The most famous story of Charles Dickens is A Christmas Carol published in 1843, whose central character bears the name that has come to personify all that is mean and misery – Scrooge. The surviving partner of a London firm of moneylenders and now an old man for whom life means no more than making money, when Christmas comes is is all “humbug†and only begrudingly does he let his clerk, Bob Cratchit, take the time from work to celebrate with his family. But that night Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, then by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come, who take him on journeys into his own past, into the present, where he is shown a world of hardship and poverty which he has ignored, and finally into the future. The night ends in the dawn of a new life for Scrooge: his heart has been truned and he has regained his ability to love and to care for others. All ends on high note of happiness.
Seven year earlier, Dickens’ story “The Goblins who Stole a Sexton†was published as part of The Pickwick Papers. Here we find Gabriel Grubb, sexton and gravedigger, “a morose and lonely man, who consorted with nobody but himselfâ€, and who deicdes one Christmas Eve to raise his spirits by digging a grave. Preferring the gloom of a dark lane to the cheerful sights and sounds of the old street as people prepare for Christmas, he enters the churchyard and sets to work, completing the task with “grim satisfactionâ€. It is then he is confronted by a goblin and then by a crowd of goblins who transport him to a goblin cavern where he is presented with visions of poor people who, faced with life’s adversities, maintain hope and serenity. He awakes in the morning, convinced that it was not a dream; but cartain that no one will believe his experiences, he resolves to seek his living elswhere. He returns 10 years later to find that indeed very few believe him and many attribute his experiences to drink. But he is changed and better man, and A Christmas Carol is partly modelled on this story.
Truth can be found through experience. Scrooge and Grubb discovered the truth about themselves through their “Other-world†experiences. But in the Gospel, when John the Baptist’s disciples ask Jesus if He is the “one who is to come,†He tells them that by experiencing His deeds they will discover the truth of His identity. Those who awaited a Messiah of worldly power stumbled and fell against unfulfilled anticipation. That is why Jesus says that anyone who does not lose faith in Him is blessed.
The ghostly visit of Jacob Marley was a warning to Scrooge to find life’s meaning before it was too late. It was too late for Marley. His ghost was fettered with a chain that he had “forged in life†by never letting his spirit venture beyond the narrow limits of his business, instead of making his “business†the needs of others, especially those who were poor. Thomas Merton, in his book No Man is an Island, says that our purpose in life is to discover its meaning and live according to it, and “that each individual has to work out his own personal salvation for himselfâ€. This means the “full discovery†of who I really am. As the days draw nearer to Christmas, may we find ourselves in Christ and not lose faith in Him.