There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” Scrooge to the Ghost of Jacob Marley: “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. Narrator: “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.” Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself always.’’ Scrooge: “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. Narrator: “Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!” Here are a few memorable quotes from the tale, in the hope of inspiring you to become reacquainted with it this year. This heartwarming story of repentance, redemption, and the transformative power of love and charity is especially poignant during the season of goodwill to all. “A Christmas Carol,’’ written by Charles Dickens in 1843, has become synonymous with the holiday season, and with good reason.
Merry christmas one and all free#
Go and do likewise!ĭavid Robertson is Associate Director of Solas CPC in Dundee and minister at St Peter's Free Church. I can still look forward to Hogmanay and New Year but now I'm off to enjoy my Calvinist Christmas – to celebrate the God who gives us all things richly that we may enjoy them, and above all to marvel at the One who is. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate Deity, Pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel. I believe that our forefathers got it wrong and that Christmas is a wonderful time of year to remember the birth of Christ and to consider the light that has come into the darkness. In more recent years, though, I have come to appreciate not just the evangelistic opportunities Christmas provides, but also the refocus in my own heart on the sheer wonder of the Incarnation. It's only in the past few years that my church has had a Christmas Day service and it's very much considered an optional extra.
To leave Christ out of such a Christmas is not a bad idea – but perhaps we need to change Christmas by bringing Christ forward as the central focus of the festive season. To have the birth of Christ associated with such excess, greed and materialism does border on the blasphemous.
Sometimes when I see the exploitativeness and farce of much of today's Christmas celebrations I am tempted to think that our forefathers had a point. Christmas is primarily seen as a time of being with family, giving gifts and feasting, and there's nothing wrong with that. The paradox is that we did celebrate Christmas, but more as a secular holiday than a Christian one. He clearly had never been here on Hogmanay! I remember as a child thinking that New Year was far more important and exciting. The late Christopher Hitchens argued that the Scots banned Christmas because Scots Presbyterians were so against partying and drinking. The situation is not quite as black and white as we like to assume. Of course it is easy to mock from a safe distance. In 1658 another satirical pamphlet gave the old man a name – Father Christmas! A satirical pamphlet was published in 1652 which showed Christmas as an old man with a long beard. This ban, by the way, led to the development of a character now considered essential to the days celebrations.
In 1644 Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans banned it in England as well, ordering that its 'carnal and sensual delights' (I think they meant Brussels sprouts) be stopped. Although the ban was lifted it was not until 1958 that it actually became a public holiday. It was the Scottish Reformers who banned it as a Popish festival in 1560. There was a time when Christmas was either banned or hardly celebrated in Scotland. Why? Because they don't believe it is a Christian festival and they celebrate their freedom not to celebrate something that God does not require them to. UnsplashĪnd there are a small number of Christians who will not be celebrating today as a matter of principle. Father Christmas was invented in the 17th century. If you are in a Christian school in India you were warned last week by extremist Hindu nationalists that you celebrate Christmas at your peril. If you are a Jehovah's Witness then today is just a normal Monday. Now get off your computer or phone and go and do something less boring instead, like eating turkey, watching the Queens speech or washing those dishes.Ĭhristmas is not universally celebrated. If you are reading this on Christmas Day, Happy Christmas.
0 kommentar(er)
