Hey everybody, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Greg. Merry Christmas, Alex. Merry Christmas, David. Nice.
He's the only one for you. Merry Christmas, Greg, you're the same as me. So what are we doing, Greg? We're re-releasing an episode, first time, right?
Look, we've never done this before. We did record a stocking stuffer, so you know, our hardcore fans, we've been seen a week, we still have an episode coming out on Hawthorne's The Christmas Bank, but we, honestly, this is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. Mine too. I feel like we did something that was novel, people haven't done this before, we showed what a sort of very close, maybe even esoteric reading of a story we're all very familiar with, it looked like.
And I learned a lot, and it's very Christmassy. Very Christmassy, and I think it was popular. I've heard from more than a few people a colleague of mine here have taught Christmas girl, precisely the Christmas mark. It's great.
And then the other guy, too, we developed it at Montana, the Montana School, right? The Montana Christian School, or Montana Center? The Montana classes were actually pretty good. So yeah, I mean, this is a great episode.
I make a tradition, it's honest, I get a tradition of mine, I read this story every Christmas, so maybe we'll make a tradition to re-release this episode every Christmas. Maybe also a meeting every Christmas. You should. You should, I just read a few of my favorite sewers, right?
Yeah, that makes sense. But for all our folks at home, it's a great Christmas. And we hope that you'll enjoy this little treat. Go adults.
Just say Merry Christmas, that's it. Merry Christmas, take care of everybody, and enjoy a classic New Thinkery episode. Welcome to the New Thinkery, I just dropped my microphone. I'm David Barr, and with me as always is my Christian brother, Greg McBrayer, how are you, Christian brother?
And Merry Christmas. Fine brother, fine brother, Merry Christmas to you, David. Thank you. And our other good friend, Alex, Alex, Greg, and I both want to wish you a belated, happy, eat-all fitter since you're our Muslim brother.
And this is, we're a tolerant tribe here at the New Thinkery, and all fates are welcome. I'll carry you out. Doing well, I mean, I'd be doing better if, you know, you infidels weren't joined for people, but it feels pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'll have a high degree of tolerance. It'll be nice hearing from you in your lives. Yeah, so I always forget this, but at the start, I do want to enjoy and listeners, if they haven't already, please, please rate us on wherever you download your podcast. If you could give the show a five-star rating, that helps with our visibility, and it helps attract new listeners, it's important.
So if you could do that, if you can remember, we'd be grateful. And in the spirit of giving, it's a season of giving, right? Just be coming out on Wednesday, 23rd. Just, no, I'm saying, if you want to donate, right?
Now, the way I see this going, the way I see this going, there's two options. Either you don't donate, and then you listen to what this story, a Christmas Carol is about, and you realize that you're, you're just a modern day scrooge, a scrooge make the up. Or you give now, and you'll find a story that follows a good information, and you're charitable giving, yeah. David is going to haunt you if you don't donate.
And you don't want that. You don't want that. Nobody wants that. You need cheeses for our mises.
I'm calling in from Kentucky today, so I won't be able to help you out with grandpa's cheesebar and David. Oh, with Greg. The Salt lick. That's right, if you have listeners could only see the suitcase you packed.
Parnier returned to Kentucky, it's filled with a lot of sugar. It's a lot of sugar, a lot of cheese. A lot of bourbon too. Yeah, and you.
Not for me, obviously, but for other people. Right. Right. So today, we have a special episode.
Christmas episode. Christmas episode. But a ghostly, spooky Christmas. Reading Charles Dickens, a Christmas Carol in prose, being a ghost story of Christmas.
So that's a full title of what we commonly hear termed as Dickens Christmas Carol. And I will say from the outset, having only learned Christmas Carol through the Muppet Christmas movie, which is excellent. Such a good movie. Yeah, and that's where the cheeses from the mises.
What is it? What's the quote, Greg? It's Jesus for our mises. And I think that we had a listener promise $10 every time we mentioned that line.
It was every time? I think so. Was it just the once or I think it was for every time we mentioned it. All right.
Well, yeah, let's get ready. We got to get on it. It is a great movie, by the way. It's great.
And one small point on that. By the way, if you watch that movie, it's a great movie. It's very very family friendly. It's true to the sphere of the book, as far as I can tell.
But there's one moment in it where when I was a kid and it first came out, I said to mom and dad, did that just happen? And I said what I thought I saw? And they were like, no, no, no, no, no, come on. And then we rewound it.
And sure enough, the two poorly lads that come to Scrooge and ask for money in the movie are it's Bunsen and Beaker. And when Scrooge throws them out, Bunsen is talking, he's sort of upset. And Beaker goes, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He doesn't talk.
And then Beaker flips Scrooge off. He gives them the bird and goes, me, me, me. And then they go out. Like, just as plain as day in this otherwise child-friendly movie, I find it very hilarious.
I find it very hilarious. I think you're right. I know it's like four fingers. There's no middle finger.
Fair enough. Good point. I stayed for it. But he's raising off finger.
