As the nation prepares both to celebrate Christmas and to inaugurate its new president, it is worth remembering that there are lessons in the former that should inarguably be applied as well to the latter. After four years of attacks on Republicans, on free speech, on the right of the people to know what their government is or is not doing, and a host of other people and principles, some on the right are eager for payback, for retribution against their “enemies.” While understandable in many cases, conservatives should be leery of the idea that vengeance is justified or advisable.
Perhaps the greatest but least understood of all Christmas stories is that which has become almost synonymous with the holiday, that of Ebenezer Scrooge, as told by Charles Dickens. Conventional wisdom has it that Scrooge’s tale is a “Christian resurrection allegory,” which is to say that it mirrors the tale of man’s death to sin and restoration to life with Christ’s birth and eventual sacrifice on the cross. But this is not quite right. Rather, A Christmas Carol is more a parable about the importance of mercy and forgiveness.
In contemporary adaptations of A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Present, who is fun and gregarious, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who is horrifying and traumatizing, generally garner most of the attention. But in the original telling, the Ghost of Christmas Past is, quite clearly, the key to understanding Scrooge and understanding the virtues necessary to enable his transformation.
Through his travels with the Ghost of Christmas Past, we learn of Scrooge’s childhood, where he was abandoned at a boarding school and left on his own every year at Christmas time. Scrooge’s friends know that he is alone, that he has nowhere to go, that he has been cast out by his family, and that he will spend the entire Christmas break at the school, with nothing and no one to keep him company, save the characters in the books he reads. But not one of them ever does a thing about it. Not one of them ever offers him a gift or meal or a chance to spend the holiday away from the school. Not one of them ever shows him any kindness at Christmas at all. “What,” indeed, “was Merry Christmas to Scrooge?”
We also learn that Scrooge’s friends are not the only ones who neglect him. He is not, like Harry Potter, an orphan forced to stay at school for lack of anywhere else to go. Instead, he has been cast out by his family. He has been abandoned at the school by his father, who is as cold and cruel as Ebenezer was or ever would be.
We learn all this from Scrooge’s beloved kid sister, Fan, who shows up one Christmas to fetch her brother and bring him home. Fan’s words teach us much. Ebenezer’s father was cruel (“Father is so much kinder than he used to be…”). In his cruelty, the elder Scrooge alone had decided to abandon his son at the decrepit boarding school. Fan had asked their father before about bringing Ebenezer home, only for her pleas to be rejected and rejected harshly (“I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home…”). We also learn that Ebenezer’s mother is either dead or too afraid to stand up to her husband and that Ebenezer is NOT going home “for ever and ever” (despite Fan’s insistence) but only for the holidays, before he is to be apprenticed, presumably to Fezziwig (“And you’re to be a man!” said the child, opening her eyes, “and are never to come back here; but first, we’re to be together all the Christmas long…”).
We also learn from our travels with the Ghost of Christmas Past that Scrooge’s troubled childhood contributed pointedly to his obsessive early adulthood. Fan, the only person Scrooge loved and who loved him back, died as a young woman, presumably while giving birth to her one child, Scrooge’s nephew Fred, whom Ebenezer therefore detests.
Additionally, like his creator (Dickens, not God), Scrooge lived in constant fear of poverty and perpetual worry that his earnings would not be enough to keep him and his family alive and well. Dickens’ own father, John, was sent to debtors’ prison when Charles was only twelve. Charles—the oldest of the Dickens boys (two years younger than his beloved sister, Fanny)—was given the tasks of begging friends and family for financial help and of taking his family’s possessions to be sold at the nearby pawnbroker (thereby setting the imagery for Joe’s scavenger shop, which Scrooge visits with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come).”
The point here is that Dickens knew what poverty was, and he knew that it could be soul-crushing. Although he writes Scrooge’s nephew Fred as a sympathetic character, there is little doubt that Dickens himself likely felt a greater kinship with Scrooge than with the nephew. Scrooge rightly feared poverty in Victorian London as a cruel and repugnant fate, while Fred did not fear it enough.
In turn, this suggests that the conventional interpretation of the collapse of Scrooge’s love life may be somewhat different from what Dickens intended. The Ghost of Christmas Past, recall, also shows Scrooge the moment (at Christmas, naturally) when “Belle” ends her engagement to Ebenezer, telling him that she knows that he has “displaced” her with “another idol,” a “golden one.” Given Belle’s words and her rebuke of Scrooge’s fixation on business, the standard interpretation is that Scrooge’s avarice is the sole cause of Belle’s pain and the end of their relationship. And while there is no question that Scrooge has grown obsessed with “gain,” there are also questions about Belle’s character.
