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?
It's fine brother. It's 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 e-doll fixer since you're our Muslim brother. And this is a, we're a tolerant tribe here at the New Thinkery and all faiths are welcome. I'll create Alex. Doing well.
I mean, I did do better if, you know, you infidels weren't doing good. It feels pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I 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 listen to this. 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 the season of giving, right?
Just one of the one that I have. Just, you know, I'm saying, if you want to donate, right? Now, wait, I see this going. I see this going.
There's two options. I don't, you don't donate. And then you listen to what this, the story of Christmas Carol is about. And you realize that you're, you're just a modern day scrooge, a scrooge, or you give now.
And you'll, you'll find a story that follows a good information. Listen, listen, you're charitable giving. Yeah. David is going to haunt you if you don't donate.
And you don't, you don't want that. Real nasty. Like, what do you know he wants that? He needs cheeses for our mises.
I'm calling in from Kentucky. So I won't be able to help you out with grandpa's cheese barn, David. Oh, Greg. The salt lick.
And that's right. If you have listeners, but only see the suitcase you packed, find your return to Kentucky. It's feels a lot of contraband, a lot of cheese and 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 Christmas Carol. And I will say from the outset, having only learned of Christmas Carol through the Muppet Christmas movie, which is excellent. Such a good movie. Yeah.
And that's where the cheese is 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 promised $10 every time we mentioned that long. 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. That is a great movie, by the way.
One small point on that by the way, if you watch that movie, one of my, it's a great movie. It's a very very family-friendly. It's true to the spear 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're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, come on.
And then we rewound it, sure enough. The two portly 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 and he's sort of upset and beaker goes, oh, no, no, no, no, no. He doesn't talk.
And then beaker flips Scrooge off. He gives him the bird and goes, me, me, me. And then they go out. Like just his plane his day in this otherwise child-friendly movie.
I find it very hilarious. I know it's fingers. Yeah, if he has like four fingers, there's no middle finger. Fair enough.
Good point. I think 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 the apparitions appear to old Ebenezer Scrooge, who's a real humbug. But when you start reading Dickens, you have to read this story. You can't just watch like the Tinseltown version. You have to read it because it's wonderful and it hits a lot harder and there are a lot of kind 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're picked up because I just 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. It's trying to figure out- I'm having a lot of fun 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, W.
Yeah, sure. It's not a spirit of Christmas. I'm just reading it to myself, to be honest. Well, Scrooge doesn't have kids, right?
He dies without silver at 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. 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. It's much deeper than the movies or its ubiquity would sort of apply.
One of the things that David and Alex 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 much, it's sort of harmed by its popularity. It seems to me it does not. People don't appreciate how good it will be.
It actually, I was reading in my design, the Penguin edition. I was just looking at the introduction of it. And apparently it's sold out immediately. And it's never been out of print since 1843 when it was originally published.
That's pretty impressive. I remember that. Yeah. 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 by this idea of charity and having a roast and gather 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'm not sure how accurate 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 bah humbug, you know, he's also a duck, apparently, and he and he's visited his old partner.
Yes, he's Scottish, Marley. And then on three successive nights, apparently, you know, he's visited by 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 or just all the very interesting details that you can't necessarily put into a film version. And Alex or Greg, how long is this novel? Just so listeners?
I mean, 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 to what I was going for walks. I was listening to an audio book version. There's a free audio book version on Audible read by Tim Curran is 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. Is that a pond based on the book digestible? It comes up as one of the anyway, you know, I think that comes up as a minor theme. That's right.
Yeah. And Justin. So Alex, why don't um, can 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. No, it's, I mean, it could be a rat. We don't 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 is 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 somebody who'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 encounters initially. We see him with his clerk, Spock 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, you know, what happens at the Cratchit's, you know, I don't know what's happening. So if he, uh, it's great to live in a one room shack as rather indecent Bob. Yeah, well, you know, I mean, certainly you're the spirit of remarks would be met with approval by Greg, who's the father only to a couple Chihuahuas. But in any case, the, so we 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 changing quality, but it's putting to pros, right? So you can imagine a kind of song being sung about a person going through this, but it's been put into pros.
I think it's meant to kind of bring you up into the spirit of Christmas. But in the first stave, we see a 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. And then that fear is carried through by what's supposed to be three successive nights of spirits visiting him. The first two seem to come on a successive night.
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, and these are ghosts of past, present future shows of old Christmases. It's a very sad moments.
