EVEN THOUGH it was less than two weeks ago, the onslaught of final papers, exams and the like have made the Thanksgiving holiday feel like an ancient memory for most of us. I, however, can still remember it clearly because on this Thanksgiving I was in New York, in Manhattan, and on the street during the famous Macy's Parade. What this means is that I was one of the freezing people you were watching on TV while you laughed on your nice warm couch with your hot chocolate and a better view of the actual parade than I ever got.
But that is not the point. The point is that I got to see Santa Claus in person -- okay, so I did not even get a great view of Santa, but my little sister who was on my shoulders did, and that is the important thing.
In my mind that is the best part about Thanksgiving: As soon as it's over, the Christmas season begins. While the commercialization effects are overwhelmingly nauseous for the most part, the general holiday spirit is a great one and I must admit that I am a sap for most of the Christmas culture. The traditional carols and stories everywhere serve as memories to bring back a sense of the childhood wonderment at the pure joy of this season which is truly, to quote the song, "The most wonderful time of the year."
Of all the Christmas stories and songs which have been passed down throughout the years, there is one that stands out to me as being the best of the best. Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" captures the spirit of Christmas and the sense of universal brotherhood better than any other I have read, and each year I go back to it seeking that same feeling.
Dickens himself was truly in love with his work. He blessed the story and his characters with an enormous amount of vivacity and wit, truly bringing each character to life. John Forster wrote about Dickens' state while writing this work: "I can testify to the accuracy of his own account of what befell him in its composition, with what a strange mastery it seized for itself, how he wept over it, and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself to an extraordinary degree, and how he walked, thinking of it, fifteen and twenty miles, about the black streets of London, many and many a night after all the sober folk had gone to bed." As a testament to the beauty of Christmas, "A Christmas Carol" has few equals, and it certainly bears re-reading -- or re-watching -- from us all.
While it is not scientifically provable, one can get a general sense of a change in the social mood during the weeks surrounding Christmas. People tend to smile more easily and are friendlier to those who they encounter. Though this may not be the case in your local shopping mall's parking lot, the overall spirit certainly is there.
That is important to remember, especially for those of us in college. This time of year is definitely the easiest to become completely anti-social due to the insane pressure of end of the semester work. We need to get this work done, definitely, but we should not waste the opportunity this season presents us with, to reach out and be friendly to the community as a whole. We should try to embrace the ideal expounded by Scrooge's nephew: "Christmas time is ... 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 really were fellow- passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."
Part of what is so beautiful about Dickens's conception of the Christmas spirit is that it is a universal one: Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Winter Break, the crux of this vision is the idea of universal brotherhood, not of religious division. Dickens uses the phrase "keeping Christmas" at numerous points throughout the story, and that is what the phrase truly means. We keep Christmas well by recognizing the common humanity we share with all other human beings and by striving to respect and love those whom we come into contact with.
Towards the beginning of the story, Scrooge -- after declaring Christmas a humbug -- rebukes his nephew by saying, "Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it mine," to which his nephew replies, "Keep it! But you don't keep it." To watch the transformation which takes place in the heart of Scrooge and to read the effusively animated prose with which Dickens describes him at the end of the novel is truly a joy. It reminds us of the importance of this time of year, as well of the importance of keeping that spirit alive all year. We must resist the temptation to submerge in work and declare these final days a mere humbug. Dickens writes appropriately of Scrooge in the final pages, "and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!" Indeed.
(Luke Godwin is a Cavalier Daily columnist.)
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