A Christmas Carol - The Spiritual Meaning

The Spiritual Meaning of A Christmas Carol with Josh Reeves — Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is one of the most beloved Christmas writings ever. Back the characters and interactions are incredibly deep messages about the Sacred and how to truly embody and practice the Christmas Spirit.

Transcript

The Spiritual Meaning of A Christmas Carol Part 1 Scrooge Syndrome Looking at the history of secular Christmas,

We have two major historical movements that bring us Christmas as we know it today.

One happens right in America,

In the early 1900s in New York.

This is where Clement Clark Moore lived.

He and others saw a lack of spirit in their town,

And through mixing together all sorts of characters from many different traditions,

Gave birth to Santa Claus as we know him today.

Moore wrote what would become known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

" The second happened in England the century before,

Culminating with Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Dickens as well as many others saw a stuck up culture and a consciousness of a deeper spirit being needed.

Old traditions were renewed,

And the Christmas tree gained popularity.

I think we hear too much about the war on Christmas,

And not enough about the covertness of Christmas itself.

How it was created and recreated to fight dullness and depression and sadness.

And although certainly so many would argue Christmas has become all about materialism and all that,

To me,

At its heart,

It is still about practicing the Christ spirit.

Charity.

Goodwill.

Forgiveness.

Love.

Even if it costs us an arm and a leg,

Christmas is still a time of rebirth into a greater consciousness of what life and we ourselves are here for.

Its sacred time.

And to me,

Dickens' character of Scrooge is one of the most important and powerful characters in literature.

Why?

Because Scrooge is all of us.

He represents the birthing of the Christmas spirit.

I find it funny that we speak of Scrooge as a kind of grumpy villain,

When in truth,

He is a hero.

We are more apt to talk about him before his rebirth,

Which I guess I get,

But it's kind of like talking about Luke Skywalker before he was a Jedi.

That being said,

We can find ourselves both in Scrooge the villain,

As we can in Scrooge the hero.

To edge his way along the crowded paths of life,

Warning all human sympathy to keep its distance.

This is just one of the brief portraits we are given of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.

And right now,

With it being the Christmas season,

Are you edging your way along the crowded paths of life,

Annoyed with all the holiday hustle and bustle?

Are you warning all human sympathy to keep its distance?

You may be suffering from the early Scrooge syndrome if you can say yes to having done any of the following things.

Cursed the store for playing Christmas music already.

Looked away from the little guy outside the store with his Salvation Army basket.

Wished you could be doing anything else than bringing out the Christmas decorations.

Concerned yourself with finding out what people want for Christmas so that you don't have to think about what you might want to get them.

Have no idea what you want for Christmas.

Wondered what people are so happy about.

If you've done any of these,

You may be suffering from Scrooge syndrome.

A central interaction in The Christmas Carol is when Scrooge comes into contact with a Christmas lover mad for the season.

Perhaps you have had or tried to avoid some of these interactions this year.

A man in a silly sweater.

A friend with whams last Christmas seemingly on repeat in their car.

The neighbor who put his lights up just after Halloween.

In this interaction,

The Christmas zombie,

To Scrooge anyways,

Is his nephew.

A Merry Christmas,

Uncle.

God save you,

Cried a cheerful voice.

It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew.

Baa,

Said Scrooge.

Humbug.

Christmas is a humbug,

Uncle?

Said Scrooge's nephew.

You don't mean that,

I'm sure.

I do,

Said Scrooge.

Merry Christmas!

What right have you to be merry?

What reason have you to be merry?

You're poor enough.

Come then,

Returned the nephew gaily.

What right have you to be dismal?

What reason have you to be morose?

You're rich enough.

When you're a Scrooge,

You ask questions like,

Why should I be happy?

Why should that person be happy?

What right do those people have to be merry?

Haven't you been watching the news?

What's the matter with you?

There are so many reasons to be miserable.

The better question is certainly Scrooge's nephew.

Who am I to be unhappy?

Why waste my time on anything else?

I breathe.

I am.

I am alive.

Glorious.

Glorious life.

The Scrooge is always looking for a reason not to.

The one who celebrates always has a reason to do so.

So who's crazier,

Scrooge or his nephew?

You or the Christmas mad person?

Scrooge for Dickens wasn't an imaginary character.

He was drawn from his own father.

Dickens grew up wealthy.

His dad fully focused on such things until he was arrested for illegally gaining wealth.

Dickens father was sent to jail and little Charles was sent to an orphanage.

His little world turned upside down.

In the orphanage he experienced the pain and sorrow of his own and others poverty,

But he also saw the light of human nature come through the poor people he met.

What right have they to be merry?