And the other is pointing at heaven and saying, that's where you're going to go one day, bud. After these ghosts get you. So this story, we all know that the apparitions appear to old Ebenees or Scrooge, who's a real humbug. But when you start reading Dickens, if you have to read this story, you can't just watch the Tinseltown version.
You have to read it because it's wonderful. And it hits a lot harder. And there are a lot of mysteries within the tale that we want to explore. So Greg, why will we already discuss why we're reading Christmas Carol?
But I think you should mention, well, so we picked it because a couple years ago, I decided to read it as a sort of to start a tradition. Because I've always loved the movies. And it's really good. I think that we decided a couple weeks ago.
And so the three of us have been exchanging text messages about it. I don't know about you guys, but I've been having a lot of fun just trying to figure out what's going on in this book. I'm trying to figure out how you're going to start a tradition without any kids. Just going to read it to your dogs every year?
Yes, they'll be. I'm sure. That's not a spirit. It's reading.
That's not a spirit. I'm just reading it to myself, to be honest. But well, Scrooge doesn't have kids. Right?
He dies without silver in the end. And he's already advanced in years. I think that doesn't have kids who's maybe also advanced in years. Oh, I mean, I see right before me.
I mean, he's aged. See the streaks in his beard. The ghost of Christmas past. Hey, folks at home.
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Well, yes, you both have kids and I don't. In any event, the book is very good. If you do have kids, I'd encourage you to consider reading it to them. I think you'll get a lot more out of it.
And it's much deeper than the movies or its ubiquity would sort of apply. One of the things that David and Alice and I were talking about, I think it was Alex or David, one of them even said, like, just how popular this book is, really masks how deep and profound it is. It's sort of harmed by its popularity, it seems to me. It does not, people don't appreciate how good a book is.
It actually, I was reading, in my design, the Penguin Edition, and I was just looking at the introduction of it. Apparently, it's sold out immediately, and it's never been out of print since 1843, when it was originally published. It was pretty impressive. I remember that.
And then some people even credit Dickens with sort of crafting the modern or sort of what we think about Christmas now. I mean, it's gotten commercialized, but you know, this idea of charity and having a roast and gathered with family and friends and dancing and all that and giving of gifts and stuff like that. I think he, in many ways, he's credited with that. I don't know if this is historically, but it's such a cultural phenomenon that it's hard to appreciate what's strange about it.
Because we all know the story of Scrooge, right? You know, he's this bahumbug, you know, he's also a duck, apparently. And he and he's visited as an old partner. Yes, he's Scottish, Marley.
And then on three successive nights, apparently, you know, he he's visited by these these ghosts. But there's a whole psychology behind it and transformation that you don't necessarily get from the sort of cultural tale of don't be stingy. It's Christmas. You ought to be gracious and charitable.
That's I think really fascinating about how he comes around, that you don't necessarily get to say nothing. I'm just all the very interesting details that you can't necessarily put into a film version, you know, so. And Alex or Greg, how long is this novel? Just so listeners, 100 pages?
How long is it in the penguin just roughly? In mine, it's about 90 pages. It's a novella, really. So and it's I mean, I was listening when I was school for walks.
I was listening to an audio book version. There's a free audio book version on audible read by Tim Curran. It was pretty funny and enjoyable. But that one took three and a half hours to listen to, you know, so it's a pretty digestible work.
You can read it in an afternoon on Christmas. That's a pun based on the book digestible. It comes up as one anyway. Yeah, that comes up as a minor theme.
That's right. Yeah. And Justin. So Alex, why don't you just give us a quick quick summary?
Yeah. So when we encounter we have this narrator. We don't know who he is. It's not Rizzo the Rat.
Not Rizzo the Rat. No, it's I mean, it could be a rat. We know nothing about him. My general sense, just from reading it, is this narrator is a sort of taken by the spirit of the moment, right?
Often it seems like the narrator's in Scrooge's head or he's there celebrating with the people who are dancing or eating or laughing and playing. And he often gets overtaken. So whoever this narrator is, it's something he's very much taken by the spirit of the time and put off by by Scrooge's own behavior. But anyways, he shows us Scrooge, Scrooge encounters.
Initially, we see him with his clerk, Bob Cratchit, father of I think five or six kids, including a little little weak tiny Tim. Busy Bob as his friends called him. Busy Bob. Yeah.
Yeah. What happens at the Cratchit's? Exactly. I don't know what's happening.
So if he is a great, they live in a one room shack, is rather indecent. A Bob. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, certainly your, the spirit of the remarks would be met with approval by Greg, who's the father only to a couple Chihuahuas.
But in any case, the, so basically there's five staves. Staves is in the staff of the song. It's a Carol, right? And it's got a kind of musical and changing quality, but it's put into prose.
Right? So you can imagine a kind of song being sung about a person going through this, but it's been put into prose. I think it's meant to kind of bring you up into the spirit of Christmas. But in the first stave, we see Scrooge with his various relations, Bob Cratchit.
