By James Ward
It’s the season for holiday traditions. One of my long-standing favorites is an annual rereading of A Christmas Carol. I started the story this year, as I traditionally do, late on Thanksgiving evening.
After a long day spent with bacchanalian adults and hyperactive kids, too much football and too much noise, bed and book are a welcome refuge for me, you might say my safe place.
I propped my pillows just right and clicked on my overhead reading lamp. My copy of A Christmas Carol is a well-worn classic, with Bob Cratchit on the cover, joyously walking down a wintry London Street, carrying an equally joyous Tiny Tim who waves his little crutch as if it were a magic wand. That image always readies me to enter the fictional dream that any great story conjures.
But this year, just minutes into Stave One, something unexpected happened.
Of a sudden, I felt a cold draft, as if the door to the attic, which is just off my bedroom, had been opened. I pulled the blankets up tighter around me.
Then the disturbances started. My house is over 100 years old and steam-heated. It can be noisy. I was sure the clanging sounds I heard were the steam pipes heating and expanding.
When the night light, which is in the hallway to the bathroom and set off by motion, flickered and lit, I prepared to defend myself, with the handy cudgel I keep alongside my bed.
The club wouldn’t help, for appearing from under my bed and floating upwards to hover over me was a fog-like cloud. The cold draft intensified, as if it came from this apparition.
Slowly coalescing, the mist formed into an old man, wearing an antiquated night shirt and sleeping cap. He had a pointed nose, shriveled cheeks and red-rimmed eyes. What looked like a hoar frost was on his head and his eyebrows. I recognized him. It was a perfect likeness of Ebenezer Scrooge, as depicted in my book.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the top blanket over my face. I tried to calm myself with the knowledge that I had overeaten at the day’s family feast. Usually a champion of moderation, the temptation of all that holiday food had bested me.
Besides a hefty portion of turkey and all the trimmings, I had been compelled to sample a dish prepared by a young niece, an inexperienced cook. Her concoction had the texture of underdone potatoes. I had read that such things can disorder the stomach, and a disorderly stomach can lead to disorderly senses. I kept my eyes shut and concentrated on my breathing.
I assure you that I am a logical being. I had never claimed to see a ghost before and had always been the first to call such things foolish and poke fun at those who fall for them.
But when I opened my eyes and peaked out from the blanket, the eerie old man was still there and hovering closer, his sharp chin pointed directly at me. I could even smell an unpleasant sourness about him.
“James,” the Ghost of Scrooge said, in a grating voice.
“Yes?” I answered and heard the shiver in my own voice.
“I,” the ghost said and raised a stick-like forefinger, “require your assistance.”
His tone was pleading, not threatening, and I noticed the oddity that he could speak without moving his thin, blue lips.
The only answer I could think of was, “What can I do?”
With more emotion in his voice, the ghost said, “I have been done a great wrong.”
“How so?”
“That infernal book,” he said, and looked to my copy of A Christmas Carol, lying next to me on the bed.
“A volume that impresses you and so many others, but that for almost two centuries has involuntarily resurrected me every year, to be pilloried by all mankind, such that my very name has been made synonymous with greed and humbuggery. I am the victim of a nothing less than an annual rite of worldwide character assassination.”
I still didn’t know this ghost’s intentions, or his powers, and with all that pent-up anger perched above me, I was not inclined to debate. Instead, I asked again, softly, through the top blanket, “What can I do?”
“Defend me,” the Ghost of Scrooge said.
“Defend you?”
“Yes.” He looked again to the book, but kept his distance, as if afraid to touch it. “It’s all in there. What I ask is that you read it anew, but this time consider my situation, and if such a reading assaults your sense of fairness – defend me!”
The Ghost tried to say more but was slowly fading away. When it disappeared, it was with a barely audible final plea.
“Defend me.”
As you might imagine, I was most unnerved. I thought to get up and go for a walk to clear my head. My legs said no. They felt as if strapped to my bed. Then I was overcome by an irresistible compulsion to go back to the book, from the beginning.
I did that, reading slowly and carefully. It was early in the morning when I finished. I had my legs back but felt the need to take up my bedside pad and old Parker fountain pen and answer Mr. Scrooge’s plea. I would defend him.
That is what follows.
