October 27: Very Dark, Too Dark, New Cartoon

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was.  A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man..

Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come are in a death chamber.  Scrooge's death chamber, to be specific.  Although Scrooge doesn't want to admit it yet, he knows the body on the bed is himself.  It's a terrifying moment in the novel.  Scrooge is faced with a vision of his end, and it isn't pretty.

Halloween is this Wednesday, and the pumpkins and scarecrows and skeletons are out in full force this weekend.  Tomorrow, I will be carving pumpkins.  I buy two every year, one for my daughter and one for my son.  I held off buying them until this weekend because, last year, I bought and carved the pumpkins too early.  By the time All Hallow's Eve was upon us, the faces on the pumpkins were a little shriveled and sunken.  I didn't want to make the same mistake this year.

So, the only reason I chose the passage above is that it's scary.  Dickens loved ghost stories and anything paranormal.  All of his books are filled with all sorts of creepy, unsavory characters.  Ghost stories were a staple for the Christmas holidays in the Dickens household.  I would bet that, if Halloween had been celebrated in Victorian England, old Chuck would have been known as Father Pumpkin instead of Father Christmas.  In fact, A Christmas Carol might have been A Halloween Carol, and Scrooge might have had a prize pumpkin delivered to the Cratchits instead of a prize turkey.  Since Dickens was single-handedly responsible for the popularizing of many stereotypical Christmas traditions, the world would certainly be a different place if the Inimitable had been into Halloween instead.

But, he wasn't, and so we have Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim celebrating the yuletide season.

Saint Marty prefers that arrangement.  Let Dickens have Christmas.  Leave Halloween to Poe and Bradbury and Stephen King.

Confessions of Saint Marty