There's some people coming in to ask for money for the poor. We are introduced to his nephew. He then goes home and he sees the ghost of his dead partner, Marley, who basically says that if you don't change your ways, you're going to be tortured for the rest of the life, realizing the evils you've done and not being able to do anything about it to help people that you wish you had helped your life. Scrooge is very skeptical at first, but eventually is taken over by kind of fear.
What's supposed to be three successive nights of spirits visiting him. The first two seem to come under successive nights. And the third one comes right on the heels of the second, though. It seems to have been like 23 hours or something like that, that he's been with the second ghost.
That's at least what you'll let to believe. But then in the fifth stave, these are ghosts of past present future, shows of old Christmases. It's a very sad moment. Present Christmas, how his relations are celebrating the day and some others.
And in the future, what's going to happen? Basically, Scrooge will be dead in a casket with nobody to mourn him. And then finally, the fifth stage, by this point, Scrooge has had a change of heart. And he celebrates, and he's trying to make amends.
He's obviously very moved by this, shaking, laughing, crying, right? It's emotionally very fraught for him. And at the end of it, he's resolved to be a different man. Hopefully, we don't know.
Hopefully, this will save his soul. But the third ghost refuses to answer at all, whether or not this is actually going to save him or whether it's too late. All he knows is that there's one way he can live, given the fear and troubling that's been put into him. So that's a general kind of overview of what happens in the text.
Yeah. So let's kick off Greg Kicks off with stave one or chapter one. I mean, if it's easier. No, stave one's fine.
So what's going on in stave one? Let me just gosh, the book opens. Marley was dead to begin with. I mean, dead as a dornet.
Why do people say that? Dead as a dornet. Why do people say that? I don't even know why that's a dornet phrase.
There's no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood. So death, I guess for me, the interesting thing about the first stave is that Marley's death is pronounced at the beginning. I think hammering one of the key themes of this book, that death is a sort of central topic.
I mean, it's a ghost story, for example. And I think that for me, one of the things that really jumped out, reading it for the first time as opposed to watching the movies, was that how preoccupied Scrooge himself is with death. So the first, I mean, there's a number of things that are going on. So very simply, we learned shortly that Scrooge hasn't really thought much about Marley these last few years.
But, definitely, we learned it's actually seven years since he thought of them because it's the seven year anniversary of Marley's death. So here it is, Christmassy, and Marley died seven years ago. We learned something I didn't notice upon watching the movies. How would you know just watching the movies that Scrooge lives in Marley's old house, which is also a weird kind of business office.
We ended a weird part of town, Dickens, and this is why you have to read the novella Greg I apologize, I don't mean to cry. No, jump in. This is what this is one of my the Dickens has the anybody that's read Dickens knows how funny he can be and how wonderful his turn to phrase and for a guy that relied a lot on a quick serial writing, which can often be terrible. He kept up really high standard, but he describes Scrooge's neighborhood where the house he lives in is having crept away from other houses in the neighborhood and like he hid in a weird obscure part of town.
I mean, like he really sets the stage for what this sort of like the scrooge's environs. It's just this wonderful little side. So, I mean, there's that. I mean, when his nephew comes and speaks to him, which is his nephew from his sister, his nephew's name is Fred and his sister's dead sister, by the way, her name is Fran.
Is that right? He's fan fan. So I was only pointing out that even the arrival of his nephew reminds him of his dead sister, which we learn later was sort of very impactful on his life. So there are just a number of things reminded of death.
I mean, even when he's sitting down to eat his meal, there's there are pictures from the Bible marked in tiles above the chimney or around the chimney, many of which could be associated with death. I mean, there's Abraham, which could involve Isaac. There's the Cain and Abel story, which obviously is murder. There's Pharaoh's daughter, which could either refer to the Pharaoh's daughter who found Moses, which of course means all the kids being killed.
So there's just a number of examples of things that are sort of pointing to scrooge's fear of death. I said, we also learned that Scrooge is miserly and solitary. I guess I hadn't really focused so much on myself on what miserly this means. I always thought it just meant sort of somebody who hoards up money, but I hadn't focused on how much Scrooge hoards money and doesn't spend it.
He doesn't live in luxury. He lives like a poor person almost. And he's living in his dead friend's old house. And I think that Dickens is trying to connect Scrooge's fear of death with Scrooge's miserliness, if that makes sense.
There's a sort of trying to save up. There's a way in which I suspect that Scrooge's hoarding of wealth is a way in his mind of trying to save off death. Although it didn't work in Marley's case. And I think that that reminder of Marley was problematic for him.
There were a couple of them. Go ahead. Yeah, I think one just to connect this, because Dickens is really good at this, like in a tale of two cities, right? You have concrete relationships, individuals, right?
But their concerns and their psychology is embedded within the spirit of the time, right? And so one of the things we realized is we go through this. This is not an easy time. Things have gotten really rough.
There's every reason to be miserly, right? And I think one of the paradox, and maybe one of the things that Dickens wants to impart, at least on his contemporary reader, is that this is a time where you could be successful if you're ruthless, if you're miserly, if you're very careful with money, you will succeed and you will be safe. But the problem is that the virtue required for that success is not the same virtue that will be conducive to charitable giving, right? Or is kind of Christian grace.
