"I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book,
to raise the Ghost of an Idea..."
The story is so familiar we almost forget the point. Even in our old age it is not too late to change. Even in our old age it is not too late to live the life which is our birthright.
In Dickens' tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, an old miser is shown his past, his present, and if he does not change, his future.
The first ghost reminds him how he once enjoyed life's pleasures. The second ghost shows Scrooge his current deplorable state. The final ghost foretells the likely outcome of his skinflint ways.
A Christmas Carol is not so much a Christmas story as a New Year's story. For those of us who want to change the course of our life, for those of us who want this year's resolutions to actually mean something, we need to go through an Ebenezer-like process.
Mine the past for its lessons, search the present for its patterns, and project where those patterns will lead us in the future. If those patterns lead to unhappiness, those patterns must be altered to lead us to better ends.
Whether your life is a bad life or an abused life or a flat life, you can use the ideas from this simple story as a guide to breaking the patterns which lead to bad ends.
You can read A Christmas Carol online here.
From A Christmas Carol:
--"External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty."
--[But after his transformation] "Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world."
--"Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him."
--"…and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!"
The classic film versions of "A Christmas Carol" feature Alastair Sim, George C. Scott, or Patrick Stewart in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge.
