ANOTHER CHRISTMAS CAROL

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachussetts
Sunday December 18, 2005


A man and his wife were sitting together in their living room one Sunday afternoon when suddenly he turned to her and said "Just so you know, I never want to go on living in a vegetative state dependent on some machine. If that ever happens, just pull the plug." So his wife got up and unplugged the TV.

We are now, of course in the midst of the season when television abounds with football games, feel-good advertising, and of course those classic Christmas stories, the annual Holiday Specials we’ve all doubtlessly seen dozens if not hundreds of times. Movies like Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” starring Jimmy Stewart in the role of George Bailey, and Donna Reed as his devoted wife. Or “Miracle on 34th Street” staring Maureen O’Hare as a progressive single mom and Edmund Gwenn as the kindly but eccentric Kris Kringle, and featuring a young Natalie Wood as Mrs. Walker’s precocious daughter Susan, who grows to discover that there is a Santa Claus after all. How many of us have been tempted to bring home a less-than-perfect Christmas tree after being inspired by “A Charlie Brown Christmas?” And who could possibly forget Ralphie Parker’s quest for a Red Ryder BB gun in the aptly-named “A Christmas Story?”

But perhaps the best-known and most widely-broadcast sentimental Christmas Story of all time is the one which essentially defined the genre: Charles Dickens’ often-adapted Victorian novella “A Christmas Carol,” which turned the characters of Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim into both household names and enduring icons of Popular Culture, and made the phrase “bah-humbug” part of our common Christmas lexicon. I don’t know for a fact whether Dickens’ original tale is the most frequently-dramatized non-biblical Christmas story ever, but I do know that a quick Google search will turn up dozens of different variations. The benchmark, of course -- the standard against which all other Scrooges are measured -- is still Alastair Sim’s 1951 performance (which has now been colorized for the appreciation of a whole new generation of digital cable viewers). But let’s also not forget Albert Finney’s brilliant 1970 characterization, or those of George C. Scott (who had already won an Oscar for his performance as General Patton) and Patrick Stewart (perhaps better known for his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: the Next Generation).

And then of course there are the knockoffs. Bill Murray, one of the original Ghostbusters, played the title role in 1988’s Christmas Turkey “Scrooged,” while Henry Winkler (who in happier days was better known as “The Fonz”) tried his hand back in 1977 in a version set in Concord New Hampshire during the Great Depression entitled “An American Christmas Carol.” More recently Kelsey Grammer, who has made an entire career out of playing the character of psychiatrist Frazier Crane on “Cheers” and its subsequent Seattle-based spin-off, starred in a musical adaptation that also featured Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander in the role of Marley’s ghost.

And finally there are the animated versions: not only my personal favorite, “Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol” (from 1962), but also “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” (from Disney), and “The Muppets Christmas Carol” (with Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit, and actor Michael Caine in the role of Scrooge), not to mention versions featuring both the Flintstones and the Jetsons. Let’s just face facts: at this time of year, Scrooge is ubiquitous. And it’s a miracle that there’s enough Christmas to go around.

So what is the enduring appeal of Dickens’ one hundred and sixty-two year old Christmas morality tale? And could it possibly have anything to do with the author’s own Unitarian beliefs? That’s what I really want to know: is the timeless popularity of “A Christmas Carol” simply a manifestation of its straightforward expression of the classic Unitarian values of liberality and compassion, together with its profound belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and its unshakable, optimistic faith that no person is ever beyond redemption, simply through the power of honest, introspective self-examination to evoke transformative change?

Dickens wrote his novella at a time when the celebration of Christmas itself was undergoing a dramatic transformation in the English-speaking world. Seventeenth-century New England Puritans had essentially outlawed the celebration of Christmas in this part of the world, objecting among other things to the obvious fact that many of the most recognizable symbols of the season: holly, mistletoe, and the yule log, for example, were all unquestionably of pagan origin. Meanwhile, back in Merry Olde England (as well as in other parts of North America) “keeping Christmas” had all the solemnity of the old Roman Saturnalia from which the holiday is originally descended: a rowdy celebration of the Lord of Misrule, during which gangs of intoxicated working-class men would “go a’wassiling,” presenting themselves at the front doors of the gentry to demand their “figgy pudding” and other gifts of food and drink, and refusing to go until they got some.

Dickens and his Unitarian co-religionists, on the other hand, represented an element of society which was literally attempting to “domesticate” Christmas: to move it (in the words of historian Stephen Nissenbaum) out of the streets and into the parlour, by transforming the season from a drunken revel into a pious, child-centered “frolic” devoted to the celebration of family, the exchange of uplifting, inspirational gifts, and acts of Christian charity directed toward the less fortunate. We see these same sentiments expressed in the opening chapters of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, where the March sisters celebrate the holiday with “a good deal of laughing, and kissing, and explaining, in the simple, loving fashion which makes these home-festivals so pleasant at the time, so sweet to remember long afterward....” Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy keep Christmas by exchanging small, practical gifts, putting on a play of their own creation, and accompanying Marmee on her charitable errands to the immigrant poor of Concord.

