Marley’s Ghost
Editor’s note: I’m writing this from church as the 2nd service is near. Robin & I attended 1st service but our kids like classes so much they want to go to both. We don’t want to discourage it so we just stay for both when we can.
Friday night, Luke and I attended the opening night of A Christmas Carol put on by the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. A good production, I liked how they had actors play multiple characters and adapted it in a way that highlighted Dickens’s literary skills. I have to admit even though like most I thought I was well familiar with the story, I think I had missed most of the main points before. Like I think its a play about an old man who hates Christmas and needs to be reacquainted with its true meaning. That’s partly right because old Scrooge does scoff at Christmas. But its not just about a man who is not Merry. I mean we often can take this story to just encourage us to shop and spend more. That’s Christmas right! But the real point Dickens is making is that this is a story of a hardened old man whose heart is cold towards the poor.
In Stave 1, Scrooge is visited by two gentlemen raising money for charity. When one says that ‘many thousands are in want of common necessities; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts’, Scrooge incredulously asks, ‘are there no prisons… and the Union workhouses, are they still in operation?’. Scrooge says he will give nothing, that he supports the institutions he mentioned before. When told that these people might die, Scrooge says that he would rather them die and thus decrease the surplus population. These words will literally come back to haunt him when visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present.
When Marley’s ghost visits Scrooge and explains why he is fettered by chains and how the chain is one he forged himself in life by his own free will. He explains that he misused his opportunity in life. Scrooge, applying it to himself as well, says, “But you were a good business man.”
Here’s Marley’s reply: ”Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
What will be my Christmas Carol this season? Do I need to see ghosts in chamber room for my eyes to be opened? Is mankind my business? Do I think of Christmas as getting, buying, spending and Black Friday deals? Do make charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence my business? Do I really understand Christmas and why Christ came? Do I embrace the Great Commandment of loving God and loving others as myself? Or just the Great Commission (or what I’ve limited it to) and proclamation message?
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!
