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I debated about this for quite a while. On the one hand, I didn't want to be too dreadfully serious; this is a holiday blog meme, after all. On the other, I wanted to post something meaningful. So I contemplated giving you a snippet of something like Santa Mouse, or Catmas Carols, or even Santa Lives: Five Conclusive Arguments for the Existence of Santa Claus (which is really quite hilarious if you are interested in the philosophical arguments for the existence of God, on which it is oh-so-irreverently based). However, I decided that I wanted to actually be meaningful, particularly given the political climate these days, and the issues faced by so many around the world at present. I therefore give you:
A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas
Charles Dickens, 1843
Stave Three; The Second of the Spirits
Now, there's a lesson that doesn't require a 'Christian Christmas,' nor indeed any other kind, nor indeed any special day at all....
A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas
Charles Dickens, 1843
Stave Three; The Second of the Spirits
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”
“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.
“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
The bell struck twelve.
Now, there's a lesson that doesn't require a 'Christian Christmas,' nor indeed any other kind, nor indeed any special day at all....
