Dickens' Christmas Carol and the Challenge of the Christmas Proclamation

 

Dickens' Christmas Carol and the Challenge of the Christmas Proclamation

The movie, The Man Who Invented Christmas, is an enjoyable, albeit different, Christmas movie.  It is the story of Charles Dickens inner struggle to create the beloved A Christmas Carol.  I had a number of different reactions to this movie and thought that I would collect them in this short essay. 

1.     This is essentially a Christmas movie about the creation of the story, A Christmas Carol, which ultimately became the archetype for all Christmas stories and movies. It tells us that a core of goodness still exists in the heart of humanity and that the heart of even the most miserable human beings can be changed.  This story is one of the triumph of hope over despair, of goodness over evil, and of purpose over meaninglessness.  It is the essential story of most Christmas movies from The Bishop’s Wife to It’s a Wonderful Life.

What makes these movies “Christmas stories” as opposed to ordinary happy tales, is the intervention of an external power or force, be it angels or ghosts.   Human despair and misery cannot be reversed by humanity alone, a power from beyond is needed. 

2.    A Christmas Carol is a Christmas story without a Christ.  Dickens’ delightful story is about human transformation without a religious dimension.  There is no mention of the Jesus, no crèche, and no Mary and Joseph.  The story is entirely secular.  In this respect, the title The Man Who Invented Christmas is spot on.  This story provides the foundation for the modern celebration of Christmas as a secular holiday.  The “Christmas Spirit” is the spirit of generosity and hope, not the Holy Spirit that comes upon Mary in the Magnificat, (Luke 1:46-55).  Dickens distilled the hope of the biblical story of the incarnation in a form that enables all to celebrate the “season” apart from the theological dogma surrounding the incarnation.  Ironically, Dickens, “the man who invented Christmas” removed Christ from Christmas. 

3.    I was struck by the coincidental timing of this story, given what is happening in the halls of Congress.  A driving sentiment in A Christmas Carol is the hope that Tiny Tim will live.  He is ill, probably with rickets from the poor nutrition that results from poverty.  He needs medical care.  Our country is filled with “Tiny Tims” suffering from all types of childhood diseases, but the Children’s Health Insurance Program, (CHIP), has been unfunded since September 30, 2017.  Tiny Tim survives because of the generosity of the transformed Scrooge.  How many children will die in the richest nation in the world because of the hardened hearts of the representatives who are sitting on this bill? 

We should not forget that Dickens’ novels were critical of the disparities of wealth that existed in Great Britain during his day.  This included the exploitation of children to the benefit of the wealthy.  His character, Scrooge, is the archetype of the greed that allows those in power to continue to exploit workers, deny healthcare, and justify poverty using arguments of economic expediency.   The modern reader of A Christmas Carol cannot help but hear echoes of Scrooge’s rhetoric in the pseudo-philosophy of Ayn Rand, social Darwinism and its modern political proponents.  

As a pastor, Christmas was always a difficult season for me.  Part of it was due to the “busy-ness” and the tyranny of minutia that are so much of a clergy’s experience of Christmas.  But there was a deeper, theological, and existential issue for me.  It is the fact that Christmas is a very minor part of the Biblical story.  It occupies 2 chapters of the Gospel of Luke, (really only the 2^nd chapter).  Matthew devotes 30 verses of his Gospel to the story of the incarnation.  Neither Mark nor John mention it.  The Apostle Paul does not write about it in any of his letters, with the exception of Galatians 4:4-5, (with no mention of Mary and Joseph).  The focus of the New Testament is on the Resurrection of Jesus and the victory ushered into the world by this event.  I felt as though contemporary Christianity had been overtaken by the secular celebration of Christmas.  From my conversations with colleagues, I knew that I was not alone in this sentiment.

It was only in the latter years of my ministry that I began to change my feelings about Christmas and its religious and secular dimensions.  It began to dawn on me that Christmas stories, particularly A Christmas Carol provided a “point of contact” for me to address my congregation with the message of the incarnation.  The words of the Advent hymn, “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” were embodied in these secular Christmas stories and movies.

Israel’s strength and consolation,

Hope of all the earth Thou art’

Dear desire of every nation,

Joy of every longing heart.

The Christ-less Christmas stories expressed this longing, this desire; this hope to hope again.  Preaching, indeed ministry, during the Christmas season needed to speak to this ancient longing.  There is indeed a hole, an emptiness in our collective soul that cannot be filled by kings and leaders from Herod to Trump.  There is a longing and thirst for a better world where generosity, love, justice, and healing prevail.  There is also a cynicism, a wound of the spirit that tells us that we, of our own volition, cannot usher in this era.  Our Christmas proclamation needs to speak to this wound that will not heal; this wound that is articulated in the Christmas stories we read and watch. 

Dickens also had a social conscience.  His novels, from Bleak House to Oliver Twist do not ignore the plight of the underclass and the poor.  He brings their story to light and tells of their struggles and their shortcomings.  They are not the “noble poor” but rather human beings with hopes that are mired in the mud of despair.   Our proclamation needs to embody the realism of Dickens.  In the words of Isaiah, (and later Jesus) we need to declare “good news to the poor.”  If our Christmas message does not include this, then we too are captives to consumerist Christmas. 

The existential question for the preacher is: Can a world that is captivated and charmed by ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, be touched by the spirit of Christ?   

Karl Barth wrote that the preacher should have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.  He believed that preaching, if it was to be a “living Word” would have to be proclaimed in the living world.  It needed to address the context of its listener.  I fully concur with this sentiment and would extend it to say that during Christmas, we preachers should have the Bible in one hand and A Christmas Carol in the other.