Present Christmas, how his relations are celebrating the day and some others. And then 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 just 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.
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 catch 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 know why that's a turn of 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 is dead. Marley's death is pronounced at the beginning. I think hammering one of the key themes of this book that death is the 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 it's that Scrooge hasn't really thought much about Marley these last few years, but definitely we were seven years.
And quickly, we learned it's actually seven years since he's thought of them because it's the seven year anniversary of Marley's death. So here it is, Christmassy, and Marley and Marley died seven years ago. We learned something I didn't notice on 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.
And in a weird part of town, Dickens, and this is why you have to read the novella Greg, I apologize, I don't mean to go no jump in when you feel 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 of phrase and for a guy to 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 as 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, his when his nephew comes and speaks to him, his nephew, which is his nephew from his sister, his nephew's name is Fred and his sister's his dead sister, by the way, her name is Fran is that right? Or fan fan fan, excuse me. 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 in his life. So there are just a number of things that are 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 daughter, Pharaoh's daughter 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 just 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 stave 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 up going. 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 realize is we go through 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, 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 he'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. miserlyness 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 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 bah humbug, right?
He doesn't celebrate Christmas because he's the virtues that Christmas, at least as we learn, celebrate, he wants nothing to do with these things. They're sort of bah humbug means like more of 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 it kind of what it means? He's dog face pony boy. Yeah, it's gonna get to us by it. It's a great there's one more thing I want to talk about.
Humbug is just basically BS. I was trying to family show here. I was trying to avoid saying BS. Well, you know, 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 for my life. 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 that goes up.
It's there. That's funny. 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 as 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 his nephew says to to Scrooge when he comes to invite him over for dinner on Christmas. Fred says, Scrooge is asked him 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 do it to a sacred name in origin. If anything belonging to it can be apart from it 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 hearts 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 just 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 examples from World War I and other words where people just took a moment and shut up and sort of thought to themselves were all fellow passengers to the grave. They made this 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 other.
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 put some of us are a little closer to the locomotive. Well, it's true. This is true.
I wish I didn't buy a ticket on that train. So another point here that I think just really does he says there are many, 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 is just repeats throughout. I'll just a couple of pages later, the narrator says, talking about all the windows full of food, he says, pultures and grosser strains became a splendid joke, a glorious pageant with which it was next impossible to believe that such a dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do, right? 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 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 engage 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 talkal attempt to persuade Scrooge that the profitable is not the good, or I would go so far as to say that charitable 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 as of concerned with his own well-being in the future. Well, you're only concerned with the well-being of 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 a little bit?
So the only way, yeah, the question raised there is fantastic. The only way to make, not seem to be right, the good is the profitable if there are not, that's what 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 for Christianity, but it seems to be what he's put forward. And in the ghost of Marley, do you want to talk about that Alex? I mean, but just one more detail on that just so we have looking ahead.
The last day of the fourth day 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, if he just makes it to 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 is the role of 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? I mean, they don't seem like a sort of parody of Cartesian sort of thinking or something like that briefly. Maybe a parody? I mean, so that argument.
Maybe it's a I think, so this is, so Marley shows up. And there's all sorts of weird epistemological questions. So he hears these chains and Scrooge says, oh, how does Marley look? Did Marley cover it in chains?
His jaw is falling off and held up by bandage, right? And what are on those drains, parent? They're all like, our contracts in money boxes, right? 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 through anything he says, right? So Scrooge says, well, return to 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 to 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 to think not just about this world but the next, to the 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 could have this dread, you know, there's more of gravy than of grave about you, Alex.
Look, this is one of the bases we've been having over text messages 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 said 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, 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 this is just got to find out by that.
And where are the other few hints? He says that he's he's stayed up the tavern reading his newspapers. It seems like the one thing he does, he'll 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. That took it to be possible that that Dickens was implying that it might be food poisoning against some minor way, right?
He does say he does say before Marley shows up yet that he has a head cold. Yeah, he has a head cold. So all of these bodily factors. But also the end book, Greg, you pointed this out, right?
Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. That's my point. What else?
Well, you pointed this out so correct to you. But it ends with him saying the spirit stayed away, and the narrator who makes a lot of cunning jokes, or it could just be a joke, says, oh, 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 sort of getting boozy.
One other thing, by the way, I'll say is he goes even if I'm wrong, which 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, I mean, it would be strange coincidence if the ghosts come and haunt him on the same night that he already has been spooked earlier that night, earlier that day, excuse me.