And I think that ends up being a real paradox that's embodied in Scrooge himself, who, you know, he's had a tough life as an individual, but it turns out that there's a lot of people who have been driven by business to be like this, maybe not to the same extent. And he has to come around and realize that in focusing so much on preserving himself by acquiring wealth, he's also all the spice of life. I think it's interesting. The word miserly, right?
It's related to the word for misery, right? So there's a kind of wretchedness or unhappiness that I think that connection is a good way of looking at what the story is about that. Myserliness is a way to maybe safety, but also to misery, right? I think his solitaryness is also a path to misery for him.
I mean, everything seems to be cutting off and trying to protect himself from death. So I'm not going to form attachments to other humans. I want to hoard up as much money as I can for rainy days, bad stuff like that. But also strangely enough, of course, his view of Christmas, like his Baja Humbug, right?
He doesn't celebrate Christmas because he's the virtues that Christmas at least as we learn and celebrate, he wants nothing to do with these things. They're sort of, Baja Humbug means like what a bunch of malarkey, right? It doesn't just mean like I don't like that. It means I think that's superstitious, right?
Isn't that kind of what I mean? He needs dog-faced pony boy. Yeah, I was going to get to ask Biden. It's a great, there's one more thing I want to talk about.
Humbug is just basically BS, right? I was trying to family show here. I was trying to avoid saying BS. Well, if it's a family show, we need to speak a little less of your love of cheese.
I love cheese. In decent as it is. I like cheese too, but you know, anyways, but I try to look up the roots. There's no way to tell.
But as I was looking for usage, like over time, there's like a spike every Christmas. It goes up to stick and stuff. That's funny. So speaking of the Christmas part for one moment, if you guys will indulge me, I want to read one of the lines that is nephew says to him because what struck me curiously about this book is this is maybe the most popular Christmas book in the English-speaking world.
And it has so much to do with Alex said with our understanding of Christmas. But it seems to not be very Christian. If what we mean by Christianity is sort of connected to Christ and religious or sacred or something like that. So I just want to read a line that is nephew says to Scrooge when he comes to invite him over for dinner on Christmas.
Fred says, Scrooge is asking what good Christmas ever did for him. Here is Fred's response. There are many things from which I might have derived good by which I have not profited, I dare say, return to the nephew. Christmas among them.
But I'm sure I have always thought of Christmas time. When it's come around, apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can 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 consent to open their shut up parts freely and to think of people below them as if they were really fellow passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on their journeys.
And therefore, 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. And I think that the interesting part for me to end quote there is the focus on how Christmas can bring people together and how helpful it is for humanity. I think of all these examples, there were these examples from World War I and other wars where people just took a moment and shut up and sort of thought to themselves, we're all fellow passengers to the grave.
So they made that sort of more good way of thinking about it, but we're all in the same ship, we're all in the same boat. And therefore, we ought to be benevolent toward one another. And by the way, just as a final aside, even that quote there points again to the centrality of death to this first day, we're all fellow passengers to the grave. Yeah, if I could tell you some of us are a little closer to the locomotive.
Well, it's worse. This is true. I wish I didn't buy a ticket on that train. So another point here that I think just to relate this, he says, there are many things from which I might have derived good by which I have not profited.
That's related to the question of miserliness, right? The good and profitability are not the same. This repeats throughout a couple of pages later, the narrator says, talking about all of the windows for the food, he says, pultures and grosser trades became a splendid joke, a glorious pageant with which it was next impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. So there again, the pageantry of Christmas versus bargain and sale profit.
Now the good, the non-profitable good with which they are concerned is a kind of fellow feeling for your fellow human beings and our common mortality and suffering, which induces a kind of charity, that's supposed to be very sort of comforting. And that, I think, is therefore tied to the kind of sacred element, right? Because it's not simply concerned with maybe a more robust life or engaged life, but specifically with charity in relation to our suffering as we make our way towards death. And one way to think about what follows after this is it's a kind of argument or an attempt or a total attempt to persuade Scrooge that the profitable is not the good, or I would go so far as to say that, curitability is profitable.
Because a lot of this is about putting fear of death, right, of suffering in the afterlife into Scrooge. And therefore, sensing that making money in this life is not the ultimate profit, but having a comfortable afterlife is the ultimate profit. And this fear, I think, has to appeal to the psychological motivation, has of concern with his own well-being in the future. Well, you're only concerned with your well-being in the future in this world.
Well, what about it in the next? So I do think this question of profitability, the good, the sacred runs throughout in that sense. And I'm not sure, is this a story about how if you're really concerned with profit, the afterlife is the ultimate focus? It's a somewhat mercenary way of thinking about Christianity, but it does seem to be what works on Scrooge, right?
Can I amplify that just so that the only way, yeah, the question raised there is fantastic. The only way to make, I'm not saying this right, the good is the profitable if there are not providential gods, only with the support of the divine, does it make sense to pursue the good of others? Does that, that's too neat? That might be the account that works for Scrooge.
