Dickens, Then and Now

My son sings in a high school choral group, and last Friday night it opened for a community production of A Christmas Carol. I can’t remember the last time I saw that play. But I must have been a lot younger than I am now. And so was the economy.

“Are there no prisons?” I watch Scrooge interrogate the women who knock on his door, soliciting contributions for the poor. “Are there no workhouses?” What I do remember, is that the last time I watched A Christmas Carol, Scrooge was a caricature. His rhetoric was extreme and quaint, a relic of a Victorian sensibility we had long outgrown.

I was shocked at how current his words sounded to me last Friday night. Hunger, child labor, incarceration . . . it’s all back in fashion.

I can’t stop crying.

“Are you OK?” my son stage-whispers to me.

 “It’s just the play.”

He rubs my shoulder. “I can’t take you anywhere.”

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period . . . Dickens is speaking to us, now. And I no longer mind the sentimental way his characters talk about childhood and goodness and charity. I must be growing sappy.

I see a hidden gift in the extremity that surrounds us. The more difficult the times, the more each individual kindness registers. We may not have the means, like Scrooge, to buy the best turkey in the shop for the Cratchits. But we can do lots of little somethings. A friend goes in for emergency surgery; we slip a check – whatever we can afford - into the Christmas card. When the cashier asks us if we’d like to give a dollar to the town food bank, we can say yes.

But money is not the real deal. Material gifts are only the wrappings for positive energy. And sometimes the best gifts come unwrapped. Scrooge doesn’t only contribute money and food – he shows up at the door and takes part in the festivities.

Especially where children are concerned, simply taking time– to listen, to play, to smile, to truly connect – can be the greatest gift of all. It is such a busy season, we feel that we don’t have time to get everything done . . . but, when times are busy, it is even more powerful to take the time. Otherwise, we give wrappings only - not the real presence.

We are complicated organisms living in a complex world, and cause and effect is a mysterious cocktail with ingredients we can never know for sure. When someone’s cancer turns around, we’ll never know if it was our get well card that tipped the balance. When a child finally begins to talk, we’ll never know if it was us, looking into his eyes and holding his hands and saying “I love you” that completed the synaptic gap and released those first words. When we send our silent, loving thoughts and toward a tragedy somewhere in the world, we’ll never know if it made a difference.

But we’ll never know that it didn’t.

We are all Scrooge. Moment by moment, we all have that power to make someone’s life a little better. We do not have to address the darkness. All we need to do is to shine our little lights.

Here’s mine. Pass it on.