Immediately, he “was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten.” When the spirit showed Scrooge his boyhood self, left alone in his dismal school, Scrooge sobbed with newfound emotion. Scrooge became filled with Christmas memories from his pre-humbug life.įor example, the ghost transported Scrooge back to the place where he was a boy in boarding school. Rather, that spirit helped Scrooge remember his own past. ![]() But what began the transformation of Scrooge wasn’t an enchanted zap from the Ghost of Christmas Past. What brought about such a miraculous change in Scrooge? To be sure, it was a result of supernatural intervention initiated by the ghost of his deceased partner, Jacob Marley, and carried out by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. ![]() Of the man who once hated Christmas, “it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.” Moreover, Scrooge had come to care deeply about others, expressing his concern with exceptional generosity to the poor, brand new fairness as a boss, and a passionate personal investment in the life of Tiny Tim. Relationships mattered to him more than they had in decades. On Christmas morning after his metamorphosis, he confessed to be “as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy.” Yet the new Scrooge wasn’t only delighted to say “Merry Christmas” to his neighbors rather than “Bah! Humbug.” He actually wanted to spend time with the family he had previously spurned. I doubt I’m spoiling anything by reminding you that when Scrooge’s story began, 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.” It would be hard to imagine a more miserly and miserable man than Ebenezer Scrooge, who, among other things, hated Christmas, regarding it as nothing but a “humbug.”īut, after several ghostly visitations, Scrooge was transformed. I expect you’re familiar with his story, which premiered in Charles Dickens’s classic tale, A Christmas Carol, and has been retold in a profusion of Christmas movies and plays. As you savor sweet Christmas memories, you may also feel a hint of sad longing, realizing that happy times from the past are really and necessarily past.īesides giving you some moments of bittersweet joy, can your Christmas memories actually enrich your life today? Can they help you live in the present and the future with greater delight, even with deeper meaning? Is holiday nostalgia a gift to be opened? Or is it rather something to be avoided because you can get stuck in the past? The Curious Case of Ebenezer ScroogeĪs we seek an answer to the value of Christmas memories, let’s turn first to the curious case of Ebenezer Scrooge. Hearing beloved carols, sniffing Christmas cookies, viewing brightly colored holiday lights, watching the wonder of children, all of these can transport you back in your personal history like some magical time machine. If you’re inclined to be at all nostalgic, Christmastime amps up this inclination. (The photo shows my children hiding behind the Christmas tree over 20 years ago. And so it goes with me throughout December. Or when we gather as a family on Christmas morning, my mind is filled with reminiscences of past Christmases when my children were young and enraptured by the mysteries of Christmas morning. When I smell Christmas trees, for example, I remember going to the tree lot with my parents, trying the find just the right tree for our home. ![]() ![]() At least it is for those of us in the third third of life, perhaps because we have lived long enough to have a whole bunch of holiday memories.
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