It has been said that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is as much part of Christmas as holly and plum pudding. I know for sure that at some point The Muppet Christmas Carol will be dug out in our house and enjoyed as much as it was last year and the year before. That’s just one of the many versions that have appeared on stage and screen since the story first appeared in 1843. So great an impression has it made that Ebenezer Scrooge has become a bye-word for everything that stands opposed to what is understood to be the spirit of Christmas. Mrs Cratchit describes him as ‘an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man.’ That is backing for the narrator’s judgement early in in the story when he describes Scrooge as ‘Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire.’
Carol isn’t Dickens’ only Christmas story. It’s success paved the way for four others all published in the weeks before Christmas. None of them really hit the heights of Carol but they all have one thing in common. They deal with people who have experienced shadows falling on their lives and find in the Christmas season the resources to make a new start.
The Haunted Man is about a disturbed academic named Redlaw who is visited by a ‘ghost’ at Christmas. This is really a dark projection of himself but Redlaw is told that it is possible to have all his painful memories of the past erased so that they will no longer trouble him. He is hesitant at first but eventually is persuaded that this is the way to go. In the process, however, he destroys any compassion he might ever have had for anyone in any kind of need. Furthermore, he spreads that indifference to anyone with whom he has to do. The depth of this tragedy is revealed when the ghost informs Redlaw that having chosen this state of being it cannot be reversed.
Hope comes in the form of a woman named Milly. She is daily aware of painful experiences in her past but has found that they are the source of a strong empathy with those who suffer. Because she has been in dark and difficult places she is able to help those who are struggling with life’s challenges. It is in coming into contact with Milly that Redlaw finds the ghost’s decree overruled and he is changed along with all those who have been affected by his inner darkness.
In the end The Haunted Man faces us with the reality of the past. It cannot be changed. Nor should it be. There are experiences that may embitter us but they can also shape us in a more positive way. Even the things that are hurtful when brought to mind can work a better person in us. Discussion of where Dickens stood in relation to the Christian faith will go on as long as he is regarded as one of our major writers but Redlaw’s response to Milly’s experiences is surely significant. He recalls ‘Christ upon the cross, and . . . all the good who perished in His cause . . .’ Redlaw realises that it was in suffering that the greatest good ever was released into the experience of humankind, a good that is transformative. The final challenge of the story is not to despise the dark experiences of the past or to seek their annihilation but to ‘keep the memory green’ and allow them to shape our response to the suffering of the present.
This is what nowadays might be described as ‘a Big Ask’ but the life of faith is full of them. How we respond affects the depth of our discipleship. It is often missed that Advent is a Season like Lent when we are called to self-examination and to aspire to changes within ourselves that will bring us more fully in line with God’s will for our lives. Dickens’ Christmas stories are a reminder that we all carry our inner darkness which affects others as well as ourselves. But there is a Light which a regretful Jacob Marley was to discover too late. As a ghost he reviews his life and laments:
‘At this time of the rolling year I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to the blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me.’
If Advent and Christmas are to be meaningful then we need to raise our eyes to the Star that will lead us more surely into the presence of Christ, to stay in that presence, and to seek the transformations that only He can bring.
