cold-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge that finds echoes in the Gospels:
• The rich fool (Luke 12:16-21) who plans to tear down his barn and build bigger ones, even though “this very night your life will be demanded of you.”
• The rich man who feasted every day in the presence of poor hungry Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), who suddenly find their roles reversed.
• The rich young man (appearing in three Gospels — Matthew, Mark and Luke) who approaches Jesus but walks away from Christ “sad, because he had many possessions.”
“A Christmas Carol” is not simply a sentimental story. It’s a tale of conversion. The dead partner Jacob Marley appears chained by his sins: “I wear the chains I forged in life.” The “ghosts” of Christmas Past, Present and Future reveal to old Scrooge the loss of his long-ago love and tenderness (the past); the warm and loving situation of the Bob Cratchit clan, pitiful as it is (the present); and the frightening loveless judgment that awaits a dead, unchanged Scrooge (the future).
It is an examination of conscience, manifested by those “holy ghosts.”
In spiritual language, is “A Christmas Carol” Scrooge’s “dark night of the soul?” For when the sun (the Son) brings the light of Christmas dawn, Scrooge sees the world as if for the first time.
That is conversion! The cultured Charles Dickens may not have called it such, but “A Christmas Carol” is indeed a parable.
For at its heart is the mercy of Christ. So “God bless us, every one!”
