The turkey will soon be in the oven and in a few hours we will be celebrating the joy of Christmas with a scaled down feast, at least in terms of the number of people around the table. What does it mean to be generous today, when our focus tends to be on family?
Early in Advent the pastor of Trenton United Church, our son Isaac, mentioned that he'd reread A Christmas Carol, written in a couple months in 1843 by by Charles Dickens. Isaac quoted the highlighted passage below and it got me thinking about the classic 1950's movie starring Alastair Sim and the readings in Canadian churches over a period in the 1990's and at the beginning of the new millenium. I served three congregations which collaborated with CBC celebrities to present A Christmas Carol, events which raised money for various charitable causes. CBC news host Judy Maddren recalls the genesis of these readings which eventually took place in more than a hundred veneues in this way:
It happened the first week of December in 1990. I booked a good choir to sing carols, a lighting specialist to add a theatrical sparkle, rented a local church, and borrowed CBC sound expertise. My children and their friends were roped in as ushers, my husband looked after house lights, and the volunteers for the charity sold tickets at the door. The church youth group handled the reception. From ticket profits, we raised a small sum for a Women's Shelter.
I read a Time Magazine piece describing Dickens's initial plan to write a pamphlet decrying the exploitation of child labour in 19th century Britain. Instead he wrote the enduring story A Christmas Carol which masterfully addresses the hypocrisy of blaming the poor for their own poverty and shining a light on the growing divide between rich and poor during the Industrial Revolution. He meant it to be a "hammer blow." It is remarkably relevant today, on a global scale.
Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. “And travelling all the time!”
“The whole time,” said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse."
“You travel fast?” said Scrooge.
“On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost.
“You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,” said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one's life's opportunity misused!
Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!”
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
"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 comprehensived ocean of my business. ”
It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
“At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!”
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
As A Christmas Carol reminds us, its never too late to live and see as Christ's compassionate people, desiring a more loving world because of God's gift of incarnate love to all of us.
Have a safe, enjoyable, and even indulgent Christmas feast, and as Tiny Tim exclaimed "God bless us, everyone!"
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