And so my argument would be that him being spooked earlier in the day, perhaps made him more credulous about sort of chance things or even miss seeing things. Have you guys ever been in an island of old houses until 1938? I mean, the sounds that it does all kinds of weird things. And 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. But so we should say, so what has happened is it seems like his nephew visits him, right? As these people ask for money. And Scrooge is kind of pressed to be to sort of confess the extent of his lack of charity, right?
Now his nephew says I'm going to keep visiting him, but it seems like this might be the first time he's visited 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, right? 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 he's doing with his life. What is he doing as he heads towards the grave? And he's an old man, it 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, right? His partner is not far behind him. It's been seven years since that even.
Another thing when he's talking to Marley's ghost, this is not the profit versus the good line. Scrooge says to Marley, you were always a good man of business, Jacob. And then Marley replies, business. Mankind was my business.
The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy for parents 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. What 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 testing, not something like before, actually, or earlier in the day. Yeah, early in the day, the day before, sorry, whatever the causes might be, at the end of the day, there's a kind of psychological part here, whether this 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. We go into the first ghost. Let's go on to the second one.
Second, sorry. Second, Steve, the first ghost. So Marley in a way is the first ghost. Marley is the first ghost, but he's, how does Dickens, he's like a parrot.
Yeah, he's like the prelude. He's like, he announces what's to come. What's funny, which is once more gets it wrong to, yeah, he does get wrong. One small point to what I said, but that's Socrates's definition of justice in the Republic is insufficient, apparently, doing the justice is doing the things of yourself and he is doing your own business.
There's also another very socratic moment. Yeah, I thought so too. Right, where he says, anti-jurans. No, there's a point where he eats, confesses, I didn't know that I didn't know.
Where is that? Right. So remember that? It's in the fifth, Steve, maybe I'm just remembering, but.
Well, let's move on to the state number two. Yeah, so talk 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? So we don't know the ultimate origins of his backstory. So the ghost of Christmas, what the ghost of Christmas Pass we should discuss is what could do appearance, but what could do? Yeah, I'm using a word which you should be very familiar since it was first coined in the 18th century, but I, 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 two don't know anything about his parents, right? We infer a couple of things.
I infer, so the first two past Christmas as 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. It's not 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 seems right. Love in his childhood. And maybe even abused.
Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's I inferred that there was abuse. Maybe.
Where's the mom? Where's the mom? Where's no mention made for? There's 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. She's the younger sister.
Is it clear that she's younger? Yeah. Okay. And 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. So 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 of it, right?
And the teacher, the headmaster is, is the headmaster unkind to him? The headmaster is weird. The headmaster enjoys a Scrooge and his sister to take good shrink and their 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 Scrooge is 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, like how happy they are writing by him. And then he goes, no, don't show me anymore of this because the ghost leads him to the schoolroom. And there's Scrooge reading 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. And so you just sort of view Scrooge as a ruthless evil man.
And you have I had no pity or sympathy for him. This part seems to be trying to stir your pity for him, like to try to explain to you why this seems to be saying the stage, why Scrooge 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 tweakings, 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 to me. 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 violence. So that undermines his relationship with his, it's 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 is when his fiance Bell breaks up with him, and she's wearing a mourning dress there. And so I inferred this is just conjecture that partly what's 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, something at least I've heard to believe Bell's account, something in him changed. And I do wonder if it's the death of his sister, like everything, everyone that's close to him has died, something like that.
I don't know. I think that's fair. I mean, the more interesting, 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, what's her name?
The plump sister? Chik-chang chang chang. Where she's chasing around the plump sister. There's a lot of plumps on the bat.
She's described in the text. Yes. 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 chasing the sister around and he actually gets in a front, but he'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, there being so you never know whether the mourning 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, the very least you have to say that 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 his father was cool his whole life.
There seems to have been a death that 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 indications father. I mean, we don't know how his father is.
There's no indication. So this again is just conjecture, but it's not wholly implausible that he was orphaned fairly at a somewhat young age. So that his sister's gone, his dad is gone. And as Alex said at the start of this episode, the world that Dickens sets up is not a nasty bruges in short, but it's a hard city life.
And the charity houses are a big thing. We learn later on in the text when it's during the Ghost of Christmas Future, Scrooge is taken to a very, very rough part of town. And he's allowed to listen in on the 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's his. I think he's starting to clean up.
Yeah, they start stealing from him. It says that they have the bed currents, and then we wakes up on my bed currents are still here. So I think he's watching. I think he's afraid that it's him.
