Keeping Christmas well

A lesson from Mr. Scrooge

I think that the mass commercialization of Christmas has brought along with it several unintended side effects. There’s no need to list them here, as I’m sure you’re already thinking of a handful.

But there’s one that I don’t think gets quite as much recognition…probably because there’s really not one specific word for it, or at least not one that I can think of at the moment. It’s the overwhelming pressure for Christmas to feel right. 

I think it’s the sum total of all the other pressures that come along with the season. For Christmas to be Christmas, everything has to fall perfectly into place. Perfect gifts must be purchased and wrapped with precision. The house needs to be decorated just right. We need to attend all the light shows, and performances, and pop-up Christmas markets, and we have to watch all the movies and buy the seasonal lattes before the peppermint syrup is out of stock again. 

The family celebrations need to be fun, casual, festive, and maintain all the warmth we felt when we were growing up. The food needs to be perfect, served on the special China reserved for this holiday. We need the matching pajamas, and the photo in the matching pajamas. We need it to be right.

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I think this is connected to another phenomenon I’ve observed over the last several Christmas seasons. My theory is that the desire for this perfectly curated Christmas is rooted in nostalgia. 

Nostalgia is a double-edged sword. It’s perfectly bittersweet. At its best, it allows us to smooth out the wrinkles of our memories and bask in the positive feelings they hold. At its worst, though, it threatens to trap us in a perpetual state of “it’ll never be that way again.” 

A few years ago, probably during the first Christmas Carson and I spent as a married couple, I came to the stark realization that Christmas would never feel quite the same as it used to. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing—it was just a coming of age of sorts. I wasn’t a child any more. 

But, just because I can say now that it wasn’t a bad thing doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a hard thing. I definitely shed a few tears over the realization. Slowly, though, it’s helped me come to terms with what the holiday season “should” feel like. As much as I want it to, it simply can’t feel the same as it did when I was a child. 

Likewise, I am certain that there are traditions I’m creating in this stage of life that I’ll have to leave behind as I enter the next, which will inevitably be difficult. But, rather than focusing on the way things have changed, or might change, or will change in the future, my goal is to cultivate a Christmas spirit wholly founded in the season itself, and not the accouterments. 

You might say that I’m taking a page out of Ebenezer Scrooge’s book. 

No humbugs here

This year, I decided to revisit A Christmas Carol for the first time since I read it with the rest of my class in 8th grade. It was so much better than I remembered. It’s a short story by Charles Dickens that tells the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly, greedy man in Victorian London, England. I particularly love Dickens’ characterization of Scrooge in the first few pages of the book: 

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.

On Christmas Eve, after mistreating his employee, berating his nephew, and embarrassing two men seeking donations for charity, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Jacob Marley, his former business partner who died 7 years before the start of the story. 

Marley, though, comes with a warning. A man who lived as greedily as Scrooge, Marley has been wandering the earth as a specter since his death, damned to witness the happenings of the world but with no ability to interfere. He implores Scrooge to change his ways, lest he suffer the same fate, and tells Scrooge that he will soon be visited by three spirits. 

“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom … “Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! Such was I!”

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. 

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

As Scrooge is visited by the three spirits, the truth of Marley’s lament rings true to readers and, eventually, Scrooge himself. 

During this read, I couldn’t help but notice one specific theme resonating through all Scrooge’s journeys with the spirits: Charity. 

I don’t mean simple generosity, though that is certainly an outpouring of true Charity. I mean a deep, abiding, selfless love and forbearance for humanity; an elevation of the fellow man that is founded in the abundant love of God. 

Throughout his life, Scrooge chose time and time again to shirk Charity in favor of his own gain. His engagement ends because he chooses to focus on work rather than devoting himself to the woman he claimed to love. The wife of Bob Cratchit, his overworked, underpaid employee, resents Scrooge for being the reason their little family struggles. His only living relation, a nephew left behind by a beloved sister, laments the way that Scrooge has gone completely blind to the love and joy waiting for him around the corner. 

Greed and selfishness are just symptoms of Scrooge’s actual illness, though. Dickens depicts a man who has lost his humanity. 

That is, until he regains it. 

The turning point for Scrooge doesn’t just come when he realizes his nephew’s friends are making fun of him, or when he sees that, if he continues on his current path, he’ll be so disrespected in death that the housekeepers will be more concerned with stealing his few possessions than making sure he is properly laid to rest. 

Instead, it comes when he takes notice of the way his actions contribute to deeper pain for the people around him. Then, and only then, can real change take root.

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. 

A Christmas Carol isn’t an overtly religious story; the Christmas story itself is only mentioned in passing, there’s no specific claim of an exclusively Christian ethic present. But, as all Truth does, I think it uncovers an essential element of our Christmas celebrations that can often be overshadowed by the holiday’s flashier aspects. 

The Christmas story is this: that God was born as a man named Jesus, who grew up to die the death of a slave on a Roman instrument of torture. His resurrection three days later cemented his victory over death and the grave. Through him, we have access to the infinite, perfect, omniscient God. Through his Spirit, we are empowered to live out true Charity, during the Christmas season and all year long. 

So, what should Christmas feel like? What traditions should we keep? What events should we attend, and what are the essential elements of a holiday well celebrated? 

I can’t answer those questions for you—I’m still trying to answer them for me. But, I am certain of this: Christmas is as good a time as any to ask God to help you cultivate Charity, and then to practice that radical selflessness in every moment. By turning our focus outward, toward Christ and the people God has placed in our paths to love and serve, I think that we’ll find a new, enduring warmth that no tradition can replicate. 

And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!

Now, LMK:

How do you “keep Christmas well?” What helps you turn your focus outside of yourself during this season?

And a recommendation:

Last week, I shared about one of my favorite pieces of art that I love spending time with during the advent season. I purchased a print of Mary Consoles Eve from this site, which supports Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey, where the original artist (Sister Grace Remington) resides. I can’t wait for it to get here so I can finally have it hanging in my home, and I wanted to share the link here for anyone else who may be interested. (I also grabbed a box of chocolate covered caramels while I was there.)