What right have I to be dismal?

Scrooge is Dickens father and Scrooge's conversion is who he knew his father could be.

Having the Scrooge syndrome over Christmas mania may just mean you are crazy about something else.

Most especially money and profit.

Life is about how much money you have and making choices that help you have more,

Right?

One of the things that having money as your only priority does is it causes you to forget your past and stop thinking about the future in terms of anything else but as a profit center.

They become meaningless.

This is what happens to Scrooge.

Scrooge cares nothing for his past.

He cares nothing for who he used to be and thinking about who he will become is a waste of time.

He is in denial.

Don't be cross uncle,

Said the nephew.

What else can I be,

Returned the uncle,

When I live in such a world of fools as this?

Merry Christmas!

What upon Merry Christmas!

What is Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money?

A time for finding yourself a year older,

But not an hour richer?

If I could work my will,

Every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

He should.

You've got to admire the guy a little,

No?

But why is Christmas time the hardest time for Scrooge?

It's driving him and maybe you a little crazy.

Why?

Why not just ignore it all?

Because it's sacred time.

It's primordial time.

The past returns.

Traditions continue.

We revisit ourselves from where we've been before.

Everywhere the season beckons us to honor the preciousness and the fragility of life.

So Scrooge's rage is not just a result of a mix-up of priorities,

But a denial of his own inner truth,

His avoidance of his own mortality.

Uncle,

Pleaded the nephew.

Nephew,

Returned the uncle sternly.

Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine.

Keep it,

Repeated Scrooge's nephew.

But you don't keep it.

Leave me alone then,

Said Scrooge.

Much good may it do you.

Much good it has ever done you.

There are many things from which I might have derived good,

But which I have not profited,

I dare say,

Returned the nephew.

Christmas among the rest.

But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time when it has come around,

Apart from the veneration due its sacred name and origin,

If anything belonging to it could be apart from that,

As a good time,

A kind,

Forgiving,

Charitable,

Pleasant time,

The only time I know of,

In the long calendar of the year,

When men and women seem by one passenger to the grave,

And not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

And there,

Uncle,

Though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket,

I believe that it has done me good,

And will do me good,

And I say,

God bless it.

How does one become reborn into the Christmas spirit?

It has something to do with this thing we call time.

But it is much deeper than that.

For time is not just a word for the fleeting and the passing,

Nor to point out what is done and what appears to be and what is to come.

Time is a way of knowing and understanding.

The deeper one dwells in the present,

With the present as priority,

The more profoundly a spirit of peace and love emerge,

Which if properly understood in a way that understanding can glimpse but never fully acquire,

One can awaken from that consciousness of the asshole to that of the heart,

And thus rebirth can occur.

If I am wrong,

Then may I boil in my own pudding.

The Three Spirits The Spiritual Meaning of A Christmas Carol Part 2 The Three Spirits There are three most common definitions for the word spirit.

The most common is how good one feels.

His spirits are high,

Her spirits are low.

She has a lot of spirit.

Another definition of spirit is the presence of God.

I am surrounded and guided by divine spirit.

A final definition is as a ghost.

A presence who has transcended a physical body that seeks to communicate with some of us still in physical bodies.

I was visited by my grandmother's spirit.

In A Christmas Carol,

Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his old business partner,

Jacob Marley.

He warns Scrooge of the consequences of denying kindness and goodwill in life.

Even Marley,

Strangely enough,

Doesn't know why Scrooge can't see him.

How is it that I peer before you in a shape that you can see?

I may not tell.

I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.

I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance in hope of escaping my fate,

A chance in hope of my procuring,

Ebenezer.

You have always been a good friend to me,

Said Scrooge.

Thank ye.

You will be haunted,

Resumed the ghost,

By three spirits.

Notice there that Marley doesn't say ghosts.

He says spirits.

And why is Scrooge being haunted?

Because he lacks spirit.

And why does he lack spirit?

Because he is completely denied the internal realities of life and only accepts the external realities as real.

Money,

Accumulation,

These are what are most important.

Humbug on love or goodwill or charity.

Scrooge is in denial of the Christmas spirit.

Do you ever do that in your own life?

Come to believe only in the external realities to the point you neglect the internal ones?

What happens when we do this as we begin to lose focus on the truest narratives of our life?

And if we're not careful like Scrooge,

We can squash them.

It might be interesting to note that Charles Dickens believed in ghosts.

That his work,

Although fictional,

Is representative of his own spiritual beliefs.

When Scrooge sees the ghosts,

That of his old business partner,

He isn't just shocked,

But he is forced to move beyond his regular sense of consciousness.

