This year I supersaturated in Charles Dickens to celebrate his bicentennial and used his Christmas Carol as part of my jollification. Whatever the state of Dickens’ soul, and no man can judge, he lived in a pervasively Christian country. His books are shot through with references to the Faith and he assumes the Christianity of all but his Jewish characters and that appeals to Christian ethics make sense to his readers. Secularists have a poverty of writers before the nineteenth century, so they… Read more

Scrooge repents. He repents even though he is unsure of salvation. He is sorry for his misdoings and no longer attempts to bargain with Justice. He accepts that he is wretched and does not just retreat from selfishness, but to positive charity. C.S. Lewis made the point that too many of us confused unselfishness with charity, but charity, as he points out, is a positive virtue while unselfishness is merely getting rid of a vice. A husband may be utterly… Read more

We discount Scrooge’s sins too steeply if we make him merely stingy. Scrooge’s stinginess made him a bad neighbor and subject of the Crown. This was his chief sin and the Ghost of Christmas Future reveals that the City is better off without him. His story is the reverse of that of George Bailey: it was a Horrible Life chiefly because his absence made the community better. Mostly, Dickens lays the blame on his “worldly mind.” Secularists need not become… Read more

Christmas Carol has targets in mind and it isn’t Ebenezer Scrooge. Charles Dickens is after Ignorance and Want. Nobody, even Mr. Scrooge, is in the Ignorance and Want Lobby, but Dickens knows that many of us support both without intending to do so. My vices, small in themselves, added to the vices of my neighbors, can destroy a community. Dickens knew a people dedicated generally to Christian morality, which he took for granted, would generally fail in their moral ambitions, but… Read more