* * *
Before the story even started, my newly sensitized consciousness barked. In the brief opening descriptions of his characters, Charles Dickens describes Mr. Scrooge as a rasping, covetous old man. I asked myself – is that a fair introduction to the man before the reader has even met him?
The story’s opening page informs us that Jacob Marley, who had been Scrooge’s sole friend in this world, is dead. We discover that at Mr. Marley’s death, Ebenezer was his sole mourner. We are informed that even after Marley’s passing, Mr. Scrooge never painted out his friend’s name from above their business’ door.
Somehow, meanness is insinuated from this, but I see it as a testament to the man’s loyalty and commitment to never forget his colleague. We should all have such a friend.
Another point to consider – how does Mr. Dickens describe Mr. Marley’s death? It is not with a gentle reminder, not a polite he had passed, or gone to a better place. No, Marley is coldly described as dead, and to make the point sharper, he is described, twice, as dead as a door-nail. Imagine Mr. Scrooge’s distress at such a description. Talk about emotional triggers!
Given the untimely passing of Mr. Marley and his close relationship with Mr. Scrooge, we might expect some sympathy for the surviving friend. What do we get instead? Mr. Scrooge’s every action, no matter how innocuous or even good, is turned against him.
For example, the man is criticized for conducting business on the day of his friend’s funeral. But I think it completely reasonable that Mr. Marley would have wanted it that way. He might well have seen it as a tribute.
Today, when professional athletes choose to compete in the face of such a personal loss, they are often praised as courageously fulfilling what would surely be the lost one’s wishes. Not Mr. Scrooge, for him only the worst is implied.
Given a second chance at his main character’s description, what does Mr. Dickens say? Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
A great writer, our Mr. Dickens, that is not in dispute, but here, in describing Mr. Scrooge, he uses his celebrated ability to put the best words in the best order in service of nothing short of character assassination.
A major issue is made of Mr. Scrooge’s prudent use of coal, the sole means of heating his establishment. We know today that his contemporaries were busy expanding the industrial revolution, fueled by the imprudent use of coal, the mining and burning of which currently threatens the health of our whole planet.
Wasn’t Mr. Scrooge ahead of his time, his prudence an early example of wokeness? How much better off we would all be if only more of his contemporaries and successors had followed his example.
To his supposed detriment, Ebenezer is quoted as saying to his nephew, “What’s Christmas-time to you but a time for paying bills without money.”
I would ask this, along with climate change, what is the greatest current threat to our social well-being? The case can be well made that it is our addiction to debt, personal and public and corporate.
As of this date, according to the Institute of International Finance, the world is drowning in global debt estimated to be $244 trillion. That is $244,000,000,000,000!
And every Christmas, consumers load their credit cards to the breaking point while shouldering what in Mr. Scrooge’s time would have been considered usurious interest rates.
Who looks more reasonable now, the practicable Mr. Scrooge with his warning against runaway debt, or the smiling couples shown on our televisions, exchanging the most expensive of non-essentials, what Mr. Scrooge in his time might have called, Butter upon bacon, this kind of excess exemplified by new cars for Christmas – $50,000 plus cars, financed and with ridiculous red ribbons on them?
Despite desiring only to be left alone, Mr. Scrooge is repeatedly hounded to abandon his core principals, values such as frugality and humility. It’s as if individual choice and diversity of opinion were bad things.
Ebenezer tells his nephew: ‘Nephew! keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.’ Isn’t such an acceptance of diverse viewpoints a great principle of our more enlightened time? Wasn’t Ebenezer simply a man ahead of his time?
What does Ebenezer get for defending his core values? Terrorized without mercy. On that long-ago Christmas eve, poor Scrooge had a melancholy dinner in a melancholy tavern and headed for his home and bed.
It is the anniversary of his friend Marley’s death, and all Ebenezer wishes for is pain- numbing sleep. Surely, he deserves at least that. But what Mr. Dickens has in store for him is more worthy of Stephen King than our Victorian master.
As Ebenezer puts his key in his lock, a haunting image of the deceased Marley appears in the door knocker. In the face of such fright Mr. Scrooge steadies himself, enters his place and lights a candle. He is not a man easily frightened.