I don't think this is adequate question of Christianity, but it seems to be what he's put forward. And it goes to Marley, do you want to talk about that Alex? Yeah, but just one more detail on that, just so we're looking ahead. The fourth state of the last ghost, the ghost of the future, he doesn't say anything.
And at the end, Scrooge is consistently harping on this question. Are these the visions of things that must come or things that might be? Do I have a choice? Can I avoid this outcome?
Can I do enough? He never gets an answer. He's essentially persuaded himself, I think, by the end that he can. He just makes it change.
But it is a real question that's left open. And that repeated question seems to show that Scrooge is really concerned with avoiding suffering in the afterlife. So there's still a question of that same motivation, but just extended beyond this world. I hope our listeners are hearing just how many of these philosophical questions are being raised by this text.
What is the role of the afterlife? What's the relationship between the profitable or the advantageous and the good? These are all themes that one would see in the Titanic dialogue, for example. And we're going to turn to the Marley discussion here in just a moment.
But I was greatly amused. I know I think Alex, you were too, by the brief epistemological debate between Marley and Scrooge. How do I know you're not just a piece of undigested beef or a morsel of mustard or something like this? So how do I trust the senses?
Why should I trust the senses? They don't seem like a sort of parody of Cartesian sort of thinking or something like that. Maybe a parody. I mean, so that argument.
Maybe, but maybe it's, I think, so this is, you know, he so Marley shows up, right? And he hears, and there's all sorts of weird epistemological questions. So he hears these chains and Scrooge says, oh, how does Marley look to talk about these covered in chains? His jaw is falling off and held up by bandage, right?
And what are on those drains, parent? They're all like. Chains are contracts in money boxes, right? Yeah.
And it's a sign that the things that he joined himself to in this world have become the things he has to carry in the next, right? So yeah, I think it's, so that's a very telling fragment there. But on the epistemological question, right, he talks about the body being affected. We hear that Scrooge has a cold, right?
So body can lead to projections. A number of the things that he sees of the, you know, these phantoms are things that he's heard. Are these true rumors or is this a projection? So this is interesting sort of question.
I think Dickens is really pushing you to question, are these ghosts real? Are these ghosts real? And this epistemological question really comes to the surface when he talks to the ghost and he says, yeah, right? You could be just an undercooked potato.
I don't believe. And he gives this argument and Marley ends up winning, not doing anything he says, right? So Scrooge says, well, return Scrooge. I have but to swallow this, this toothpick that he's holding up and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation.
Humbug, I tell you, Humbug, at this, the spirit raised a frightful cry and shook its chains with such a dismal and appalling noise that Scrooge held on tight to his chair to save himself from falling in a swoon. And from there, he concludes, I do believe, right? I do believe. Right.
So it's not an argument that convinces him of the spirit's reality, but the fear. And I think that suffices to show that so long as you have this concern with death, even if you're concerned with death as a miser, right, to take that fear seriously, the fear of suffering means the thing, not just about this world, but the next to things that have been said. So it's not to undermine the reality of the spirit so much as to show that Dickens is saying, look, whether you believe or not, this is a real concern you and I all have. And whether you say you believe or not, you might actually believe, right, if you can have this dread, you know, there's more of gravy than of grave about you, Alex.
Look, this is one of the ways we've been having over text message all week, right? To what extent these, the story is meant as a sort of literal ghost story in the ghost or haunting him, or is he having some kind of experience that can be explained simply on the basis of bodily things? So we know that as a cold, Alex said, we even mentioned the possibility that he's had some bad food. And as I mentioned in our conversations, after work, when he leaves work and goes home, he stops by the tavern.
Now a tavern, of course, was a place where one would eat and it says he took his regular meal, but a tavern, of course, was also a place where one might drink. I took there to be a few hints that Scrooge might actually be a little sussed up for it. So it's just got to find that. I don't buy that.
Where are the other few hints? He says that he stayed at the tavern reading his newspapers. It seems like the one thing he does. So go to a tavern, read his newspapers, and then he retired home.
He didn't stumble up this day. I didn't see any other context clues that indicated. Waking up on a sweat, there are a few other small things. You're right.
I took it to be possible that Dickens was implying that it might be food poisoning. It's a minor way. He does say before Marley shows up that he has a head cold. He has a head cold.
So all of these bodily factors. Also, the book, Greg, you pointed this out. That's my point. What else?
Well, you pointed this out, so correct to you. It ends with him saying the spirits stayed away and the narrator makes a lot of cunning jokes. It could just be a joke. It says he lived by the total abstinence principle, staying away from spirits.
So it's a joke saying, oh, he's abstaining from ghosts. But it's a joke that relies on the comparison of these visions to getting boozy. One other thing, by the way, I'm wrong, which is fine. I'd like to reserve the story as much as possible.
It's clear that his being spooked earlier by non-spiritual beings, by the actual beings, plays a role here. So the spark, it would be strange coincidence if the ghost come and haunt him on the same night that he already has been spooked earlier that night, earlier that day, excuse me. So my argument would be that him being spooked earlier in the day perhaps made him more credulous about chance things or even missing things. Have you guys ever been an old household in 1938?
