It is interesting how many religious holidays match up with astronomical events and in many cases overlay pre-existing holidays of previous religions and cultures. The actual birth date of Christ is of course a matter of conjecture. However the pre-existing Roman celebration of the winter solstice provided a convenient location to park it. But personal associations that we have with Christmas are also interesting to reflect upon as they are invariably a combination of religious, secular and personal iconography.
With age, memories of Christmas become richer, deeper and more complicated as we remember those times and people now gone as well as the fleeting character of present celebrations. The early Greek philosopher Heraclitus remarked that you can never step into the same river twice. In saying this he was stressing the importance of the fact that the primary nature of reality and hence experience was and is change. Change however undermines predictability and predictability is the basis of reason for if there are no constants there are no fixed points of reference. Emotional health rests upon having anchors to moor us while in harbour and fixed points to navigate by. Inconsistency is chaos and chaos brings madness. As such, human life consists in the ongoing struggle to find fixed points of reference in order to chart our way forward.
Christmas is such a point of reference. Though repeating each year, it changes and provides a reference to previous Christmas experiences. There is change but there is also continuity. We focus upon where we are and where we have been, who is with us and who is no longer present, good experiences and bad ones. We may even go beyond our own experiences and memories to reflect upon the countless generations that have gone before us.
I have several points of reference that I have retained for Christmas one of which is to watch the 1951 black and white version of A Christmas Carol and the other is to read the book. Among my most treasured possessions is a first edition of this classic by Charles Dickens first printed in 1843. It is a tiny volume with hand coloured plates. The first print run apparently sold off the shelves on the day it was issued. As of the coming year, it will be 180 years ago that the book appeared. Its message though succinct, remains profound in its simplicity. It recounts the turning around of one individual’s life and his transformation. In so doing, it underscores the personal responsibility for the life we lead as well as the ability to change and pursue more positive directions. There is in this a lesson for all of us, including our children.
I urge you to read it not merely as an account rendered superficial through its repetition as part of Christmas culture, but rather as a psycho-biography of how a man is step by step led to shut himself off from humanity and in that process becomes miserable. Through a process of revelations by various spirits, Scrooge is taken through Christmas past, present and future and through this emotional grounding in space and time finds himself by discovering his links with those around him, It is through the breaking down of those walls that Scrooge finds happiness. It is through the desire to change by virtue of self-examination and the fear of consequences that he is able to do so.
To place the story within a modern mental health perspective, Scrooge undergoes therapy orchestrated out of concern for him by his deceased yet concerned friend Jacob Marley. Through the intervention of three different therapists arguably representing three therapeutic schools over three nights, he is cured. The spirit of Christmas past explores Scrooges past and emotional responses to it largely along the lines of Psychoanalytical Therapy in which issues surrounding his early childhood and family dysfunctions begin to form his personality. The spirit of Christmas Present exposes Scrooge to an awareness of events around him and the effects of his interactions with others along the lines of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. The Spirit of Christmas Future shows Scrooge the results of his current behaviours and attitudes should they remain unchanged and provides purpose in the form of changing behaviour and outcomes along the lines of what is called Logo Therapy.
“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Scrooge repeated as he scrambled out of bed.” In so saying, he expresses a new sense of integration brought about at having looked upon his life as a third party spectator through the help of outside agencies. It is the fact that Scrooge sees himself from the outside that enables him to see clearly and gain objectivity. Seeing himself in this manner, Scrooge begins to take on the role of his own therapist.
The opening involves a brief description of Scrooge as a man who is functionally dysfunctional. Despite material success, he is miserable and is entrenched in negativity — a feature he is more than willing to share. His initial response is denial of the reality of Marley’s ghost and then only a reluctant acceptance. He hopes that it is all a dream and when awakened by the first spirit of Christmas attempts to avoid the experience. The spirit of Christmas past takes Scrooge back in time as a spectator in which he can witness but not interact with events of his past. The first of these is Scrooge as a boy at boarding school where he is left alone despite his classmates all leaving to return to their families for the holidays. Anger and resentment towards his father and the absence or death of his mother form the acorn of the future growth of his personality. He is a sad little boy who looses himself in reading fictional stories. In another episode we see his younger sister Fan coming to the school to pick him up. We learn from their interchange that there has been problems with his father presumably resulting in Scrooge being sent away and that his father has had a change of heart at his sister’s intervention to have him home and begin an apprenticeship. We also learn that later Fan will marry and have one child who will be Scrooge’s nephew.
The next scene involves Scrooge’s first apprenticeship and how he and Jacob Marley formed a friendship or more specifically a partnership while working for old Fezziwig. A party given by Fezziwig which all of the company employees were invited to for food and drink and merriment is memorable for the amount of happiness generated. Another scene takes us forward to a break up between Scrooge and Nell in which she breaks up their engagement on the grounds that Scrooge is no longer the man she met and is focused only on making money. A final scene involves Nell now married to another in later life surrounded by loving children and a devoted husband.
