A Christmas Carol

We finished reading a Christmas Carol today.  I cried and the kids made fun of me, but what a powerful message it has.  I think I have two favorite quotes from it and would like to write them down to reflect on and remind myself of the true meaning of Christmas.

The first is said by Scrooge's Nephew Fred.  He wishes Scrooge a Merry Christmas and Scrooge says,
"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.  He should!"
"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew.  "But you don't keep it."
"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you!  Much good it has ever done you!"
(this is the part that gives me chills)
"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew: "Christmas among the rest.  But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round - apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart form that - as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: 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.  And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

The second quote is one that Scrooge says when he has repented of all his ill doing and he is pleading with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come to let him know if he can change the things he has just seen.  He makes an oath that moved me so deeply that I was surprised.

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  I will live in the Past, Present, and the Future.  The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.  I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.  Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

and to close as Dickens did:
"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!"