This Christmas, Paladin chews over passages and observations on the rightfully revered – A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens.

A tale of redemption, hope, and psychological reckoning without peer. Indeed, if bitter old Ebenezer can gain a second chance, seize the moment over a lifetime of cruelties — then can’t we all?  Dicken’s simple message: Everyone deserves a second chance.  Maybe even a third and a fourth. As many as you can get.

If one sinner is redeemed, why not you? Why not me? Why not the World? Make that last chance, that final reprieve, that mortal clemency in Pandora’s Box count in this life and the next. Beyond our earthly fate, beyond good and evil, Hope’s Promise will see you through. And Christmas the perfect time to celebrate every chance we are given.  

Can you imagine a world without Christmas? What a dull little planet this would be. As you’d expect, the word Christmas appears 92 times in the Carol. Yet the word Christian appears only 3 times. As in, “Christian cheer”, “Christian spirit” and “Christian name.”

The name of the Lord is invoked only twice, “Lord bless ye,”and “Lord bless me.”

While the name of Jesus, not at all.

Less ecce homo, more spiritus Sanctus.  

The staggeringly popular and pious Dickens was the very model of a modern 19th century gentleman. But he shunned the cold cathedrals, for the human soul that needed saving. Redemption through narrative. An ancient practice. Since time forgotten humans huddled over a cave fire in those stone dens telling tales to banish the night, to make us think, ask questions, beg the cosmos, just get us through to another dawn.

Dickens’ devoted readership, many illiterate, nay devout ha’penny readers – the poorest of the poor – readily pooled their coppers to have his stories read to them in some garret, alley or gutter. And where the abandoned churches and temples of Dicken’s time, like our time, might shed their pews of occupants into a great emptiness, who among us hasn’t said a little prayer before coming to the end of A Christmas Carol?

All tales great and small have to start somewhere—

“Old Marley was Dead: to begin with.”  The phrase repeated in nearly every dramatic interpretation. Then the following line:

“Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

Overlook for a moment Dicken’s first person humility – coffin nail, door nail, no matter – for it cradles a hidden truth, like swaddling clothes about a child.

The wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile – the similarities of matters at hand, matters of the past, matters of the future and of our human soul, of any matter we fail to grasp or any matter we may twist to darker ends – grasping this is like that is the simile’s virtue. It’s raw power within our minds.

So, give our cave bound ancestors their due, for when they told a story, when they showed this was like that, they seized the core of cognition – found ways to master their moment, beyond the cave, beyond their fear, and ventured out to master an unpredictable, unforgiving world.

When this is like that, mistakes can be mended, hurts healed, and even the most diabolical evil undone. Hope’s Promise of the Similar. Use it every chance you can. Let it lead you from the cave.

~End~

Christmas Plum Pudding at Amazon, you’ll get it by Twelfth Night!  

And for our Do-It-Yourself Victory Girls and their Admirers, Tiny Tim’s Plum Pudding Recipe that’s 30 minutes prep and 2 hours in the oven getting ready for the party.

Feature Images Credit: Wikipedia, here and here. 

Paladin is an Entertainment/IP Warfare Rōnin and self-identifies as a Y-chromosome Victory Girl.