Have you ever actually read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol? I mean read it. I don't mean seen the movie, watched the cartoon, or kind of know it from all of the half-hearted adaptations. This is one excellent story–Dickens at his best. When you actually go back and read the the original, you develop a new appreciation for the story. I did.
A couple of years ago, I was looking for something to read one sleepless night and pulled from my shelf a book called You've Got to Read This : Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe. In it, John Irving writes an introduction to A Christmas Carol asking the reader to read it with new eyes. It occurred to me that I had never actually read it. I knew the story from bad movies and cartoons. So I did and I was blown away by the finely-crafted prose and vivid characters. It's a great story.
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. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
One thing I took away from the story was that Scrooge wasn't a villain because he had money. He was demonized by Dickens because of the way he cut himself off from the world. For all of his money, Scrooge lacked compassion for others and was bitter and isolated. Scrooge lacked moral fiber. Money without morals, ethics, and an appreciation for how it was earned ate away at Scrooge.
Christmas is tomorrow and I have this new appreciation for A Christmas Carol. It is a tale of morality and humanity; it is not a tale of greed gone wild like so many people think it is. Dickens wrote about how Scrooge's nephew reached out to him as well as people in the community looking for Christmas donations for the poor. Wealth in itself is not evil. Scrooge was wealthy without a sense of humanity. That's the point of the story. To say that money is the root of all evil is a tired cliché and yet that is the focus of many of the A Christmas Carol adaptations. Instead, read the story and learn the importance of people. Watch Scrooge's transformation and how he used his wealth to enrich other people's lives. Money is a tool and Scrooge eventually learns how to use it properly.
Merry Christmas
Popularity: 1% [?]
Unrest by Parkway Drive