The Spirit of Christmas

I am reading Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” for the umpteenth time; one of those little traditions of the season I hold to. For some reason, perhaps due to the sheer quantity of bad news I’ve been receiving courtesy of the global village--Somalia, Bosnia, India and all--I began to think how much like poor old Jacob Marley we’ve become. Marley was condemned in death to wander the world and witness human pain and sorrows. There but a specter, Marley could only wail in torment at his helplessness to ease the slightest bit of human suffering. Marley was lucky, though. He didn’t have CNN to worry about.

Like the hapless Marley, we are daily haunted by human suffering in all its varieties through our spirit of the airwaves. Famine, war, pestilence and natural disaster from across the globe are portrayed to us in shocking detail on our televisions. We, unlike Marley in his eternity of grief, can only withstand so much guilt and frustration before the walls of self-defense go up.

Maybe we need to remember exactly what old Ebenezer learned at the hands of his spirits. His redemption was a personal, not global, one.

Global welfare programs are good and necessary, but they in no way alleviate us of the responsibility to keep happiness and hope alive in our own piece of the world. That may be the most difficult thing to face. While the suffering a continent away may truly be beyond your or my ability to solve, the problems across the street are not. If we realize we do have the opportunity to act locally as much as globally, then, perhaps, the sentiment of the littlest Crachit may become a reality, and God will, all year through, bless us everyone.

CARL J. LUNA

San Diego