Heaped up upon the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.

–Stave Three, the Second of the Three Spirits — A Christmas Carol

This beloved work of Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) was written in 1843 when Twelfth Night was still the primary winter holiday in England.  January 6th, and not December 25th, was the focus of the Season.  Christmas Day was a very simple, almost unnoticed affair when church services were the highlight of the day.  In contrast, Twelfth Night involved feasting, games and the traditional cake–an elaborate affair that contained a dried bean and a dried pea.  Their discovery conferred royalty status on the finders, even if they were ordinary servants. 

Knowing what feasting and partying was awaiting you at the end, wouldn’t you want to hurry through the Christmas season?

I’m not suggesting Dickens wrote Carol solely to address the evils of Twelfth Night, or the curious schedule of festivities during the Christmas season.  But he had given the story’s principal character, Ebenezer Scrooge, an almost painful revulsion of Christmas.  A dread of December 25th because it signalled the beginning of a twelve-day period of unhappiness that for him seemed to culminate in a glorious celebration of his aching heart.

Dear me.  It’s the “message” story.  Tricky for even the best of writers who attempt it. 

Yet Dickens succeeded brilliantly.  Back in those days, a print run may be a few hundred copies.  Dicken’s little ghost story succeeded in selling hundreds of thousands and has never been out of print since.  

Moreover, he managed to vault Christmas Day to its present-day primacy during the Season that is celebrated throughout the world.

How did he do it?

By drawing out Scrooge’s long-suppressed memories.  A kind of backstory that triggers our own memories, even unhappy ones, of Christmas past.  Scrooge courted his lovely Belle during the Regency–the dawn of the Romantic age–when discipline and order were shed in order to seek the things that gratify us emotionally.  But encroaching worries of poverty, echoing Dickens’ own childhood, scrubbed away those tentative shoots of pleasure that grew in Scrooge’s heart, turning him to the elusive stability of a golden idol.

Belle perceived the fear in Ebenezer of being without money, and so she released him from the scandal of crying off their engagement:

“Another idol has displaced me; and if can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.”

It was an exquisite portrait of all our worries that seek to hem us in, cutting us off from the love of others.  Dickens knew this to be a bold self-portrait, not only of himself but of others.  He had tried out this theme before–in his Pickwick Papers, (1836-1837).  Chapter 28 is the rather frightening poem of Gabriel Grub, the mean, lonely sexton who dug graves on Christmas Day and spared no effort to hit a child on the head with his lantern for singing on Christmas Day. 

Why, you ask?  Because Christmas is painful and must be gotten through with as little rejoicing as possible.  It causes the heart to remember, and to bleed, much like the dance Ebenezer observed–the dance of Sir Roger de Coverley.

“Christmas is quite a country gentleman of the old school.  (It brings forth) many old recollections… and many dormant sympathies.”

Dormant sympathies that are collectively invoked, putting us, the reader, in a frame of mind to recall the past and receive the message.  Having received the message, Scrooge learned what it was to be happy again.  He was a second father to little Tim, a good old soul in a good old Victorian world of sleighs, top hats and ringlets. 

We may laugh, yet such sentiment was assumed without regard to the derision of others who observed the wondrous change that had come over the wealthy old man:

“His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him.”

Good charity, nay, the best! comes from the efforts of individuals. 

And the finest reward is happiness, whether it be Christmas Day, Twelfth Night, or any other day of the year.