But I think anyway, that's a small point. He either 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 disciplined.
Beyonce. Yeah, he says, right, she says, oh, this is an idol has displacement. He goes, this is the even handed dealing of the world. There's nothing on which it is so hard is poverty, and 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 noble aspirations have dropped off is just gain.
And he says, well, then I'm wiser, right? 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 the grandferences 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. I mean, in a rupture point, I mean, 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 well as well.
And I think he's afraid of the 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 alms for the poor. 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 finally regrets about his way of life. So it builds slowly, I think, as we go forward. Isn't he else? They're small indication that he also feels like maybe he should have a little kinder who's clerking in this day, or am I mistaken?
I thought he did, right? Because Fuzzy Wakefroze of Bargain, he's like, oh, yeah, I didn't really cost him that much. The conversation with the guys. So let's transition to the next stage.
But before we do, let's tell listeners how these transitions are handled by Dickens. 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 and cold sweat, and he's like, what time is it? And then another ghost shows up.
Yeah, he's in and out of the other 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 past. 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 call woken up like that before though, right? Like you wake up and you thought you think you've been asleep for several nights and come back 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 dream that you're awake. Yeah. So yeah, so what happens in the second one, Greg, why don't you take it up? So state is texting.
Well, my little brother just arrived. Sorry. Hey, the tiny Tim. No, we got rid of him.
I need you again. Okay. So in this, the third stage, which is the second ghost, the ghost of Christmas present, the ghost of Christmas present takes around and shows them 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 Bell with her husband, the Manchin married instead of Scrooge. That one, therefore, strikes me as being 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 goes to a Christmas market and sees people sort of enjoying everything, sort of buying goods and mostly food.
He goes about Cratch's house 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 seat, this is the longest scene in the third stage, where it's where, then 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 family and friends, excuse me, all having a fancy time having a feast, but then also dancing.
I guess just a small point, and Bob Cratch's house, 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 a 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, but who 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 got horny hands, but yet somehow they decide they'll sing a little Christmas carol together and celebrate.
They must have got the plumps this year. So one thing I'll say about the miners and the people in the lighthouse, think about this, they're both, he says that the miners live in the bowels of the earth, yeah, they still, 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? Amidst sort of harsh and unforgiving. And the implication, Alex, correct me wrong, here seem to be that the own, maybe this is the central example, I'm not sure, but is Dickens trying to tell us that the only, the only, maybe, super, 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. If the, I just thought about this, if the second save, the first ghost Christmas pass was meant to show him that being miserly was problematic. Maybe this one is meant to show his solitaryness is problematic, like that, just because your poor doesn't mean you'd ought to be solitary or something like this. I'm not sure.
Yeah. So an interesting, these are all themselves hospitals and jails at the end of this, the state as well. So anyway, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Another way in which it shows up small form, though these, these, so this is really shown, I think really well with the alms houses, the miners, all that sort of stuff, right? There's one people that that's who doesn't know, and so you wonder, well, why is he being shown this? He's shown his nephews, shown Bob Cratchit.
You know, these, those episodes make sense. They're his relations, but those show was, I think, quietly happening, for instance, at the Cratchit's house, they eat the goose, right? They're like, this is the greatest goose. The best, they're so positive, they all have enough to eat, and there's just an atom left.
So they've just barely been able to fill themselves. And then they have this Christmas pudding, which by the way, they talks to great about this Christmas pudding. I looked up a traditional British Christmas pudding. It's disgusting.
Super gross. It's just a bunch of nuts, you know, flower ball. It says it looks like a cannibal. It's really true.
But it says it would have been blasphemy to say that this was not that this was small. So I think there's a subtle suggestion that though they're celebrating, they're happy, there's very low, even when they're drinking the gin cocktail, right? You mentioned earlier, David, it seems like it's a pretty recurring thing, but the kids drink anyway, water was on safe, I suppose, because I didn't. No, I think it's true.
I was thinking I was like, I wish I lived with the cradches, right? More fun. But they, but then he says, oh, the prize collection of glass, right? It's like two cups in a picture for a family.
I mean, so there's a lot of suggestions that though they are celebrating, they're kind of in the city, there's the same sort of neediness, right? And needs to celebrate despite harshness, and they're making more of this goose, more of this pudding, more of the glass, more of everything than it actually is, right? And yet it seems like, you know, things are pretty bad. And another detail, when we see the cradches, Bob is coming back with Tiny Tim from Church.