At first,

Scrooge does his best to deny it,

To cling to rationality.

Why do you doubt your senses?

Because a little thing affects them.

A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat.

You may be an undigested bit of beef,

A blot of mustard,

A crumb of cheese,

A fragment of an undone potato.

There's more of gravy than of grave about you,

Whatever you are.

The rationalist seeks the same explanation for an experience of love,

Or of unity,

Or of great joy,

As opposed to the understanding that there are deeper energies going on.

Once Scrooge agrees to believe in Marley,

Marley shares with him his warning.

It is required of every man that goes returned,

That the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide,

And if that spirit goes not forth in life,

It is condemned to do so after death.

It is doomed to wander through the world,

Oh woe is me,

And witness what it cannot share,

But might have shared on earth and turned to happiness.

I'm only guessing,

But I would not be surprised if that is what Dickens truly believed.

There's a Sufi saying,

Man's heart is like a piece of ground,

You may sow anything in it and rear it.

When the fruit comes,

Then man knows whether it was a sweet fruit or a poison.

Man's heart is like a piece of ground,

You may sow anything in it and rear it.

When the fruit comes,

The man knows whether it was a sweet fruit or a poison.

What are you sowing in your heart this Christmas?

The joy of Christmas is that it doesn't just happen now,

But at a deeper level of now that blossoms something into a greater reality.

A future perhaps?

A heaven perhaps?

Or like what happens with the first of the next three spirits that visit,

A kind of return to the past.

For the hard-hearted,

Christmas is terrible,

For it forces a return to the past.

Christmas is a kind of return.

It represents the unchanging,

And we visit it with terror or with joy.

Very few are those who can view it honestly with indifference.

It is hard to see Dickens' work as fictional when most of us are visited by ghosts from the past on Christmas.

The past does exist,

Perhaps not as an external reality,

But certainly as an internal one.

Viktor Frankl said,

The transitoryness of life cannot destroy its meaning because nothing from the past is irretrievably lost.

Everything is irrevocably stored.

It is in the past that things are rescued and preserved from transitoryness.

Whatever we have done or created,

Whatever we have learned and experienced,

All of this we have delivered into the past.

There is no one and nothing that can undo it.

We are also visited,

Of course,

By the spirit of the future,

Which,

Too,

Isn't an external reality,

But we know it's real.

It's already so on the inside.

How did Rilke put it?

The future enters into us in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.

Scrooge sees his possible sad fate,

But luckily if he can nurture his inner reality,

That future can change.

So too,

If we can nurture our inner spirit,

Our future can change.

We can experience a more profound tomorrow,

Today.

The seeds we plant today,

With the right nurturing,

For better or for worse,

Blossom in our life tomorrow.

The most powerful spirit is the spirit of the present moment.

It can be like a ghost because we don't see all of it.

Not because it's not there,

However,

But because our focus is too narrow.

In A Christmas Carol,

The ghost of Christmas present has the power to bring goodwill and abundance.

He just sprinkles some powder from his torch.

The sight of these poor revelers appeared to interest the spirit very much,

For he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway,

And taking off the covers as their bearers passed sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch.

And it was a very uncommon kind of torch,

For once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner carriers who had jostled each other,

He shed a few drops of water on them from it,

And their good humor was restored directly.

For they said,

It was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas day.

And so it was.

God love it,

So it was.

The ghost of Christmas present shelters two suffering children in his coat,

And Scrooge sees them.

Scrooge asks the ghost,

Do they belong to him?

No,

The spirit says,

They belong to man.

One is ignorance.

The other is want.

The present contains everything,

And yet its spirit isn't everywhere,

For much in the present is unaware of what it is.

But that's the calling of Christmas,

Of the three spirits,

To bring forth the spirit,

To relieve ignorance,

To fulfill want.

Where we are,

Whomever we are with,

Remember,

Celebrate,

And practice the spirit.

How are you when visited by the three spirits?

Just remember they all have the same goal,

To bring you into living more fully right now.

They point not to a time other than now,

But to that deeper time,

Sacred time.

You enter not through a door of matter,

But a door of consciousness within,

And come out profoundly restored.

The Spiritual Meaning of A Christmas Carol Part 3 God Bless Us,

Everyone Some bug is probably the most well known saying from A Christmas Carol,

But second is most likely God bless us,

Everyone.

And of course,

They are spoken by one of the most beloved and copied characters in literature,

Tiny Tim.

Tiny Tim is a young crippled boy who is the son of Scrooge's underpaid employee,

Bob Cratchit.

What makes Tiny Tim so memorable is that despite his condition,

He embodies entirely the spirit of good,

Love,

And peace.

