I’ve gotten into the habit over the last few years of re-reading Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol during the holidays.
I read it because it makes me laugh and because it moves me and because it teaches me about the human heart.
I’ve got several different copies of the book, but the one I keep returning to features illustrations by P.J. Lynch.
Lynch’s depiction of Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present walking down a glum and snowy London street is wondrous, and makes me think of words from another novel I love: Charles Frazer’s Cold Mountain
There is a character in Cold Mountain who offers himself “as proof positive that no matter what a waste one has made of one’s life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.”
And it is true because . . . just look! There is Scrooge, the most miserable and lonesome of human beings and he is walking beside the Ghost of Christmas Present. He is on the path to changing his life.
This is what stories tell us: it might happen, it can happen, it does happen.
We can change.
Happy New Year.

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