December 3: Lean Christmas, "Carol" Dip Monday, Hope

This morning, I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that my wife lost her job on Friday.  I'm being quite selfish in my thinking right now.  I'm thinking about how much more difficult Christmas is going to be this year.  How I might have to reconsider my two-week vacation at the beginning of January.  How I'm going to miss the extra income, the peace of mind, it gave me.  I could go on, but you get the idea.

You know, Bob Cratchit has about 27 kids in A Christmas Carol, and he somehow manages to be upbeat and generous all the time, even with Scrooge as a boss.  Of course, Bob Cratchit is a fictional character in a novel that is guaranteed to have a happy ending.  There's no guarantees is my situation. No Ghosts of Christmas are going to visit my wife's bosses and teach them the error of their ways.  (I will admit to having an urge to go to my wife's former place of work this morning to create some awkwardness and anxiety, but my wife asked me not to.  I am still a little angry, if you can't tell.)

The hardest consequence of this whole situation for me is the holidays.  It's going to be a lean Christmas season.  No prize turkey from the butcher's window for this Cratchit family.  That's a tough pill for me to swallow.  A really tough pill.  But swallow it I will, with a few extra cups of low fat eggnog.

My question for Carol dip Monday is pretty simple this week:

Will my family have a good Christmas this year?

And the answer from the Inimitable Charles Dickens is:

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistably contagious as laughter and good-humour.  When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way:  holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions:  Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he.  And their assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out, lustily.

Well, that's a pretty jolly little scene.  Of course, it's about Fred, Scrooge's nephew, who is practically Santa Claus.  But it's a good answer to my question.  An answer full of happiness and love and good will.  And hope.

That's what Saint Marty needs the most:  a little hope.



Well, not quite this lean...