He says, you know, Tiny Tim seems like the kind of person Jesus might have saved. And it's pretty clear, I think that the father's gone with his, you know, sickly son to church to pray for him, right? To help solve other people who need to go to church, but Tiny Tim does, his father takes him in, and he has a sense of his own suffering. So I think in general, you see Christmas as a time to try to create joy when life is quite difficult, you know, like being a minor in the bowels of the earth or something like that.
Yeah, I think that's right. So there's also, he seems to, I mean, we see this change is sort of gradual in Scrooge. He also changes in this, David, in this night, in Sepharsi, he seems to have affection for his nephew. He seems to be partaking in the games they play.
He wants to join their dancing and their games. And even wants to be a part of the game, he's sort of shouting out answers. Even though he's the butt of one of the jokes, that doesn't even seem to bother him so much. You're jumping in.
It doesn't, it's not that it doesn't bother him. He actually laughs. Yeah, he laughs. He's called a, he's called like a horrible animal, right?
Who roams the city and compared to a bear and he's laughing, which I think that's an interesting, another maybe Socratic element where he's coming to get self knowledge about how he's perceived, right? And how he's understood. And he's so rejoiced in the fact that this is something that he could perhaps partake in, this fellow feeling, that it gives him great distance on his sins. And I think that's a sign of his resolve to change, because by the time the fourth ghost, the ghost of the things that will be helped, then why is the fourth night necessary then if he's already resolved to change?
Because the fourth night scares the bejesus out of me. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, but then he says, I've resolved to change. I mean, trust, but verify.
Go on. But I mean, what does it verify? I mean, it shows him that this is to show that that right that he if he continues down this course, and maybe even if he changes it, nobody will will attend his funeral. And it's quite sad, I think.
He needs to see that this is what the outcome will or might be, maybe to reinforce for him this fear and trouble, right? You know what, this by this episode in the book, I started to reflect that Dickens could have fashioned Scrooge any way he wanted. That is to say, he could have made Scrooge less sympathetic. He could have made him a profoundly evil man who has a total turn of heart.
But instead, I think he imbues Scrooge with feelings that each of us have, but in a muted way, for example time. Like just wanting to be away or being grumpy or being put off by people, not necessarily the miserliness or the wretchedness. But I mean, I think there's a certain amount of, I mean, it makes some sense. But he has to make him common to us, or it can't be such an extreme example, is what I'm trying to say.
Right. But I mean, even just trying to shut off the world to prevent being harmed, I think is a pretty common thing that people do, a pretty common defense mechanism. Yeah, yeah, sorry. No, no, exactly.
And especially in the modern, I mean, we tend to, in the United States, at least where we have, or at least we see visibly, Ohm's houses, we have homes but like that, the church and synagogue and mosques give, it's really easy to think, well, somebody's doing it or we have a welfare state, that is to say our government to care of it. So that's their problem. Yeah, Scrooge's argument is actually why I'm saying, yeah, I think a lot of I pay my taxes back. Or I mean, I remember being upset about this in fourth grade, we were driving in a car and there was a homeless man who looked really sad and I rolled down my window.
I had like a quarter in my pocket, I tried to give it to him. I was in the car, a friend's car, and my friend's father said, don't give it to him. He's just going to spend it on beer. And so like, that kind of stuff early on.
You know, I had a similar experience when I was in graduate school at St. John's, I had a very impoverished friend and he always needed money for beer, but yet still I gave it to him. I remember being on a street corner once, a little boy drove by and I was standing there with my beard and I was standing there and this little boy was trying to give me a quarter but some man made him speed off. Is that really true?
No, he's saying he's the bum from your story. No, no, I really need to shave. Yeah, yeah, it's so bad. Should we move on to the next day?
Yeah, let's see. Are you talking about it? I suppose. Yeah, so it comes in.
He's dead silent. All you. This is the scariest working ghost. Yeah, he's dressed on a black cloak that blurs with the darkness behind him.
And about the only thing you can concretely see is his hand, which is pointing right and guiding him. Sometimes he asks, Scrooge asked the ghost questions and he kind of moves and he can tell by some change in the folds. But it's very mysterious. I think the silence of the ghost, the fact that you can't make out any answer, if he even dains to answer a little bit is really important because it's prophetic, right?
This is the only ghost that's engaged in real prophecy. This is what's going to happen. And yet what Scrooge really wants is freedom, right? Freedom to change his fate and to make better.