THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT

I’m glum. Yeah, I know. Shouldn’t be gloomy at Christmas. And yeah, I know, no-one wants to hear from a humbug, let alone the dreary wafflings of such a down-beat Scrooge. Well, you don’t have to read it. But then, maybe I don’t have to write it either.

Speaking of Scrooges and humbugs, he’s just met the Ghost of Christmas Present. I’m continuing to read it, two pages at a time through December. There’s a beautiful piece of writing about how the berries on the greenery suddenly hanging from the walls of Scrooge’s room are catching the firelight. Dickens tells us they looked like a thousand little mirrors, which is lovely. Then there’s the gigantic spirit himself, throned on a mountain of turkeys, pies, hams, apples, fruit and flowers, green mantle and cornucopia of plenty in hand.

I’ve always loved that image - a great presence in the room, filling every corner with joy and good cheer. That seems like a pretty good approximation of the feeling of Christmas, if not the reality. I absolutely love it.

Yet here I am, feeling more like the quivering Scrooge in his nightgown and slippers than the embodiment of Christmas Present. Why am I gloomy today? What’s actually going on?

I liked reading about the Ghost of Christmas Past. You could see Ebenezer’s backstory, understand perhaps how he defaulted to be the eponymous skinflint, alone in the meagre light of his counting house. But his coldness to his fellow man is probably more the point that Dickens is getting across here - and all of that lies in the contrast between an opulent giant and a wrinkled old miser.

Maybe I’ll pick up as the season goes on. I tell you what though, I reckon that mountain of food is telling a story - I reckon it’s pretty important to eat well.