139. A CHRISTMAS CAROL ONE YEAR ON - A Philosophy
It was the day after Christmas and Ebenezer Scrooge’s head was pounding. He’d overdone it with the Cratchits the day before. All those years of temperance had caught up with him after an evening of festive indulgence. At one point Tiny Tim had stopped looking so tiny and Scrooge had realised he was down on the floor somehow, looking up at the boy. It was around then that he’d stopped drinking, but the damage had already been done.
Sitting there in the office, waiting for Bob to arrive, a year to the day after he had given the man his first raise and committed himself financially to helping the struggling Cratchit family, Scrooge was struck by an unnerving observation:
The Ghost of Christmas Present had shown him a Christmas day last year completely different from the one the Cratchits had actually experienced in the present. The poverty he had seen in the vision had made him feel guilty and melancholy at the time. The certainty that Tiny Tim would die without treatment. That desperate little house. But in reality, in the actual present, the Cratchits had feasted on turkey and trimmings at Scrooge’s expense and had a wonderful time. Bob had thanked him with great giddiness the following day. And now, a year later, his treatments bought and paid for, Tim was doing great. He was no longer at death’s door, even if he was still tiny.
This observation led to another. One which made his already troubled head sway:
By changing his ways that Christmas morning a year before, buying up a turkey and all the trimmings and sending it to the Cratchit’s door, he had made a liar of the ghost’s vision. The ghost had not shown him the present at all. It had shown him something false. A vision of a Christmas which wasn’t.
The nausea grew as Scrooge considered the implications of this:
If one ghost’s vision was false then, perhaps, so too were the others. After all, the data of what had actually happened seemed to falsify the veracity of what the Ghost of Christmas Present had shown him. On what evidence, therefore, could he trust the others when this crucial piece of evidence that he could had been undone?
While the vision offered by the Ghost of Christmas Past had seemed fairly accurate at the time, Scrooge had to admit that, with age, his memories had faded. How certain could he be that the ghost’s reflection of those long-ago events wasn’t tinted with supernatural roses, designed to make him feel wistful?
Come to think of it, he was sure he remembered Fezziwig could be a grumpy old sod sometimes. Hadn’t he fired the lot of them after that wonderful Christmas party? Something about cost-saving and reducing his outgoings? It was easy to look back fondly on the good times, but perhaps that left the past somewhat distorted and prone to misremembering? He was sure, now, that the day of the party people had been worried about their jobs and were attending only in the hope they’d gain favour with old Fezziwig to survive the impending cuts. The mood had been tense, not jolly. People drinking too much and dancing frantically, not with carefree abandon but with a sort of stress-induced mania. Hadn’t they mocked Fezziwig’s awful fiddle playing in whispers the more they downed their punch? Hadn’t they cursed his name in the weeks that followed?
And Belle! Sweet, Belle. Sure, he missed her, and wished they’d gotten married. He’d never met anyone else he’d felt willing to propose to since, and it had been a shock to see her again. Especially later, with the new husband, while he, Scrooge, was still alone. But it wasn’t only his growing love for money which had made them grow apart. She’d become quite the bore on the subject of needlework and soft furnishings and, if he were being honest with himself, he had started working late with Marley to avoid having to discuss such things with her as much as to increase the company’s profits. Releasing her from their engagement had come as a quite a relief at the time, even if he regretted it now. The ghost had shown him a spin on the past. A perspective of it. But not the real, complete, thing. A Christmas not quite rather than a Christmas truly gone by.
This meant two of the three ghosts had shown him either a completely false, or at least a deeply distorted vision. Two out of three who couldn’t be trusted as sources of knowledge. Why on earth had he been so convinced by the third?
That he would die one day was obvious. That much he knew to be true. But that he would die without mourners or love? Where was the evidence? For all his grouchiness and miserliness, he was, at the end of the day, a money-lender who had long been in a profitable and successful business. He had helped many in the town over the years get a good start in life. His rates were high, his deadlines strict, but for those who paid what was due, he had often been a life-saver. He was sure it would bring a tear to at least a few of their eyes to hear that he had expired. If anything, given how radically false the Ghost of Christmas Present and Past’s visions had been, it was more likely than ever that when he died, Scrooge would probably be greatly missed. What the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come had been touting was possibly pure humbug.
The room swam as he struggled with the paradox:
He had changed his ways that day, a year ago, because he believed the ghost’s visions to be true, but by changing his ways he had made their visions false.
He had wanted to falsify the vision shown by the Ghost of Christmas Future, but by doing so and changing the present, he had undermined the very evidence presented by the Ghost of Christmas Present, on which the Ghost of Christmas Future’s epistemic status as a legitimate source of warning had been founded. Once done, the previously compelling evidence on which to base the idea that he needed to change his ways, no longer existed.
Given the unreliability of two of the three visions now contrasted with their lived reality, the promised future of the third seemed likely illusory too. By believing the ghost’s visions, and acting on them, he had made them unbelievable and no longer motivating for action. Scrooge had no dependable way of knowing now for sure whether the number of mourners at his funeral would have anything to do with whether he loved Christmas or he loathed it.
Which was just as well, as this hangover was reminding him why he used to avoid all things festive and merry.
God, he’d been such a fool. To think of the money he’d wasted in the last twelve months being kind!
The door opened, signalled by a little bell, and Bob Cratchit walked in, a big stupid Boxing Day grin on his face.
‘What time do you call this?’ roared Scrooge from his perch, furious at himself more than his employee but needing somewhere to vent.
‘It’s Christmas, Mr. Scrooge.’ Cratchit replied, concerned, his smile falling. ‘You said last year, last night too, that I could…’
‘Last year? Last night? What on earth does the past have to do with the present?’ Scrooge barked. ‘A fool’s logic. The present changes all the time, by the whims of the people in the moment. The past is irrelevant to the present.’
‘But you said last night that tomorrow I could…’
‘Tomorrow? A prediction of the future? Even more unreliable than a lesson from the past. Now get to work, Cratchit and stop wasting my time. I’ll be docking your wages for lateness and I expect you in again early tomorrow morning to make up.’
‘But it’s Christmas, sir’, muttered Cratchit, bravely.
‘Christmas?’ echoed Scrooge, the word feeling strange in his mouth. ‘Christmas you say?’
‘Yes, sir. Christmas.’ replied Cratchit.
A dry smile formed on Scrooge’s lips.
‘Humbug to Christmas!’
And with that he got back to his books.
Author: DaN McKee (he/him)
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