SALT LAKE CITY – One of the most beloved stories that touches us around this season is Charles Dickens’ "The Christmas Carol." It tells the story in vivid detail of the transition that takes place in the miserly old Ebenezer Scrooge as he is confronted by his own Christmases of the Past, Present, and Future.
In "Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol,’" Rev. Cheryl Kincaid, an ordained minister with the Presbyterian Church, USA, weaves the story of Scrooge into the New Testament and the 1600 version of the "Book of Common Prayer," with its candles and bells, the one that would be most familiar to old Scrooge.
Kincaid compares the drastic change that takes place in Scrooge to the Christmas change that should take place in all of us as we grow to know the Son of God. Beginning with the lessons of the prophets, Kincaid introduces us to a lonely and bitter Scrooge, who is so busy counting his money that he has no time for the sounds, the songs or the charity going on around him. He has no time for his nephew, who invites him to dinner as he has done on Christmases untold, and he has no time for the memory of his sister, whom he loved as a child. She had the Christmas Spirit all year long until her death.
Ah, death. Scrooge fears that more than anything, and while the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present offer him some sense of salvation, it is the Ghost of the Future, with his own death and Tiny Tim’s wound into it, that Scrooge most pulls away from.
The book would be an all together good one if it weren’t for the mistakes in grammar and spelling that plague it. Time after time, the reader is faced with misspelled words, grammatical errors and words that are run together. It wasn’t long before I found myself sitting with my proofing pen, making notations on the pages.
For example, Kincaid writes of how heartbroken Scrooge is at the sight of Tiny Tim and his suffering. Instead of "sight" Kincaid uses the word "site," a place or location. She explains how, when we "turn our gaze upward toward the spiritual, the material can be seen proper light…" Oh, how that sentence could have used one small word, it would read instead, "… the material can be seen in its proper light…"
This book is missing the processes of proofreading and editing, and many readers would be tempted to quit after just starting the book because there are errors on every page, yet I would encourage readers to take up their proofing pens and struggle on. Kincaid has much to say in this little book, as do Scrooge and his ghosts, Mary and the Baby Jesus, and other characters who work so hard to bring Scrooge and us to our needed transitions and redemption.
"Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol,’" by Rev. Cheryl Anne Kincaid, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, United Kingdom, 2010.
Stay Connected With Us