Does any of this justify Scrooge’s behavior or his detestation of Christmas? No, it doesn’t. But when taken in sum together, it does explain his behavior. Scrooge was “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner,” but he was, nevertheless, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner who had every reason to hate Christmastime and to resent others’ happiness during the season.
Despite his obvious pretexts, Scrooge yields to the ghosts and finds the strength to “get over it”—all of it. Or to put it another way, Scrooge yields to the power of mercy; he grants forgiveness to those who wronged him and to the conditions that clearly deformed his perceptions of Christmas, of humanity, of business, and of the relationship between industry and life. He forgives his father, who, presumably, had his own revelation and offered his own forgiveness. He forgives Fred, who did nothing wrong, and professes confusion at his uncle’s dislike of him. He forgives God for taking Fan from him. And he even forgives Belle, who, unlike the others, is not entirely blameless and does not seek forgiveness. Scrooge makes his peace with all the wrongs done to him and promises to make good on all the wrongs he has done to others. As he seeks out the charity collectors, he tells them that his donation this year includes a “great many back-payments” as well. He awakens from his dream, telling himself that he “will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” which is to say that he will always remember what he has done and what has been done to him, in order to remember the mercy shown to him and the mercy he must show to others.
Human existence has always been torn between the virtues of justice and mercy. In the Western theological and natural law traditions, however, this conflict is viewed as superficial: true justice is impossible without mercy. Justice must be tempered by mercy in order to reflect the natural order or the face of the just and merciful Creator. This is, in fact, the very foundational principle of Christianity. “For the wages of sin is death,” we are told, “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Because we sin, we should, justly, be condemned. But instead, God, in His mercy, gave His Son to die to sin on our behalf. Justice, tempered by mercy, is, as we say, THE fundamental Christian idea, the entire point of the faith.
In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge appears, at least superficially, to be justified in his hatred of Christmas, in his dislike of the nephew who took his beloved sister from him, and in his hard-heartedness toward those who celebrate the love and joy of the season that, for so long and in so many ways, made him so miserable. But Scrooge’s justice is misguided; it is rendered only by man, only on man’s terms, and without the application of mercy and forgiveness. The spirits teach him of a more powerful justice, a more potent justice, justice tempered by mercy, which pointedly prevents tragedy and death—his own and Tiny Tim’s.
This is a powerful lesson—at all times but especially at this one.
Mercy? Show me what justice has prevailed before conceding to mercy! This is why the very word “conservative” has neither meaning nor value. What is it if not a dedication to legitimate governance in accordance with constitutional limits, and the swift punishment (sans merci) of those who seek to overthrow it?
Do not speak to me of “mercy” before one member of the illegitimate government persecuting Americans is hauled before any tribunal! Shall those whose families were ripped apart by the hordes of invading gangs show mercy to a government which encouraged, funded and facilitated this invasion? Sir, I think you confuse mercy with weakness. Justice is not vengeance, but the exercise of a legitimate power without regard to the status of its object with the end being the strict adherence to procedure which begets equal application of the laws. When did the objects of this government ever receive that consideration? Citizens have every right to demand and expect the swift justice against those who denied them the same. Better ask whether Americans still have the spine to seek justice than to retreat under cover of a counterfeit “mercy”.
It’s good enough mercy that the bad government was de-elected.
Sometimes, it’s the other way round too: mercy tempered by justice.
I too have given these issues no small amount of consideration . I believe justice must be dispensed before mercy can enter into its sentencing . Fir me it comes down to the spirit in which we act when we dispense it . What is it that we are trying to achieve in other words ? We ought be trying to achieve two different things I suppose , the first is protecting the innocent from the guilty in the immediate sense , a motive not inspired by our resentment of the perpetrators but instead motivated by our love of those who have found themselves the victims of the perpetrators acts . The second motivation should be in achieving a deterrent to behavior that falls outside of what is considered by libertarian political philosphers as " Universally preferred behavior / the non aggression principle , considered " Natural Law " by the classical Liberal philosophical mind and considered perhaps by Christians Like say CS Lewis as " The Tao " ( the way ) /ie ; The Golden Rule ". that said I also have some definite ideas about our penalty system that I suppose might to some either represent a radical departure form the current norms, or to others would represent a regression to what appears on the surface as a crueler and more primitive form . Some combination of banishment and penal colony for the more heinous and chain gang / labor camps for the less severe perpetrators . In the former the subject would be forced to either lead a productive life or die , should they not fall prey to their own kind instead , and in the latter , hey guess what ? I guess we have found another cheap labor force other than all the illegal immigrants to do a portion of the migratory agricultural harvest work and other such jobs , where again the end result is a citizen / inmate who has come to a place of productivity and of contributing to the larger society at whole rather than being a net negative on it .