A continued Christmas Carol

The Christmas festive period technically comes to an end with the celebration of the Epiphany on January 6. Before Father Christmas came from the North, the Tre Re was the day for exchanging gifts. Nowadays, no one is prepared to wait for so long. As The Sunday Times (December 26) lamented “Christmas has lost its religious significance”.

There is little new in this. I recently watched the animated remake of A Christmas Carol, directed by Robert Zemeckis. Written by Charles Dickens in 1843, the novella indicates that Christmas in Britain had already lost much of its religious significance. Dickens saw Christmas as a secular feast of generosity; his main concern being the hardship suffered by those exploited by industrial capitalism. Dickens, as a child, experienced poverty when his father was imprisoned.

I wonder how Dickens would develop his fable had he to write it today. The setting would probably be quite different. The industrial era is no more and it has been replaced by globalisation. The excesses of the tale’s main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, would probably have been presented in terms of unwarranted, self-centred consumerism rather than miserly behaviour. The relentless pursuit of wealth is still relevant as is the fate of the poor. The circumstances have changed but the conceptual framework of the Carol is timeless.

In this morality play, Scrooge is at first presented as a cold-hearted, tight-fisted and greedy man. Scrooge is a personification and a parody of Malthusian thinking: that any person unable to support himself was of no value to society and represented a net depletion of resources. Scrooge is presented as the triumph of “rational” economic thinking over social considerations. His wealth begets him power but masks his loneliness.

Regretfully, there are still too many Scrooges around who use their self-righteousness to blame the poor for their fate rather than seek ways of helping them. The year 2010 marked the European year for combating poverty and social exclusion. One in every six Europeans are poor or on the verge of poverty. Children are still primary victims of poverty. Dickens in his parable personified ignorance and want as two ghastly children. They would surely be in his modern-day cast.

A Christmas Carol is also about love and hope. Bob Cratchit is Scrooge’s abused and underpaid clerk who can barely afford to feed his family and is unable to give proper treatment to his crippled son, Tiny Tim. Yet, Bob is happy as he has the love of his dear ones. Despite everything, Bob remains loyal to his employer; something which is contested by his wife. Scrooge was lucky in having had ghosts telling him about his nakedness and spiritual poverty. He got a chance to redeem himself and he was wise enough to seize the opportunity. Still, Scrooge remains synonymous with a miserly person in the English language.

Events such as L-Istrina, which manages, in difficult circumstances, to raise €2.3 million for charity, show that society, including our own, can still save itself. If only the Christmas spirit were to permeate throughout the whole year. Charity is not just about giving a little of whatever we have. Charity and solidarity should be an integral part of our value system. We just cannot see poverty around us and pretend that nothing is happening. We cannot feel impotent and accept poverty as inevitable or, worse still, as a self-inflicted malaise.

Some people even go so far as quoting Jesus’s words, “You will always have the poor among you”, to claim poverty is a relative concept and cannot be eradicated. This is really quoting Jesus out of context. Poverty is generated by human institutions and action and not by God. Charity enriches the spirit. It is about the joy of giving rather than that supposed to be derived from consumption or possession. Charity is a realm alien to economists and marketers.

Will humanity be lucky enough to get its own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come? I doubt it. We keep having natural disasters that find us unprepared. We cause our own financial and economic disasters and seem unable, or unwilling, to introduce the necessary regulatory frameworks. So many questions remain unasked and, if asked, remain unanswered. Unbridled consumerism, the rise of Asia, global warming, internet warfare… the list is endless.

The people deserve to be told the plain truth. It is not right that political leaders continue to feed us citizens with half-truths, unrealisable visions and easy solutions in the hope of legitimatising their power. To be effective, democracy needs to ensure not only that relevant information is available but also that citizens have been educated to use that information to their advantage. If some segments of society seem to get their priorities wrong it is often because no one has taught them otherwise. They are the target of relentless marketing which promises them instant gratification and the possibility of escaping from their misery. Unfortunately, the state, for its own reasons, is not offering the right education to these citizens.

A Christmas Carol, in its own time, helped to generate increased spirituality around this festive period. It is no less relevant today to all people of goodwill. Christmas is a celebration of God becoming man. Hopefully, one day it will become a celebration of humanity’s god-like behaviour.

fms18@onvol.net