A few nights ago, I woke up around one in the morning and could not go back to sleep.
I stared owl-eyed into the darkness for quite some time; and then I gave up and turned on the light and picked up the book that was on the floor by the bed.
The book was Dickens’ A Christmas Carol; and I was at that point in the tale when the third ghost—all dark robes and ominous finger-pointing—had arrived.
I tell you what: it makes for harrowing reading at two in the morning.
I could feel my chest tighten with despair and dread.
But then, oh wonder, the ghost departs and Scrooge awakens on Christmas day changed—irrevocably, impossibly changed.
“He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness.”
I stopped on that passage. I read it a second time and then a third time, and then, comforted, I finally fell asleep.
Happy New Year.

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