After coming home on his father's shoulders,

Who carried his little crutch,

Tiny Tim,

His iron frame,

Mrs.

Cratchit asked,

And how did little Tim behave?

As good as gold,

Said Bob,

And better.

Somehow he gets thoughtful,

Sitting by himself so much,

And thinks the strangest things you've ever heard.

He told me coming home that he hoped the people saw him in the church,

Because he was a cripple,

And it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk,

And blind men see.

Tiny Tim is someone we pity and sigh for,

Especially in the Mickey Mouse version where he is a cute little cartoon mouse I tear up every time.

Yet,

Tim is also the best of us.

He has vision.

He has charity.

He has the ability that so many of us lack to celebrate life even in the midst of pain and struggle.

Not because he is naive,

But because he is fully alive.

After Christmas dinner,

Bob Cratchit declares,

A merry Christmas to us all,

My dears.

God bless us,

Which all the family re-echoed.

God bless us every one,

Said Tiny Tim,

The last of all.

He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool.

Bob held his withered little hand in his,

As if he loved the child,

And wished to keep him by his side,

And dreaded that he might be taken from him.

Spirit,

Said Scrooge with an interest he had never felt before,

Tell me if Tiny Tim will live.

I see a vacant seat,

Replied the Ghost,

In the poor chimer corner,

And a crutch without an owner,

Carefully preserved.

If these shadows remain unaltered by the future,

The child will die.

No,

No,

Said Scrooge.

Oh,

No,

Kind Spirit,

Say he will be spared.

If these shadows remain unaltered by the future,

None other of my race,

Returned the Ghost,

Will find him here.

What then?

If he be like to die,

He had better do it and decrease the surplus population.

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit,

And was overcome with penitence and grief.

In Tiny Tim,

Not only do we have a wise one,

But one in need of help.

This is at times the greatest gift of Christmas,

To find someone to give to who could use the help.

To bring us out of our own self-interest and praise the life in which we live.

God bless us,

Every one.

An old Japanese tale is about a man who dies and wakes up to find a spirit directing him to sit at a large table,

Filled with all sorts of wonderful food and drink.

I must have not been as bad as I thought I was,

The man thought to himself.

Others sit down at the table too,

But suddenly his arms are gripped and attached to a large board.

The others at the table too.

They can reach the food but not bring it to their own mouths.

The man realizes he is in hell.

What,

He cries then,

Is heaven.

He is released and his spirit points to another table.

It's just like the last table and the food is the same.

People are sitting there too,

But again all of their arms are bound to a large piece of wood.

There is only one difference.

At this table the folks have realized they can't feed themselves,

But they can feed one another.

This is one of the gifts of Christmas time.

There is that which I crave that I cannot find by myself.

I only receive it from others.

And there is a joy I cannot give to myself that I can only give to others.

The British thinker John Ruskin once said,

There is only one power,

The power to save someone.

And there is only one honor,

The honor to help someone.

It is ultimately Tiny Tim that truly reawakens Scrooge's heart and transforms him into a hero.

Scrooge is overcome with a desire to feed and nurture and help Tiny Tim,

But at the level of a deeper reality,

It is truly Tiny Tim,

His goodness,

His purity,

His Christ-likeness that helps Scrooge.

When Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning,

He is transformed.

I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.

I will live in the past,

The present,

And the future.

The spirits of all three shall strive within me.

I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.

What is the lesson that the spirits teach?

That the spiritual life is about practicing goodwill,

Charity,

And kindness,

And doing it in cultivation of a sacred now.

Yes,

Be a good person,

But more so reap the benefits of being a good person.

It is to have the keys that unlock the door to an experience of ultimate reality.

Scrooge was better than his word.

He did it all and infinitely more,

And to Tiny Tim who did not die,

He was a second father.

He became as good as a friend,

As good a master,

And as good a man as the good old city knew,

Or any other good old city,

Town or borough,

In the good old world.

Some people laughed to see the alteration in him,

But he let them laugh,

And little heeded them,

For he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe for good at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset,

And knowing that such as these would be blind anyway,

He thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle you their eyes and grin,

As have the malady in less attractive forms.

His own heart laughed,

And that was quite enough for him.

How does Scrooge stay a hero?

By keeping Christmas in his heart all the days.

No,

That doesn't mean decorations in July,

But keeping the heart of charity and goodwill all year long.

Christmas becomes at that point,

Not so much a holiday as a holy day,

In which one can reset him or herself in sacred time,

And do their best to stay there all the year.

Reviews

Refreshing and humbling

What a perfect holiday message! Thank you, Rev. Josh. Wow... I’ll be revisiting this year round.