AN ADVENT "CHRISTMAS CAROL" RETREAT - VII

[Continuing our reading of and meditations on The Christmas Carol]:
         

          Scrooge went to sleep.  The hour was late and, when it comes to conversion, the devil often sends a spirit of lethargy to dissuade us from a new path.

          His sleep isn’t easy.  He listens for the hour struck from the church steeple, and it doesn’t tally with his expectations.  He blames it on an “icicle” in the mechanism.  And his mind, like his heartbeat, starts racing in the quiet loneliness of the night.

          God works on His time, not ours.  (And Scrooge didn’t get to transfer it to the nearest Sunday).

          At 1 a.m., the Ghost – the Ghost of Christmas Past – appears.  Two features of its appearance are worth remarking about.  “It was a strange figure–like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions.” It’s really him: old Ebenezer, but – in Billy Joel’s immortal words – when he wore a younger man’s clothes.  And, from atop his head gushed “a bright clear jet of light.”  At the same time, he carried a candle snuffer.  Keep that in mind.

          When the Church entered the Third Millennium, Pope St. John Paul II put a great emphasis on “the purification of memory.”  An essential part of man’s conversion is coming to terms honestly with what has been.  That is not to encourage scrupulosity.  It is to force a reckoning with truth over against a person’s capacity to redefine it. It is to see one’s self as God sees him, not as he sees – or wants to see – himself.

          Scrooge’s journey with the Ghost of Christmas Past is a purification of memory, a look – under grace – at how his choices and the choices made concerning him have made him who he is.  Some of them he may know.  Some of them he might now see in a different light.  Some of them he may not know. How they were connected, and how Providence may have led his life, show forth.

          The trip starts at Scrooge’s school.  We learn he’s not wholly to blame for his misanthropic behavior: his father also misshaped him.  He’s left alone at Christmas.  Only one person would show interest in him: his sister Fan, his nephew’s mother.

          I’ll confess a prejudice: I have a great admiration for the movie version of A Christmas Carol produced back in 1984 and starring George C. Scott.  I favor it because it is true to the original text and, where it adds to it, does so intelligently, in an adult fashion. 

In the schoolhouse scene, the Ghost of Christmas Past laments the boy is abandoned, alone in the school.  Scrooge tries to make excuses, that he has his books and Ali Baba.  “But not a real child to talk to.  Not a living person” replies the Ghost. Scrooge demurs: “Ali Baba not real?” 

In our own world, dying of loneliness, how often do our children lack another “real child to talk to?”  How often do we adults lack “a living person” in our lives?  And how often are we content with that state of affairs?

          Christmas is often a time of memories. How many of us recall with sentimental fondness Christmases long past, Christmases of our childhood and yesteryear?  Christmastime is a time for purification of memory.  It’s not about remembering the treasure trove of Christmas ornaments we found in our aunt’s house at age eight, but how – over however many Christmases we’ve had – we’ve come to “honor (or not honor) Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year[S].” It’s that kind of recollection – not nostalgic memories of the past – that preparation for Christmas – Advent – is for.

            We can purify our memories while on this earth, so that the memories we take to heaven will be joyful.  Or. we can have them purified -- corrected -- in the fires of Purgatory.  Or, like Harpies, those memories -- of graces spurned and sins loved -- can haunt us forever in hell.