Yet there is another dimension to these sentimental 19th century Unitarian Christmas stories as well. Many literary critics have read Dickens’ tale as a commentary on the increasing sharp class divisions brought about by industrialization, and a plea for a return to more traditional, interpersonal values, when the physical and material distance between employer and employee was not nearly so great. We see this sentiment clearly expressed at the conclusion of Dickens’ story, where Scrooge feigns anger at Bob Cratchit when he arrives late to the office on the morning after Christmas, and then, after declaring “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer” proceeds to discipline his tardy clerk by raising his salary, while at the same time promising to assist the struggling Cratchit family in whatever way he can, and sending Bob out to buy another coal scuttle before he dots another “i”.

“Scrooge was better than his word,” the narrative continues. “He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing every happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him.”

Scrooge’s personal transformation in many ways mirrors the metamorphosis that Dickens would have liked to see take place throughout Victorian society. But there’s a lot more going on here than the simple, cartoon-like, childish notion that the “Spirit of Christmas” somehow has the magical power to change even the most recalcitrant old miser. University of Tennessee professor Richard Kelly put it this way:

“A Christmas Carol is built upon numerous contrasts: rich and poor, warmth and cold, plenty and hunger, family and loneliness, generosity and miserliness, affection and cruelty, dream and reality, freedom and compulsion, past and present, and present and future. Most of these opposing forces are recapitulated within the character of Scrooge himself. The cold-hearted, compulsive, lonely, miserly man, who eats his abstemious meal in the shadows, emerges from his dreams, memories, and fears, into a generous, fun-loving, warm, caring fatherly man. The texture of the story, rich with contrasting imagery, prepares the reader for Scrooge's conversion well in advance of the concluding chapter. True, this is hardly a realistic tale -- indeed, it resembles a fable with its cautionary note about human behavior -- but it renders a powerful psychological account of the fruits of introspection.

“The three stages of Scrooge's conversion--the detailed memories of a lonely childhood, an awakened vision of the suffering and joys of those presently around him, and his fear of future loneliness and an awareness of his own mortality -- combine to change him into a decent man, one who goes on to earn from those who knew him this crowning accolade: ‘it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge’.”

The very word “conversion” implies a certain degree of religious or spiritual transformation. Yet consider the actual source of Scrooge’s rebirth. On one hand Scrooge realizes through his encounter with the Spirits that, compared to the people he sees around him, he has the financial means to be generous if he chooses: he has accumulated enough personal wealth that he can afford to keep Christmas as well as he likes, if only he wishes to do so. But more importantly, he has also discovered the price that he has paid personally in order to acquire those riches -- how his single-minded pursuit of “more” has cost him love, joy, his youthful happiness, family connections and human warmth, even his physical health and material comfort. He lives, not like a truly wealthy person, but like a miser whose own greed prevents him from enjoying the fruits of his supposed prosperity. Scrooge has been measuring his wealth in the wrong currency. And when he realizes how impoverished he truly is, THEN he becomes a changed human being.

Today’s sermon is supposed to be the last in the series I’ve been preaching all this past fall about “The Purpose Driven Unitarian.” And the topic for today was Affirmation: Witness, Outreach, Evangelism, Mission...transforming our lives by giving ourselves the purpose of transforming the lives of others, by sharing the good news of our saving message of hope, that people are precious and that together we have the ability to make the world better for everyone.

Many contemporary Unitarian Universalists feel a litle uncomfortable about thinking of themselves as “evangelists” or “missionaries.” The idea of “sharing” our faith with others feels a little pushy, especially if we’ve ever felt afflicted by someone who wanted to share their faith with us. But if we reflect upon the example of Dickens’ “Christmas Carol,” we will see that it is certainly possible to promote the ideas and values of our liberal faith without being obnoxious or domineering or imposing ourselves on others, and that the best example of the value of our beliefs is our own lives well-lived in the compassionate service of all humanity.

We need MORE Scrooges in this world. Not the old, stingy, small-minded Scrooge, huddled in his dark, cold counting-house hoarding even the lumps of coal in his coal-scuttle. But the enlightened, transformed and generous Scrooge, who has become the Spirit of Christmas incarnate, a living (albeit fictional) symbol of the redemptive power of self-understanding, compassionate service, and loving relationships. May our own lives also embody and testify to these same values, not only in this holiday season, but throughout the entire year. And in the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us, Every One!”