Dickens and Religion

Posted by Stolzi on December 21, 1997 at 17:18:23:

Dickens is often thought of as having furthered the secularization of Christmas, and to some degree I suppose this is true.

But I was speculating in my other post about the identity of his three Spirits, and have to call to your notice a passage in which Dickens identifies these amorphous Spirits, somehow, with Christianity.

"You would deprive them [the poor] 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."

Scrooge is referring to the efforts of Sabbath Day Observance societies to close the bakers who allowed poor people to use their bread-ovens to bake or roast their dinners (eg the Cratchits' goose) on Sunday or on Christmas. The Spirit indignantly rejects Scrooge's suggestion that "It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family."

The Spirit then has a fine speech, but it leaves unsolved the theological confusion of what relationship the "1800 and some-odd spirits of Christmas" have with the spirits generally thought to inhabit the Christian universe, ie the Holy Trinity, the saints, and angels! (Also... if there is one Spirit of Christmas per year, then how come there is an over-arching Spirit of Christmas Past and likewise of Christmas Future? Ah, these theological mysteries! )

"There are some upon this earth of yours," replied 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."

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