The plan was to read A Christmas Carol, evenly distributed throughout the period of Advent, concluding on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, my family loves this story so much, we ended up finishing it two weeks early. As a kid, I remember disliking the story, mostly due to the dark cinematography of the various film versions. It was depressing. There were no bright reds, or greens, or Salvation Army Santas, or 1990s kids in snowsuits that I could relate to. It wasn’t until my adulthood, that I developed a love for this story of redemption. It was longer still until I developed a love for Ebenezer Scrooge.
I think we’d like to fancy ourselves as the innocuous background players; the cheerful nephew, the poor but happy Cratchits, or the fundraising humanitarians. We see Scrooge as a justified object of scorn; a tax collector in the temple. We forget, that we too needed redemption. That even though our lips might stand still, our hearts say “are there no prisons?”. Scrooge is our natural state.
Every day we have the opportunity to walk alive in our redemption, or scoff at the world around us. In the end, it isn’t Bob Cratchit’s salary-vindication, or Tiny Tim’s brave blessing that moves us, it is the pure, child-likeness of an old man who has been freed from bondage. It is here that we can shed our inner Scrooge and raise our Ebenezer.
God bless you this Christmas.