Dickens is very skilled in giving us enough information to provide us with a blank canvas on which to supply the missing detail ourselves. There is no mention of a mother and there is direct reference to an unhappy and insensitive father. We can surmise some family crisis — perhaps the death of his wife but clearly a situation in which Scrooge’s father has not responded well and rejected his son. We see Scrooge as an unhappy and sensitive little boy who has become increasingly introverted. We then see him enjoying the support and kindness provided by Fezziwig but at the same time becoming increasingly hardened to a sense of ruthlessness in which kindness is perceived as a weakness or vulnerability. Though perhaps not exhibited directly towards Nell, she sees this in his treatment of others and attitude towards the world at large Rather than understanding her reaction to his change, they break their engagement with Scrooge feeling that he has been wronged. The fact that he apparently never develops any future romantic relationships points to the fact that he never wishes to expose himself again to this disappointment and therefore resolves to live alone and not have a family. This anger, resentment and meanness of character overtake him and increasingly define him.
The spirit of Christmas present exposes Scrooge to the lives of others he has contact with and the richness of their social connections and family life. He sees Bob Cratchit and the warmth of his family setting amidst crushing poverty. He sees his nephew with his wife and friends. Again, there are missing pieces here that our imagination is invited to fill in. He is the child of Scrooge’s beloved Nell but there is no longer a Nell in the picture nor is there a father of the nephew in the picture. The spirit of Christmas to come provides Scrooge with a fast forward of his own death and the indifference to it by others. The death of Tiny Tim provides a contrasting impact of his death upon family members as opposed to the indifference to Scrooges’ own demise by those with whom he has contact .
The importance of this tale rests upon the implicit lessons within it. Scrooge experiences acts of kindness, love and generosity to which as a result of some contrary experiences in childhood he systemically ignores and indeed grows to regard them with contempt. His inability to accept the good in others fuels his own lack of goodness in himself. His inability to see himself as others see him coupled with his own desire to isolate himself from others emotionally and financially. This results in him becoming the agent of the very forces that initially evoked Scrooge’s anger and distain for others. Insights derived from seeing his own future confront him with both the lack of meaning in his life and the subsequent lack of impact and importance of his life upon others. The result of this therapy is to bring Scrooge to the realization of the goodness he has experienced from others and his own responsibility for having not only forgotten those acts but also for having not reciprocated them.
In modern times the family has increasingly been reduced in importance. Having at one time been the basis of Western society, we have moved away from the family to a new era where the individual has been substituted as the new social atom. In doing so, individualism has merged indistinguishably with selfishness such that being selfish is the new individualism. However, individualism used to be defined in terms of personal uniqueness whereas now the more selfish people become the more similar they are. Selfishness spells not only the death of the family, but the death of the individual. Like Scrooge, happiness can only be found in our connections with other human beings and those can only be formed through the breaking down of the walls of the self. Scrooge became a fulfilled individual by virtue of ceasing to be selfish.
Ironically, within mass culture it is not, the good and transformed Scrooge that is remembered but rather the humbug Scrooge and denier of Christmas. The underlying assumption here is of course that the good Scrooge is the natural state of being. This is to miss the point as the good Scrooge is really the aspirational model for proper conduct. There is more of the bad Scrooge in most of us than we are perhaps willing to accept. It is important therefore to try to understand how Scrooge became the man he was and how he became the man he ended up being in the story.
But A Christmas Carol is about more than personal salvation, it is also about family. Scrooge lost the opportunity to have his own family because he put ambition ahead of the woman he loved. His nephew exhibited a preference for love and a happy marriage as opposed to a profitable union and career. The extension or alternative for his lost family offered in the form of helping Bob Cratchit was denied by indifference as was the potential for having a substitute for his own child in the shape of Tiny Tim. In the ending, Scrooge becomes whole by joining or adopting families and being accepted by them. He becomes whole by being a part of a whole— a process that involves acceptance and reconciliation. Importantly, this transformation also involves having a sense of purpose in life or what in current therapeutic approaches is referred to as Logo Therapy. Scrooges purpose in life involves a sense of hope that what appears to be inevitable and perhaps unchanging can indeed be altered through action and that he possess the power and ability to positively affect the lives of others while at the same time enhancing his own..
The early point of Scrooge’s trajectory was set by his childhood and relationship with his parents and how he responded to that setting. These events explain but do not ultimately excuse Scrooge. In the end, we are all ultimately accountable for our choices and actions. Whereas no upbringing is perfect, it is the responses to those very imperfections that define character. Parenting today should not aspire to perfection but should aspire to accountability and authenticity. Happiness is not after all given, but must earned and is therefore ultimately a personal responsibility.
Christmas is a time to remind us of both the impermanence of existence through the passing of time as well the importance of others to our own happiness. It is a time to remember the acts of kindness and generosity we have enjoyed and to enjoy equally the passing forward of such acts. It is a time to re-evaluate our own lives and actions and to re-establish goals and priorities. It is a time to celebrate and acknowledge the capacity in each of us to make positive changes both for our own benefit as well as those around us. The philosopher Bertrand Russell stated “The good life sone inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Neither love without knowledge, nor knowledge without love can produce a good life.” That knowledge encompasses not only the world and people around us, but also ourselves