He sits by his lonely little fire for a moment of repose and is met again with Marley’s haunting image. Then comes the ringing of bells and clanging of chains. Doors fly open accompanied by booming noises that flow through the house, coming straight to his door.
Does he cower or scream or run out of his place? No. Instead he faces all this and exclaims a defiant, “Humbug! I won’t believe it!” He is a man of reason and courage, standing face to face with the terror employed against him and defying it. More hero than a clutching, covetous old sinner.
When Ebenezer reaffirms his belief in our solid world, the spirit reacts as thwarted terrorists are wont to do, by a frightful escalation until, finally broken, our old and frightened man falls upon his knees and pleas for mercy.
Is he afforded mercy? No! Instead the ghost goes on to tell Mr. Scrooge of the horrors that await him upon his own death – unless, and this is the key, unless he conforms to what the ghost, as the representative of a tyrannical majority, finds acceptable.
But even that is not enough capitulation, because even after our brave but elderly and lonely man finally breaks under the relentless assault and agrees to conform, he is still sentenced to torture by three more ghosts!
The ghost of Christmas past strikes first. What weapon does this specter use? One designed to have maximum effect on an aging man – the terror of late-life regret. A clever one was this Ghost of Christmas Past. Nothing is too low for him.
Talk to seniors today and broach the topic of missed opportunities, of what might have been, and behold the misery you can evoke. This ghost even plays on Ebenezer’s sorrowful regret at never having a loving family of his own, tormenting the old man with scenes of domestic bliss that he has never experienced.
Second in the terrible trilogy of tormentors, is the Ghost of Christmas Present. Solitary, melancholy Mr. Scrooge is forced to silently witness a dinner of idealistic joy and camaraderie.
The children are as good as gold! And just the descriptions of the food are enough to make one sorry for the friendless bachelor. There never was such a goose! Oh, what a wonderful pudding! Read all this for yourself, in Stave Three, and wonder if ever so much hyperbole has been laid upon a goose and pudding?
Just when we think Mr. Scrooge’s persecutors have touched bottom in their ways to torment, they sink lower. Next, the possibility of little Tiny Tim’s death is held over Mr. Scrooge’s head, as if he would be responsible for the tragedy.
Finally, Ebenezer is described as the ogre of the family, just the mention of his name enough to cast a dark shadow over their celebration. Even the idealized Cratchit family have a laugh at the shaking Mr. Scrooge, after he is described as a disagreeable animal and is made the source of the family’s merriment.
Finally, completely broken, Ebenezer Scrooge relents. He tells the third ghost, the Ghost of the Future, I am prepared to bear your company, and do it with a thankful heart.
At that point I am not disappointed with the man I defend. He has endured more than anyone can be expected to endure. Still, he is forced to foresee a future where people, after his death, slander him. Scrooge is even foretold of his own death, one that occurs with him gasping out his last, alone by himself. Who could even think up such cruelties?
* * *
Dear readers, that is enough. It is time for me to conclude. I’m afraid more detail of Mr. Scrooge’s maltreatment could bring on your own nightmares.
Having read the above, I hope you have more charitable feelings toward old Ebenezer. If you are unmoved with his defense as I have presented it, I confess I am not a trained defender, just a sympathetic scribbler, and I suggest you carve out some time from your busy schedules to read A Christmas Carol.
Whether for the first time or a rereading, I encourage you to read without the baggage of previous prejudice. For those who are as miserly as Mr. Scrooge was painted to be, I point out that the book is in the public domain.
I will ask one final thing of you. As you read the evocative account of what happens to this man during that long-ago Christmas, ask yourself how you would feel if your elderly grandfather or grandmother, some of whom I am sure were parsimonious sorts themselves, were treated as poorly as Mr. Scrooge?
And for those who have a reverential feeling toward Mr. Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol, I confess that he and his books have brought me great joy over the years. My purpose was not to be harsh on Mr. Dickens or his work. My motive here is simple – after his Thanksgiving evening appearance and plea, I felt I owed it to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge to defend him. Seldom has a man needed defending more.
Finally, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Keep it in your own way.
James Ward is a novelist and short story writer. He lives in Morristown, New Jersey. His novel titled Every Commandment but the Fifth takes place in a town very similar to Morristown.
A great take on a Classic story!
Scrooge’s partner was Bob Marley? Awesome.