A Minor Christmas Digression ... Or Not

For the third year in a row, I will be reading Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol during the week leading up to Christmas Eve.  It is a story that has been made and re-made, ad nauseum, into big-screen movies and television specials.  For me, all of this cinematic re-telling had diluted the tale.  I wanted to re-visit it, without characterizations of Ebenezer Scrooge, and the rest of the characters, by actors from Alistair Sim to George C. Scott to Marlo Thomas to Patrick Stewart; not to mention the several stage versions I have seen.

Two years ago I grabbed my Kindle and re-read it, decades after my last reading of it.  I rediscovered a tale of tragedy, despair, loss, inexplicable rage and all the other emotions and themes of Dickensian London in the mid-19th Century.

I also found a story of devastating simplicity and purity.  Ultimately, for me, A Christmas Carol is about one man's long, painful road back to salvation and love.  The ending leaves me awash in a wave of spiritually cathartic tears at the end of each reading.

The New Testament tales of Jesus provide us with the kernel of the absolute Truth about God's Love for, and His desire to redeem, us.

Dickens, whether intentionally or not, demonstrates to us, more than 170 years later, what it takes to live a modern life keeping always the essence of Christmas in our hearts.  I believe that one need not be a Christian to live this kind of life.  

Perhaps, just perhaps, it is a lesson that all men and women of good will, and any Faith, can exemplify. 

I have invited the folks in my Cyber sphere (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) to read along with me from December 18th through Christmas Eve. We then would have a book club-like conversation about the story beginning on Boxing Day, December 26th.  I will create a page where those conversations can take place.   

In the meantime, happy reading!

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Have a wonderful day!

Peace     שלום     سلام