"But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of these poor revellers 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 humour 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!
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker’s oven; where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.
“Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?” asked Scrooge.
“There is. My own.”
“Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Scrooge.
“To any kindly given. To a poor one most.”
“Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge.
“Because it needs it most.”
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, “I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment.”
“I!” cried the Spirit.
“You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge. “Wouldn’t you?”
“I!” cried the Spirit.
“You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?” said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same thing.”
“I seek!” exclaimed the Spirit.
“Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,” said Scrooge.
“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”"
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
This is a passage of A Christmas Carol that I never paid much attention to before. A brief interlude where Scrooge seems to be thawing because of the Ghost of Christmas Present's presence, but still gets in to a lively debate regarding work, pleasure, and the efforts of the moral majority, of "good Christians" at the time.
Scrooge recognizes that for the poor, often Sunday is their only source of enjoyment. Their only good meal. The strive of all their labors. What makes it bearable, sustainable.
Scrooge also knows that there are “
blue law” efforts in his society to, under the guise of being a good “
Christian” society, close all commercial shops—including bakeries—on Sundays. Accordingly, Scrooge accuses the Ghost of hypocrisy.
The Ghost of Christmas Present naturally takes offense, saying it is not he that seeks to deprive them of their means. And Scrooge then utters the words that I want to focus on. "It has been done in your name."
How much ill do we do in the name of Christmas?
The commercialism. The comparison. The holiday blues, the holiday rage.
Kris Kringle: Imagine...making a child take something it doesn’t want…just because he bought too many of the wrong toys. That’s what I’ve been fighting against for years…the way they commercialize Christmas.
Alfred: A lot of bad ‘isms’ floating around in this world…but one of the worst is commercialism. Make a buck. Make a buck. Even in Brooklyn, it’s the same. Don’t care what Christmas stands for. Just make a buck.Alfred: A lot of bad ‘isms’ floating around in this world…but one of the worst is commercialism. Make a buck. Make a buck. Even in Brooklyn, it’s the same. Don’t care what Christmas stands for. Just make a buck.it doesn't want...
just because he bought
too many of the wrong toys.
That's what I've been
fighting against for years...
the way they
commercialize Christmas.
A lot of bad "isms"
floating around this world...
but one of the worst
is commercialism.
Make a buck. Make a buck.
Even in Brooklyn,
it's the same.
Don't care what Christmas
stands for.
Just make a buck.
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=miracle-on-34th-street
making a child take something
it doesn't want...
just because he bought
too many of the wrong toys.
That's what I've been
fighting against for years...
the way they
commercialize Christmas.
A lot of bad "isms"
floating around this world...
but one of the worst
is commercialism.
Make a buck. Make a buck.
Even in Brooklyn,
it's the same.
Don't care what Christmas
stands for.
Just make a buck.
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=miracle-on-34th-street
Even worse, how much ill do we do in the name of Christ? How much ill do we do with good intentions but with horrible, inevitable effects?
How much do we associate the name of Christ with hate, with malice, with greed, with strife?
How much evil are we doing in the name of Christ by associating him with a singular political party?
Marilynne Robinson’s wrote in her novel
Gilead: “
We human beings do real harm. History could make a stone weep.”
The past is littered with historical evils that have been done in the name of Christ. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, forced conversions of aboriginal peoples. Blood libel. Slavery.
What are we doing today, what are we allowing today that is the same?
Forced separation of migrant families seeking asylum.
White nationalism that proclaims that God appointed a superior race.
Support for horribly damaging conversion camps because we are too afraid to have real open conversations about religion and sex, especially at younger ages when it would be most beneficial.
Division and hatred directed at half the country because fear is a great political tool.
When will we engage in the Biblical practice of lament?
More than any other, Christmas should be a time to force us to cut through all the division, all the rancor, all the strife. To really look at what we claim in the name of the child. What we claim in the name of the God who became man to save all. To redeem all, to restore all.
Who appeared to the lowliest of us all, to shame the high and mighty. Who appeared to outsiders, to the scandalous, to the wretched, to shame the pious.
“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”
"The Advent and Christmas seasons provide those of us who claim the Christian faith with the opportunity to consider the various ways in which we—all of us, regardless of political persuasion or version of Christianity—regularly distort, twist, and often besmirch the name of the very faith we claim in ways that have nothing to do with the good news of the gospel. We all, either actively or through neglect and passivity, have been party to allowing, in the Ghost of Christmas Present’s words, “deeds of passion, pride, ill will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness [to be done] in our name.” Ebenezer Scrooge learned many things from the ghosts who visited him, but none more important than this: it is possible both to become aware of things one has been blind to and to change. May we all go and do likewise." Vance Morgan, "It Has Been Done In Your Name: A Dickensian Tale of "Good Christians" Doing Harm
May we all go and do likewise, indeed.
And then, and only then, will God bless us, one and all.