AN ADVENT "CHRISTMAS CAROL" RETREAT - VIII

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

          As Scrooge continues his journey through the purification of memory, his next stop is Fezziwig’s shop, the house in which he was apprenticed. 

Two truths become apparent there: the value of money and the value of persons.  Unfortunately, Scrooge did not learn them.

On the money side, after the parties the two apprentices lay in their room “pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig.”  Why, the Spirit asks.  Why so much praise for a little outlay, “but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?”  Scrooge replies that it wasn’t the sum but the value it brought: “The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”  Those were the days before Scrooge knew value was more than price. 

The movie version of the Carol puts it even more bluntly: what did Fezziwig do? “Spent a few pounds?  Danced like a monkey?  Beamed a great smile?”  The Spirit knows their value because our God is even more extravagant: He pays for a glass of water given in His Name with eternal life.

On the personal side, we meet Belle, the girl who will become Scrooge’s fiancée.  In his normal days, he courted her.  Then he changed.

That scene is better developed in the movie version of the Carol.  In the film, Belle breaks their engagement on another Christmas Eve.  Scrooge is delayed by “business.”  She claims “another idol has displaced her.”  He denies it.  She asks whether today’s Scrooge, up and coming, would now seek her out, “a dowerless girl with nothing but myself to bring to a marriage.”  He obfuscates.  She leaves.

“I almost went after her” says the film Scrooge.  “’Almost’ carries no weight, especially in matters of the heart,” the Spirit replies. The Spirit gets Scrooge to admit Belle interfered with his investment plans.  This is the new Scrooge: the one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. 

The Ghost casts things in terms Scrooge currently understands: “You have told me what you gained.  I will show you now what you have lost.”  That leads into the scene where we encounter Belle with her husband and her children.  “They might have been mine,” Scrooge murmurs.  Belle’s husband mentions seeing Scrooge that day, just before Christmas, as he passed the latter’s counting house while Marley lay dying. 

It's at that point that Scrooge declares, “I’ve had enough of your pictures from the past.  Leave me!  Haunt me no longer!”  He seizes the Ghost’s candle extinguisher and thrusts it over the light from its head, trying to put it out.  The Ghost, putting on the appearance of a fight not unlike the angel who wrestled Jacob, allows him to try to snuff it out, all the whole repeating, “Truth lives!  Truth lives!”  In the end, Scrooge is shown on the floor, wrestling his carpet. 

St. Peter asked Jesus to “leave me, for I am a sinful man!”  However, since Jesus never takes up Peter’s invitation, Peter does not leave Him. In fact, he keeps coming back to Him.  And that is the difference between Peter and Scrooge: Scrooge wants to be left alone so as not to grapple with himself.  He’s not ready yet to imitate Peter to go out “and weep bitterly”

The Ghost of Christmas Past demonstrates what real accompaniment involves.  Real accompaniment is painful because it wants a better other to accompany.  Without having to lecture, it lets the “pictures from the past” speak for themselves.  Without hectoring, it does not refrain from posing the pointed questions whose unspoken answers are indisputable.  Without fighting, she makes it clear: “Truth lives!”  One cannot doubt that phrase echoes in the halls of hell.

“’Almost’ carries no weight, especially in matters of the heart”  also applies to conversion, because conversion in the end is falling in love (again) with God.  That makes it a fitting meditation for Advent. 

How many “’almost’s’” weigh down my life?