I mean, it sounds like it does all kinds of weird things. So I think the fear might also have put him in a place to make him more receptive to seeing visions or hearing things before. Maybe you're mistaken of your old bones for creaking in your house. So what has happened is it seems like his nephew visits him, as do these people asking for money.
And Scrooge is kind of pressed to confess the extent of his lack of charity. Now, as nephew says, I'm going to keep visiting him. But it seems like this might be the first time he's visited him in a while. He's reminded of Marley, and he's forced to just say, I give nothing to anybody.
You can go to the poor house or die. He's forced to state his principles overtly a little bit. And so I do think this shakes him. And he gets his thought about what actually is he doing with his life?
What is he doing as he heads towards the grave? And he's an old man that seems like now, right? His nephew is grown and married. His business partner has passed away.
If we assume they're around the same age, his partner is not far behind him. It's been seven years since then, even. Another thing when he's talking to Marley's ghost, this is on the profit versus the good line. Scrooge says to Marley, you're always a good man of business, Jacob.
And then Marley replies, business, mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy forbearance and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.
We're calling an earlier discussion where Scrooge says, my business keeps me continually operated. It's not my business or happens to others. So this is something that happens to me. I'm probably touched on this as we go that the ghost bring up things that just happened tonight before.
And so whatever is going on, however, spiritual, however psychological, however, gastrointestinal time, actually earlier in the day. Yeah, earlier in the day before, sorry, whatever the causes might be at the end of the day, there's a kind of psychological part here, whether the psychology is a basis in reality, you know, one can debate, but it seems clear that what Dickens is saying, you have to take these passions seriously, this long and seriously. Yeah. Go into the first ghost.
Yeah, let's go on to the second one. Yeah. Sorry. Second, Steve, the first ghost.
So Marley in the way is the first ghost. Marley is the first ghost, but he's, how does Dickens? Yeah, he's like a market between. Yeah, he's like the prelude.
He's that he announces what's to come. What's funny, which is once we get to wrong to, yeah, he does get wrong. One small point to what I'll just say, but that's a Socrates's definition of justice in the Republic is insufficient, apparently. Right.
Justice is doing the things of yourself and doing your own business. There's also another very socratic moment. Yeah, I thought I did. Right.
Where he says, I think he's a rants. No, there's a point where he's confesses, I didn't know that I didn't know. Where is that? Right.
That's the fifth. Maybe I'm just remembering, but. Well, let's go on to the state number two. Yeah.
How about the ghost of Christmas Pass? This is kind of a glimpse right at his backstory. What do we make of his backstory? What's happened to him?
It's so we don't know the ultimate origins of his back story. The ghost of Christmas Pass we should discuss his wackadoo appearance. But wackadoo? Yeah.
Greg, I'm using a word which you should be very familiar since it was first coined in the 18th century. But we only go so far back into his past. The first vision, Scrooge has, or sorry, yeah, I guess it is a vision. The first place this ghost takes Scrooge to is his child is when he's a young boy in school.
Young boy at school. The first we don't know anything about his parents, right? We infer a couple of things. I infer, so the first two past Christmases they visit are both young Scrooge at school.
The first is young Scrooge at school by himself. And the second one, he's still young boy and his sister comes back and gets him and says it's okay to come home now. And she says something along the lines of dad isn't as bad as it used to be. So I infer that the far, I infer this is an inference that I, it's not super grounded.
I mean, it's grounded in the text. It's just not luck solid that the father was abusive. There's no mention of the mother. And so we can infer that he's had a really horrible childhood.
And I would go farther and say that he was an unloved child, it seems to me. That's the only love in his childhood. And it's a little love. And maybe even abused.
Yeah. That's right. That's I inferred that there was abuse maybe. And the one is where's the where's the mom?
Right? Where's no mention made her? Yeah. In the 1951 film version, I watched yesterday with in-laws, it suggested that both his mom and his sister died during childbirth.
And the reason the father hates him is that, well, he killed his wife, right? And that's why he's particularly cruel to Ebenezer and not to fan, right? To one child and not the other. I see the younger sister.
Is it clear that she's younger? Yeah. Okay. I mean, the movie, I think it was probably just having fun.
Yeah. But I mean, there's a suggestion of some tension and the mother's dead. It's hard to really explain why he's basically left in his school in Christmas every year until the year that he leaves the school. And then finally, he's let off a bit, right?
And the teacher, the headmaster is headmaster on kind to him. The headmaster is weird. The headmaster enjoys a scruching assistant to take good drink. They're young kids.
But at all events, other children, this is what I other children, one of his scenes is that the rest of the little kids, which this transposed screw just delighted to see this vision. This is the first of these profound movements in his soul, like the stirring of his soul or reawakening. And he goes, oh, there's my old buddy, Alex and Greg, how happy they are writing by. And then he goes, no, don't show me anymore of this because the ghost leads him to the school room.
