Dickensian

Near the beginning of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, two jolly gentlemen visit the office of the bitter old miser Scrooge. They ask for money to help some of London's poor at the Christmas holidays.

Scrooge gripes that he pays his taxes to support the prisons and workhouses, and the poor are more than welcome to visit either as far as he's concerned. The conversation continues:

"I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.''

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''

"If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that.''

"But you might know it,'' observed the gentleman.

"It's not my business,'' Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!''

The more things change, the more they stay the same. You can hear that argument, or close enough, on the cable television news shows. During televised presidential debates, people in the audience have shouted that those lacking health insurance should be left to die.

Hard times can bring out the worst in people -- and the best. In part, that's what A Christmas Carol is all about: taking a good hard look at yourself, and deciding whether you're the person you think you are.

And so it is good to revisit A Christmas Carol every so often. As if you had a choice: endless versions have been filmed and taped, and as far as I know every single one of them is going to air in the days leading up to Christmas. Scrooge is everywhere.

Rhumba and I saw Scrooge live on stage yesterday, in a theatrical production of A Christmas Carol at the San Jose Repertory Theater. I enjoyed it thoroughly: the acting was good and, as this was Silicon Valley, the special effects were excellent. Most of the cast could sing and play instruments, and so many fine old carols were brought into the story to good effect.

Dickens' heartwarming parable about the spirit of giving and love was presented to an appreciative audience -- of mostly older, well-dressed people who had the 65 bucks to plunk down for a ticket.

Our seats were good even though we sat high up in the rear. And so when intermission came, I could see the hot, bright screens of smart phones and tablets pop to life throughout the crowd below as people came back from Dickens' London to check their calls, their texts, their emails. A Christmas Carol is a nice place to visit, but I'm not sure how many of us live there.

And yet, some do. We'd come over from Santa Cruz to see the play with my sister Queenie and her adopted daughter, the seven-year-old Princessa. Queenie and I sometimes can't find things to talk about; and so when she comes to visit, we go to a play or some other attraction.

A Christmas Carol can be a scary play for a seven-year-old, especially if the special effects are good. Princessa spent a good bit of the performance sitting in Queenie's lap.

But it helped that, when the show ended and the cast trooped off stage and through the audience, Scrooge himself bent down and gave Princessa a big kiss on top of her head.

Half an hour later, Rhumba and I were sitting next to "Scrooge" and his wife in a Thai restaurant across the street. Opposite us sat Queenie, the seven-year-old Princessa, and two six-year-old girls. As we waited for food, the three girls busily made "grape burritos" out of purple Play-Doh.

Princessa and her two friends are Chinese -- or their biological parents were. One of the other girls was "Scrooge's" daughter, and the third belonged to another couple at the table.

"Scrooge" and his wife, the other couple, and Queenie had each adopted a girl infant from Chinese orphanages at about the same time. They became friends through a support group for adoptive parents of Chinese orphans.

Tell me that nobody lives in A Christmas Carol; these little girls do. Mainland China's one-child policy produces a surplus of unwanted girl children: because the parents have already had a child -- or because they would rather raise a boy who could support them in their old age than a daughter who would join her husband's family.

Nobody wanted Princessa or the other two burrito-makers; it was the orphanage for them. And after that, who knows? They had no legal status; the state wasn't even obliged to educate them.

And then kindly old people from another land -- armed with the wads of cash required for doing this kind of business on the Chinese mainland -- swooped in, adopted them, brought them home to America, and offered them all the love and help and opportunity that a child could want. And a copious supply of purple Play-doh. It's a story that Dickens could have written.

Scrooge knew how bad the world was, and didn't care; he thought that the poor deserved what they got. Some of us feel that way. And some of us just don't want to admit that the world can really be that bad. We refuse to believe it; or we feel that the problems are overstated, or easily solvable; or if the problems are that bad, certainly someone else will do something about it.

But when things get bad enough, people start to notice. And when they let themselves notice, they start to do things. They have to.

This week the news wires are carrying stories about the "lay-away Santas" haunting K-Mart stores around the nation. Almost alone among major retailers, the K-Mart chain has a lay-away department. If you want to buy something and have no credit, you can put the item on lay-away; the store will hold it for you while you make small weekly payments. When you've paid the full price, K-Mart gives you your item. People with little money and no credit use lay-away a lot. They've no other choice.

At a number of K-Mart stores, strangers have come to the lay-away department and paid off the accounts of people who've been making payments on children's toys or children's clothing. And are behind on their payments. The donors don't know who they're helping; they just ask the lay-away staff to pick an account.

Others wait in the lay-away department and press cash into the hands of people who come in to make payments. It's enough to warm the hearts of all. A classic Christmas-time feel-good story.

And yet, it is more. The times have turned Dickensian. No longer is our country a vast, bland, safe middle-class enclave. It is truly the best of times for some, and the worst of times for many others.

It makes sense, then, that some people are emulating the reformed Scrooge and helping where they can. But does it stop there? Would it have stopped there for Scrooge? Or would he have campaigned for free schools for the poor, clean water, covered sewers -- the major social reforms of mid-19th-century England? I think old Scrooge would have seen his way towards helping out, or at least paying higher taxes. And, who knows, perhaps even running for Parliament on the Liberal ticket? He wouldn't have been the only rich merchant to feel that way.

Because if you care enough to give a toy or a coat to a poor child, eventually you'll care enough to know it's not enough.

So bring on the kindly strangers, the tearful parents astonished that they'll have a Christmas after all. Bring on the Occupy protesters who've stopped banks from evicting people from their homes at the holidays. Bring on the food drives, the turkey drives, the free Christmas dinners for all comers down at the civic auditorium, the food bank holiday contribution barrel in every workplace.

Bring it on, bring it all on. Because when the deserving poor grow too many to be helped by our charity, the libertarian propaganda will melt away and we will remember that all people in need are deserving. Of something. An irreducible something that every human being should have. Dignity, help, hope: they're all in there. Dickens knew.

And God bless us, every one.