AN ADVENT "CHRISTMAS CAROL" RETREAT - XII

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

          As the Ghost of Christmas Future leads Scrooge through London, Scrooge first finds himself in the midst of cryptic conversations.  He knew some of the speakers who are talking about somebody who has died. That somebody remains anonymous. 

          The Carol suggests Scrooge is confused about the subject.  It can’t be Marley, he reasons, because is in the past.  Perhaps it is somebody whose life was related to his.  Assuming that “to whomsoever they applied they had some latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw.”

          Really? Is Scrooge that dumb or only playing dumb?  Up until now, everything he’s seen has been about him: his life, how his life affected others, and how his life stood out against lives that naturally seemed good.  Why, all of a sudden, this Ghost should be involving somebody else seems a stretch.

          As I observed before, people have amazing capacities to deny the obvious, especially when it comes to themselves and their mortality.  One might attribute Scrooge’s perplexity to that.  But, as I also said, people have an amazing capacity to play dumb, to pretend that what bites them on the nose really isn’t biting, that the obvious is not obvious.  Perhaps Scrooge knows … but doesn’t want to know.  In any event, he recognizes that these conversations have some bearing on him and, like our Lady, wisely decides to “treasure” and ponder them.

          One gaggle of men discuss the dead man’s passing, the fate of his wealth, and whether to make up a party to attend the funeral, aware that – otherwise – “I don’t know of anybody to go to it.”  One man wonders whether “… I wasn’t his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak whenever we met.” 

Friends know they are friends.

The next two men give the decedent a name: “Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?”  In the English of Dickens’s day, “Old Scratch” was a nickname for the devil, hardly a complement to the dearly departed.  That’s the whole conversation: “Old Scratch” is dead.

Scrooge visits the trade exchange but sees another man in his seat.  In keeping with the human capacity for implausible deniability, he writes it off to a possible indication of his “newborn resolutions” to lead a different sort of life. 

So, the Ghost of Christmas Future takes Scrooge off to an “obscure part of town” of “bad repute.”  They descend into the basement of a pawnshop/ironmonger/fencing operation, where those present are discussing an abandoned dead man.  Scrooge witnesses multiple illicit transactions, from personal jewelry to bed curtains and blankets.  When he sees the purloined goods, his first reaction – as in the case of Marley – is to recognize them as his.  The implications, however, deter him: if these thing are his, he must be the dead man.  He attributes them to a coincidence of similarities.  Still, he admits – in greater terror – “The case of this unhappy man might be my own.” 

The Ghost seeks to dispel Scrooge’s uncertainties.  They find themselves alone in the room with the corpse, covered from view.  The Ghost invited him to pull back the sheet: “do not persist in your unbelief, but believe” for your own good!

For some reason, though, the moment is not yet ripe.  “…[T]he motion of a finger upon Scrooge’s part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the specter at his side.”  Scrooge considers whether the man, were he to rise, would now think of his “[a]varice, hard-dealing, griping cares.”  He hears a cat and rats trying to get into the room.  He begs to leave.  And so we go on.

The Ghost still sought to have Scrooge confront the corpse.  Again Scrooge begs off, insisting “…I would do it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power.”

We, too, also have unfathomable capacities to evade the truth about ourselves, including the truth of our mortality.  Christmas, which came about because God does not evade the truth of what we have made ourselves into, invites us to consider that truth, to gaze into it and, with God’s grace, to change.  With our Spirit, we have the power. Let us pray to meet the test.