Dead to Begin with

“Marley was dead, to begin with.” 

― Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"

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Dear Kate,

Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" should be humankind's lectionary for this Christmas.

Or any Christmas.

Above you read possibly the funniest opening line for a novel.  To begin to speak about Christmas, let alone to repeatedly sing praise and share joy about it (as Dicken intended the story to be, a song of redemption to be passed along--and thus the title), we must begin with dying.

It's a sad truth.

Not until we are threatened by what we can no longer control, we hardly want to stop what we've been doing to reconsider life.  Stuffs just come out of our mouths and works our finger tips impulsively.  A necessarily-true structure of life that's been holding water for us is assumed to continue its clasp and clench and clout for another day.

Mostly we don't mean evil.  Which means we try not to hurt others.  And if we can get ourselves to do some measurable and achievable goods for the world then that's above and beyond our usual decency, the sort of thing we expect ourselves to do during Christmas (that too part of the necessary truth in our head).

Have you ever disgusted yourself when pronouncing to the world what you can and will give to save others from their plights, your living speaking to the world's dying?  That aftertaste of the forbidden fruit is meant to be bitter, but we got used to our own arrogance and now calling it an acquired taste.

Christmas is about God's dying speaking to our living.  Easter the consummation but Christmas the beginning of sorrow.  God the Father has a "retirement plan" for His Son Jesus; do we invest in the same bloody future?

"What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."  This is how Scrooge answered when his nephew wished him a Merry Christmas.

"Come then," the nephew replied with joy. "What right have you to be morose? You're rich enough."

Living is born out of dying, joy sorrow.  We have a lot of nothing to give, which is, again, the paradox of Christmas.

Yours, Alex