And there's screw treating a book, but he's all alone as the rest of the kids play outside. And maybe he's just so emotionally damaged from his father's abuse that he could just never make any connections. This is, I mean, for me, I think Alex raised this question on the wrong show. But when you watch the movie, and as a young kid, I know the story since before I can remember.
So you just sort of view a screw just sort of a ruthless evil man and you have, I had no pity or sympathy for him. This part of seems seems to be trying to stir your pity for him, like to try to explain to you why this seems to be setting the stage, why screws is such a miserly solitary old man and seems to be rooted in his childhood. Yeah, some of the details that I got, maybe this could use a little tweak in all this stuff about his father's relationship. When he's a clerk, right, he's shown good deeds by Fezziwig, the his employer at the time, but he seems to he sleeps in the back underneath his desk or something like that.
I think the other clerk does do something. This was common, but he seems to be really on his own, right, really just trying to make it for himself. His sister at some point dies, we don't know when, so we have to assume that he's pretty much alone and first defend for himself. And then, you know, he somehow, and we don't really get enough to really pin it, he somehow is turned towards this extreme, so that undermines his relationship with his fiance, right?
Right. I suspect I have no evidence for this. I know you guys don't buy this, but I suspected that so we're still in Christmas past. So one of the fourth past Christmas is when his fiance bell breaks up with him and she's wearing a morning dress there.
And so I inferred, this is just conjecture that partly what was going on, because she says in that speech, your nature has changed. So in other words, Scrooge wasn't always miserly and focused on gain, at least if her to believe Bell's account, something in him changed. And I do wonder if it's the death of his sister, like everyone that's close to him has died, something like that. I don't know.
I think that's fair. I mean, the morning dress thing is the only thing that makes me pause a little bit about that is that she talks about grieving and the narrator is prone to similarly in exaggeration. For instance, we had a pot of topper, toppers chasing around the plump sister. Chica Chiang Chiang.
Wait, she's around the plump sister. There's a lot of people. She's described in the text. Yes.
Yeah, don't add us. So unless you are a plump sister, I think David would prefer to be added in that situation. But he's he's chasing the sister around and he actually gets in front, but it's very playful. He's getting involved in the playfulness of it.
And it's all very, oh, how dare he do this. But it's obviously there being so you never know whether the morning dresses and exaggeration. But I do think there's a there's an element of truth here, these slight details that suggest there's suffering. I mean, at the very least, you have to say that if he's just if somebody didn't die that day, he at least loses his fiance on Christmas, right?
He spent Christmases alone, right? His only time celebrating was with his employer. Lucky for him, right? And he, you know, his father was cool his whole life.
There seems to have been a death or at least the loss of his fiance. And he's made one mistake or one suffering after another up to this point. So you're right. I gained a little bit of sympathy simply for him.
I mean, this is I would not have positive associations with with Christmas, right? Because it also sounds like his father's dead because if there is a reconciliation, if he does come home with his sister, and let's say that he is reconciled with his father so that gladness does fill his heart. There's no indication his father. I mean, we don't know how his father.
Right. There's no indication. So this again, it's just conjecture, but it's not wholly impossible that he was orphaned fairly, at a somewhat young age. So that his sister's gone, his dad is gone.
And and as Alex said at the start of this episode, the world that Dickens sets up is not nasty, British and short, but it's a hard city life. And the charity houses are a big thing. He learned later on in the text when during the gross and Christmas future, Scrooge is taken to a very, very rough part of town. And he's allowed to listen in on a conversation with three thieves who turned out have stolen everything from his house upon his very death.
And so like this is the kind of desperation people have. I don't think it's a different miser's house. Is it his house? I think it is.
I think he dies and he just starts stealing from him. It says that they have the big currents and then we wakes up on my big currents are still here. So I think he's afraid that it's him. But I think because anyway, that's a small point.
There are these three risers that die and it was unclear in the text. Yeah. So one thing I'll point out is when he's talking to Bell as they're breaking up or she's a display. Yeah.
He says, right, he says, oh, this is an idol has this place. And he goes, this is the even handed dealing of the world. There is nothing on which it is so hard is poverty. There's nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth.
So you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, right? You're blamed for succeeding. And yet you have to be ruthless to succeed. And she says, you fear the world too much, right?
All your no-blasts versus dropped off is just gained. And he says, well, then I'm wiser. So he's got a conception of wisdom based on the way the world actually operates to escape poverty. You need to be stingy, right?
And there's nothing on it which is so hard as poverty. So I think if you grew up in poverty, I think you can understand even again, even more sympathy for him, right? And he's a grandparent who grew up in during the Depression and like some of them that would just hoard peanut butter or crackers and stuff like this. And it's like, well, it's hard to blame them if they grew up in such hard poverty.
But I mean, in a lecture point out. Yeah. And it's the fear of the world, I think is also important, right? What really drives Scrooge before and after his conversion, I think in a common passion is this fear, fear of loss, right?
