Just Riot Theory and the Ghost of Christmas Present

One of the criticisms I often have of many screen and theatre productions of Charles Dickens' classic Christmas ghost story, A Christmas Carol, is that one very crucial and poignant scene from Scrooge's discourse with the Ghost of Christmas Present is often omitted entirely. In fact, the penchant for many directors is to portray the Ghost of Christmas Present as either Jolly Old Saint Nick who has not a mean bone in his body or as a jolly old, almost buffoon-like, character. If you read the original text of A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Present is neither of these personas. 

Most people think the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is the scariest of the spirits. While perhaps the most dark or shadowy of the three Spirits, this Spirit does not in itself make the reader uncomfortable by anything it really says. It just appears in a mist and points Scrooge to what Scrooge needs to see. It is what the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come reveals to Scrooge about his own life's decisions and their consequences on himself and others that makes the spirit uncomfortable to encounter. Nothing the Spirit actually does or says is in itself threatening beyond the haunted house special effects that directors, or one's own imagination conjures up when reading the text, that make the Spirit ominous and scary.

The Ghosts of Christmas Past and Future teach unpleasant lessons by simply pointing out things done and left undone in Scrooge's own life. But their actual behavior and dialogue are minimal. Scrooge simply is forced to face his past decisions and their future consequences, but those two Spirits say little else of greater social import. They simply point out the things that have been or may be only, but ultimately they are only the results of Scrooge's own actions and sins. They are both in their own way Grim Reapers, forcing Scrooge to reap the harvest of his life's choices both in the past and in the future.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is a wholly different type of spectre. He is not a Grim Reaper type of spectre. He is a ghost of the present only, and this gives him a bit of a sharp edge. While he does show Scrooge the lessons of the present that Scrooge personally affected by his own actions, he also takes Scrooge abroad. They visit the miners toiling on Christmas day in the bowels of the earth. They visit the watchmen on ships at sea far from their families. They see the retail people in the public square selling turkeys and goods on Christmas day because the masses did not have refrigerators back then but still needed to purchase foods for their various Christmas feasts. 

The Ghost of Christmas Present simply shows the reality of the world at Christmas: some people have to work, even on Christmas day. Sometimes because they have to work to make enough money to survive. Sometimes they have to work because of the nature of their jobs. One of the points that the Ghost of Christmas Present makes is that some people have to work on Christmas not because of any poor or uncharitable decision that Scrooge ever made. That is simply the way the world is. Because of the reality of the present, the Ghost of Christmas Present has a decidedly uncomfortable edge to his commentary on the world. He is not a jolly old elf. He's more like an Aslan type persona: he's not a tame lion but he's good. 

I often get irritated in otherwise grand stage or screen depictions of A Christmas Carol because many directors completely redact this element of social criticism from the Ghost of Christmas Present. A perfect example of this is the one major beef I have with the Muppets' version of A Christmas Carol, which is one of the best modern big screen adaptions of the film actually. In that otherwise charming film with marvelous cinematography, the Ghost of Christmas Present is presented largely as a forgetful buffoon. 

Now, I understand, this version is geared for children, and there is something to be said for a certain creative license when filming things for children. And that depiction of that spirit is delightful, don't get me wrong. However, it's really not the Spirit of Christmas Present that Charles Dickens describes. He has no sharp edges; he makes no cutting remarks. He's largely a big boned happy-go-lucky Muppet version of Dionysius: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, Christmas will be over. Fun, yes, but not the actual Spirit of Christmas Present as Dickens would have recognized his creation.

Now, here is an example of what I mean from the original text:

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

While there are a few film versions of A Christmas Carol that retain this scene, I have yet to run across a filmed or stage version that includes the next to last sarcastic reproach that the Ghost of Christmas Present utters before throwing Scrooge's words back at him once more before the Spirit disappears: Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!

Again, this is not the warm, fuzzy buffoon that the Ghost of Christmas Present is often portrayed and sanitized as in modern films. This is a wild Spirit like John the Baptist or Elijah, pointing toward the filth of a corrupt society who is crying out a sarcastic reproach with a prophetic voice. So uncomfortable is his critique of an unjust society that most modern directors redact that scene entirely, but the question is: why? 

I will let you, the reader, draw your own conclusions to that. My personal point in this blog entry is to point out something currently going on in world events as I write this. The United Kingdom is having an outbreak of riots across Britain. America has had spots of riots off and on for years. France riots periodically in Paris. It has become so prevalent in modern times to have periodic riots that I am starting to read some bizarre theology coming out of some circles that is attempting to pull in Thomas Aquinas' Just War Theory to justify it. It's called for Just Riot Theory. I think it stems from a work that came out that I will link to here. It perhaps originated elsewhere, but it's an interesting concept.

If one can have a Just War, can one ever have a Just Riot? It is an interesting concept. One one level, it seems simplistic, but on another level, it's in itself an interesting critique of Just War theory itself in a veiled kind of way. Something to ponder, but I think at the end of the day, riots can really serve no productive purpose. There is armed conflict, which can under certain circumstances be justified, and there is random violence for its own sake. Random violence and destruction is always evil because it's total chaos grounded in uncontrolled rage and hate, both of which are antithetical to a God who created a divine order. 

At the end of the day, riots are what the Ghost of Christmas Present prophetically warned about. They are the adult fruits of the children, Ignorance and Want. This is not to excuse for a society that created Ignorance and Want in the first place from all moral culpability when riots occur. Societies that do not have high rates of ignorance and poverty are not prone to riots and randoms acts of violence. But, likewise, a society that does have oppressive prison-industrial complex ways of dealing with poverty and want where basic human dignity is denied-prisons and workhouses or their modern equivalents-can also have riots even if general ignorance and want are relatively low.  

Again, food for thought, but never forget to heed the words of the Ghost of Christmas Present in his call for a just society: Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!