In recent years, I have made an annual practice of rereading Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol around Christmas. It’s partly for selfish reasons. Having been in parish ministry for as long as I have, I find it increasingly difficult to settle into the Christmas spirit without a little help. The myriad tasks that need to be accomplished before Christmas always seem to get in the way, which makes it a joy and cozy comfort to pick up A Christmas Carol and reread it each year.
But in doing so, I always discover why Dickens’s famous story has such charm. It’s a good story. And it’s not only a good story. There are theological themes running throughout it as well. It was in the middle of this year’s rereading of that story that I found my attention drawn to the part where Scrooge is taken on a visit by the Ghost of Christmas Past. With the help of this Spirit, he goes back to his childhood, recalling with great sadness the loneliness of his early years in school and the later poignant parting with an early love because he had chosen worldly gain over devotion to her.
He becomes painfully aware of all the missed chances of his past, and he realizes how jaded and unhappy he has become. It’s nearly unbearable for poor old Scrooge, and as he recalls those lost opportunities, something begins to change in him. His visit to the past plants a seed for his transformation.
The changing Scrooge begins to give voice to this in a scene from Christmas Past where he revisits his apprenticeship to Mr. Fezziwig. Scrooge’s defining characteristics may be his miserliness and idolatry of work and money, but as he remembers his time working for Mr. Fezziwig, he begins to understand that there’s something more to life than the daily grind and money.
In the scene of Christmas Past, as the clock strikes seven, Mr. Fezziwig puts down his pen, laughs, and calls his apprentices into the room and says that no more work should be done. It’s Christmas Eve! “Let’s have the shutters up. . . before a man can say Jack Robinson!” he says. And before you know it, a fiddler appears, as well as Mrs. Fezziwig, and three Misses Fezziwigs, and a whole host of other people, including some unfortunates. They’ve come to the impromptu ball! Before long, they’re all dancing and making merry until eleven o’clock at night. Each guest is then wished Merry Christmas by the Fezziwigs and all go to bed. It’s a marvelous Christmas Eve.
As Scrooge relives this wonderful memory, the Ghost of Christmas Past slyly goads him, saying that it must be a small matter for Mr. Fezziwig “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.” But Scrooge retorts vehemently that it’s no small thing at all. And the Ghost replies, “Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?”
And then, in what he says next, Scrooge inadvertently reveals how he has changed. As the story tells us, Scrooge begins to speak as his “former self,” not as his “latter self.” He replies defensively to the Ghost that the happiness given by Fezziwig’s impromptu ball “is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.” Through his visit to Christmas Past, Scrooge’s latter self has been transformed a bit into his former self.[1]
When on Christmas Eve we hear of Jesus’s birth from Luke’s Gospel, we hear of good news brought into a world of sin. We hear of perfect humanity, who’s also perfect divinity, being born into a world that is deeply broken after its Fall in the Book of Genesis. We might say that in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus comes to save humanity in its latter self.
But on Christmas Day, in John’s Gospel, we go back even farther in time—beyond time, really—to a time before the Fall of humanity. We’re reminded of the cosmic origins of existence, of the eternal nature of the Word that eventually becomes flesh in Jesus. We’re reminded of the beauty of creation when all things came into being through the Word, who always was with the Father and the Holy Spirit. We’re reminded in the opening words of John’s Gospel, with its allusions to the Book of Genesis, that God called everything very good. We’re reminded that in the eternally creative gesture of God, there was life, and that life was the light of all people. That light is eternal. It’s a light that can’t be squelched by darkness. Indeed, darkness can’t even comprehend the mystery of this true light because it’s such a great light. On Christmas Day, it’s as if our own Spirit guide is the Holy Spirit, taking us back through our own collective story with the help of St. John. And this Spirit helps us to recall our former selves, selves created in the image of God and destined to become children of God. In some sense, because we live after the Fall, we’ve never truly known these selves. But they exist eternally in the mind of God.
On Christmas, it’s as if we need two sides of a beautiful coin. On one side, in the darkness of Christmas Eve, we must recognize the reality of sin and evil in our lives, and we must acknowledge that our Savior was born into that reality to save it. We recognize that Jesus was born into peasantry, under the boot of a ruthless empire, in a smelly manger, and with all the messiness of childbirth, and with a destiny to die brutally on a cross. But in the dawn of Christmas morning, we are guided by John’s Gospel to the true source of our life in the creative eternity of God, where the Word who eventually became flesh always existed. And in doing so, we catch a glimpse of our former self.
Like Scrooge, our former self has been hijacked by all the wrong things. The mighty dollar has become our god. We’ve turned inwards on ourselves out of self-preservation. We’ve turned against others because we have essentially forgotten who we are and to whom we belong. We’ve forgotten our former self, which is in the origins of a creation destined for goodness. And in forgetting our former self, we’ve forgotten how much God looks with favor on us. We’ve forgotten that God created us and called us—yes, us!—very good along with all the rest of creation that we carelessly ravage. Amid our busy lives and addictions to so many things, we’ve forgotten that we can always put the pen down, like Mr. Fezziwig, and say enough. Let’s dance. Let’s have a ball. And Scrooge was right about that. It’s not a small thing. The fullness of life and joy given to us when we remember our former self “is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”
And when we remember that past and our former self, can we help but be changed just a bit? When we remember our roots, from whence we came, can we still continue acting as if our latter self is all there is to our existence? A visit to the Christmas Past of our lives is a loving look back on the source of our life, who is God. And such a God created us out of love and for love, so that we can begin to receive the gift of his power to become his children, not children of the latter self but of the former self.
However, cozy Dickens’s A Christmas Carol might be considering how it ends, Scrooge’s visit to Christmas Past is both transformative and painful. It’s painful because he’s fully aware of what he’s lost, and some of it can’t come back. It’s painful, too, because he's reminded of an innocence that has vanished, of a former self inevitably colored by a latter self.
Perhaps it’s the same for us. On this day, we glimpse our past and our former self with the help of St. John, and we mourn our losses and the reality of the latter self that governs our lives. But we also rejoice in the good news that our latter self can eventually be transformed into our former self. This is John’s version of the good news. From whence we came is ultimately where we’re invited to return. We were made good and destined to be good. And in visiting the Christmas Past of our former self, we dare to hope that by God’s marvelous grace, one day, we, too, will live as our former self in the age to come. And that’s no small thing. It’s “quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
December 25, 2023
[1] Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2009), 35-37.