Fear of suffering, right? And I think that ultimately if he's going to be persuaded away from his stinginess, he needs to realize that he should be afraid of wealth as well. And I think he's afraid of the, you know, his own success by the end of it. Should we move on to the next ghost?
One thing I'll say about his transformation here is he expresses a brief regret about not giving to the people who asked for all of us for the porn. He's convinced that I shouldn't have done that by the end of the first one. I think that's important because he has sort of regrets about society, then he has regrets towards his nephew and then value regrets about his way of life. So it builds slowly, I think, as we go forward.
Isn't the other small indication that he also feels like maybe he should have been a little kinder to his clerk in this day, or am I mistaken? I thought he did, right? Because Fuzzy wait for us to party and he's like, oh, yeah, it didn't really cost him that much. The, yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. So let's transition to the next stage.
But before we do, how let's tell us how these transitions are handled by Dickens. Alex? Yes. Because before each transition, before the moment, the intervening period between ghosts, you always get a sentence or two or three.
It says, well, he woke up in cold sweat and he's like, what time is it? And then another ghost shows up. Yeah. He's in and out of a days.
And this is, I think, one of the peculiar features of the plot is that it seems like it's taking place over three successive nights. And then it turns out it's not. And he says, oh, the spirits can do anything. Yeah, they're all powerful.
So they can roll back time in this way. But it's also clear that the passing of time is very murky for Scrooge. He's exhausted, right? He's, you know, waking up to a spirit and then it immediately falls asleep after Marley and then after the ghost of Christmas passed.
And then the second, the last two spirits present in future, they kind of follow on the heels of one another. So yeah, there's definitely a- We've all woken up like that before though, right? Like you wake up and you thought you think you've been asleep for several nights and gone back to sleep in different days and stuff like that. So you had these weird dreams.
Yeah. Yeah. And you can dream that you're dreaming too. I think that's what's so weird and dreaming.
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So what happens in the second one, Greg, why don't you take it up so it's texting?
Oh, my little brother's just arrived. Sorry. Hey, the tiny Tim. No, we got rid of him.
I need you. Okay. So the third stage, which is the second ghost, the ghost of Christmas present, the ghost of Christmas present takes around and shows him five different people enjoying Christmas, five different sets of people enjoying Christmas. And then there's a list of many more.
By the way, there were five in Christmas past two, all of which were Scrooge's memories with the exception of the final one, which was an image of Belle with her husband, the Manchin married instead of Scrooge. That one therefore strikes me as sort of interesting. It's the only one that the spirits would have had access that Scrooge himself would not have had access to unless he was imagining it in some way. But in Christmas present, first we see Scrooge go to a Christmas market and see people sort of enjoying everything, sort of buying goods and mostly food.
He goes to Bob Cratchisauce and sees how poorly fed they are, how poorly clothed they are, but how nevertheless Bob praises him. And I think that also touches his heart. This is the longest scene in the third stage, where it's where it didn't briefly. I think only a paragraph or two each, he visits a miner's cottage in the lighthouse to see people celebrating Christmas.
And then the last one is he visits his nephew, Fred's, where he sees Fred and Fred's wife and friends, excuse me, all having a fancy time, having a feast, but then also dancing. I guess just a small point. And Bob Cratchisauce, they're eating, but in every other example, there's songs or dance, which also goes back to the Christmas past as Fezziwigs. There was the dance.
There's this strange singing and dancing theme that sort of permeates through many of these examples or ghostly examples. What do you want to say? I guess the interesting thing about Christmas present, it seems to me the main point. I mean, all of the examples with the exception of his nephew seem to be people who are in dire straits that are nevertheless enjoying Christmas.
They're all, I mean, it's these two guys in the lighthouse, right? They only have a little cup of grog and they've got horny hands. But yet somehow they decide they'll sing a little Christmas carol together and celebrate. It must have been the plum sister.
So one thing I'll say about the miners and the people in the lighthouse, this thing about this, they're both, he says that the miners live in the bowels of the earth yet they still, right? So they're both kind of enclosed by sort of harsh nature, right? The ocean and then just, you know, in caves surrounded by the earth. So it seems like there's symbols of man rejoicing, as you said, despite being alone and isolated in the world.
And maybe they're kind of synecdoche for human existence as a whole, that it's very easy to be in the city and be about people and do your business versus other business. But the common business of man is one of suffering, right? And it's sort of harsh and unforgiving. And the implication, Alex, correct me wrong, here seem to be that the only, maybe this is the, maybe this is the central example, I'm not sure.
But is Dickens trying to tell us that the only, the only, maybe two par, one of the best constellations for human beings amidst misery is one another and coming together and celebrate these things. So I suspect that that's, it's not just his miserliness, but his, so maybe this is an interesting question. I just thought about this. If the second stage, the first ghost Christmas pass was meant to show him that being miserly was problematic, maybe this one is meant to show his solatariness is problematic, like that, just because your poor doesn't mean you ought to be solitary or something like this.
I'm not sure. And so an interesting, these, They go to almshouses and hospitals and jails at the end of this, the state as well. So anyway, yeah. Yeah.