Growing Wiser . . .
Currently, we are in the midst of rehearsals for our upcoming performance of A Christmas Carol, which will take place on December 1-3 & 8-10, 2023. As I go through the rehearsal process again, I, along with many of my fellow cast members, am reflecting on Scrooge's story. It's making me think about my own self-perception, the world, and our role in it.
This year, I am portraying Scrooge in a new rendition of Charles Dickens' timeless story. During rehearsals with our talented cast, I was struck by the intertwining nature of Scrooge's greed and bitterness. With clenched fists, Scrooge refused to share her time, treasure, or talents, allowing seeds of bitterness to take root in her cold heart. I was forced to ask myself the question, “Where have I closed my hands in greed, and what seeds of bitterness are in my heart.”
This question, I believe, is one that we must all ask; as uncomfortable as the answer may be. It is through that uncomfort of looking at ourselves and facing who we are that we can change and grow.
Over the years, I have been inspired by a little book called 52 Lessons From A Christmas Carol by Bob Welch. I read it every year as I direct the production. Today, I came across a passage that resonated with me as I recalled a recent rehearsal. I hope that the wisdom of Mr. Welch's words will inspire you as it did me.
GROWING WISER MEANS GETTING UNCOMFORTABLE
by Bob Welch
CHARLES DICKENS DID NOT WRITE A CHRISTMAS CAROL simply to entertain us as readers, even if he succeeded grandly in doing so. Beyond entertaining us, Dickens wanted to make us uncomfortable, because it’s only after we get a touch uneasy with ourselves that we open ourselves to change.
Oh, sure, you can defend the book as a social and political commentary wherein the author’s target is a cold-hearted British government that neglects the poor—worse, discriminates against them, middle-class property owners not even allowed to vote until the passage of the Great Reform Bill in 1832. Certainly Dickens wanted to rally the public to action regarding the poor; he had known the pangs of poverty himself as a child and, in books such as Nicholas Nickelby and Oliver Twist, exudes a deep sensitivity to the less fortunate.
That said, he wanted us, as individual readers, to squirm a bit when we contrast our lives with a higher standard. “I have always striven in my writings, to express veneration for the life and lessons of my Savior,” Dickens said. And one of those lessons is to love others as Jesus loved us—no small challenge.
Even if Dickens’s intent was aimed at government reform, doesn’t that begin with individual reform? “Everybody thinks of changing humanity,” writes author Leo Tolstoy, “but nobody thinks of changing himself.”
Dickens wants us, as individuals, to confront our own Ghosts. He wants us to feel the chill of regret if necessary and, like Scrooge, to make changes in how we live. All, of course, while maintaining proper Dickens Christmas cheer, with a bounty of food. And with a subtle but unmistakable seasoning of humor.
“I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me,” reads his preface. “May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.”
As the story unfolds, it’s obvious that Dickens has sprinkled it with humor as a means to an end: to force ourselves, as he forced Scrooge, to confront any rattling chains we might have in our life closets. His prelude suggests he wants—dare we say, has great expectations for—his story to marinate in our souls long after we’ve read it. He wants not only to entertain but to teach. He wants to offer not only a story but also a sermon: a fanciful moral wrapped in dark paper but crowned with a festive Christmas bow.
The word haunt, taken literally, may connote physical ghosts. But haunt also means “to visit frequently,” “to have a disquieting or harmful effect on,” “to reappear continually in.” In other words, the story sticks with us after we’re through reading it. And it disquiets us in the best of ways, much as the Holy Spirit disquiets us when it’s necessary for us to make changes in our lives.
“A Christmas Carol is designed not to make us think or see or know, but to make us feel,” writes Norrie Epstein in The Friendly Dickens. “For Dickens, the power of the imagination expressed through fiction is like the Ghosts, an agent of regeneration.” I suggest that this design to feel is not to produce some temporary emotional high, but to create a spark that might lead to flames of action: changing how we look at the world, changing how we act in the world, and ultimately changing how we will be remembered in the world. In short, Dickens is shooting for nothing less than spiritual or moral revival in those of us who read his story.
Robert Lewis Stevenson was so inspired by A Christmas Carol and a second Dickens Christmas offering, The Chimes, that he wrote, “I have cried my eyes out. I want to go out and comfort someone—I shall give money.” Isaac Newton’s first law of motion suggests that everything continues in a state of rest unless it is compelled to change by forces impressed upon it.
A Christmas Carol is just such a force, gently impressed upon us as if the author is saying, “Get up off that couch that I might politely bother you.” I say as much to the university journalism students I teach: if they’re not feeling uncomfortable from time to time, they’re not growing as journalists. Just as resistance against something is the basis for making an athlete better—lifting weights, swimming in a pool, running up a hill—so can literature make us uncomfortable . . . and better.
Dickens’s idea was that readers should be transformed into the image of the One whose inspiration was foundational to his life and to his stories. Second Corinthians 3:18 talks of “being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory.” Isn’t that what happens to Scrooge? And shouldn’t that be what’s happening to us as we hone our lives for God’s glory?
If so, let us, with good Christmas cheer, get on with learning the story at a deeper level. Let’s get on with understanding what life lessons A Christmas Carol might offer and get on with this business of being “pleasantly haunted.”
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for possibly entertaining the idea that to grow wiser means getting uncomfortable,
ERIKA BAIN
