Last year around this time I focused on one of my ironic choices for Christmas reading by discussion what I consider to be the antithesis to Dickens; James Joyce's The Dead, but in the charitable spirit of the season I think I will break my miserly tradition and embrace the tale which has come to define, in more ways than one, the Spirit of the Christmas season.
Whenever we think of Charles Dickens, especially around December, immediately images crop up of faces in door knockers and frail children making exclamations of blessing. I enjoy a hearty rendering of A Christmas Carol as well as the next bloke, but I get the sense that our preoccupation with Ebenezer Scrooge's humbugging often obscures Dickens' literary preoccupation with the meaning of Christmas. This is not to downplay one of the Victorian author's most iconic tales; in fact, I almost feel that many of Dickens' other Christmassy short stories are searching for some kind of meaning in the winter holidays; a search that reached its culmination in the message of generosity and kindness that has come to epitomize nearly every piece of Christmas entertainment since the composition of A Christmas Carol. Indeed, one can find Ebeneezer Scrooge in any number of cinematic and literary incarnations from Dr. Seuss' Grinch to National Lampoons' Clark Griswold. Some of these incarnations are more overt than others but all point to the profound effect that Dickens' Victorian holiday narrative has had upon the cultural discourse of the English speaking world.
What one must, of course, consider here is to what extent we are willing to accept this particular holiday message. Most people will agree that the progression of Scrooge's character from miserly grouch to generous chap is a positive message for anyone during the Christmas season but we have to wonder if this particular narrative coincides or muscles out the intended meaning of the Christmas Holiday. The term holiday of course is an old portmanteau of Holy Day; a day reserved for the catholic (and later Anglican) Christ's Mass which was a period of community celebration that fit nicely into the December church calendar.
The importance of this holy-day, of course, was the celebration of the incarnation of the Christian messiah; the moment at which God committed a part of himself to earthly existence in order to demonstrate to humankind the significance of his willingness for self-sacrifice on their behalf. While the life of Christ as we understand it in the gospels certainly demonstrated values that undoubtedly align themselves with Dickens' narrative, the holiday itself seems to represent a significantly different narrative. At what point does our appreciation for God's mercy become supplanted by a sense of social generosity? According to some sources (and admittedly I have not done much research beyond wikipedia. So sue me) it is with Dickens.
Of course it would be too much to blame the prolific Victorian author with the sad slide toward the commercialization of a formerly sacred holiday but the circumstances surrounding this shift must make one think. That said, I cannot in my right mind diminish the importance of a holiday that emphasizes a general sense of unselfishness. Perhaps this is the way in which we may justify the holy-day to the holiday. In either case, on a literary level I must admit that I'll never stop reveling in the lush spirit of Dickens' Christmases, past, present, and future and the ghosts, holy or otherwise, that descend upon us with the snow of late December.
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