A Christmas Carol - The Story-telling Tradition

Just as Ebenezer Scrooge needs to be reborn so too do stories. The life-cycle of birth, death and regeneration at the centre of so many mythological tales is as much a need for the stories themselves as it is for the heroes who feature in them. Therefore all story-telling traditions have an obligation to retell the tale. And that retelling across the generations can -- and should -- take many forms.

A Christmas Carol borrows heavily from the classic life-cycle myth. It centres on a man who is reborn 'a child' on a snowy winter's Christmas Day. Scrooge's response to his new-born self is as child-like as it could be: "I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby". But before that rebirth can take place, as is the case with many living things in winter, the man, Scrooge, must die. Not literally of course -- few myths are ever literal, but the man that was Scrooge must die in order for the new man to come alive and live in past, present and future. This is achieved by seeing a vision of the future wherein Scrooge's own dead body is unwatched, unwept, uncared for. So, although last Christmas we may have read or seen how Scrooge was converted, that is not enough: for last Christmas is not this Christmas and so the story must be told again. Christmas, whatever the year, in the story-telling tradition obliges us to go back to how Scrooge was the lonely and isolated miser and relive his story again. And in the telling of the story of A Christmas Carol, as with all great myths, the audience and story-teller should share not just a wish to hear it all again, but a distinct need .