Books suitable for Christmas gift-giving

By Sean M. Wright

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more . . . He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.” — Stave 5, A Christmas Carol.

And so Charles Dickens leaves Ebenezer Scrooge. Contrite and repentant, the former miser is resolved to spread the joy which now possesses him so he might set right his sins of commission but even more especially his sins of omission.

Yet what about Scrooge’s later life?  How did he go about helping make his corner of London a better place in which to live?

Robert Marro, Jr, inspired by an admirable and beautifully original concept, relates further adventures of the former miser in “Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Love” (Post Hill Press, 2024). The reader is reacquainted with Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit and his family, some years after the Night of the Spirits. Due to the continuing generosity of his employer, the Cratchits no longer struggle against want and infirmity.

Much of the tale centers on Peter Cratchit, Bob’s gentle, eldest son, now himself embarked on a business career. Possessed of an exceptional facility with accounting and how various factors affect one another, Peter is a prized employee in the company owned by Sir Nigel Fairweather-Hawthorne, as avaricious a business man as Scrooge ever was.

Peter has a family as well but his wife, Charlotte, has contracted consumption, known today as tuberculosis. With the promise of advancement and the start of his own fortune, Peter, thinking of how he can use the money to help his wife, begins a stay in New York City. 

Little does Peter know, he is being made a pawn in a scheme to be hatched by Cyrus Abernathy, a wealthy American industrialist partnered with Sir Nigel. With his beautiful though vixenish daughter Lavinia, Abernathy intends to publicly satisfy a deeply held private grudge by humiliating Queen Victoria and her government.

In the context of visiting Charlotte in Peter’s absence Scrooge discovers his cast-aside fiancée, Allyce Bainbridge, herself now the widow of a hero of the Crimean War. Allyce is a nurse who joins with Florence Nightingale in demanding sanitary conditions be introduced to British hospitals.

Allyce, however, recalling the six years she lost awaiting Ebenezer to set the date for their marriage and how he eventually preferred the pursuit of wealth to the warmth of her love, wants nothing to do with him. 

Readers will be glad to know that God has not deserted Ebenezer Scrooge and supernatural events once more overtake him. Marley’ Ghost again appears, this time to advise Scrooge to cultivate patience and inform him that the Ghost of Christmas Love may yet intervene.

Baptized into the Church of England, Charles Dickens was a Christian in a very broad sense, more Unitarian than Anglican. He disliked the dogmatic views of Catholicism. Even so, in “A Christmas Carol,” Marley’s Ghost reveals the Wandering Spirits to Scrooge who saw them, chained and shackled in a kind of purgatorial existence, unable to protect a young mother and her infant wandering through the snow.  “The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever”

Robert Marro, Jr., himself a Catholic, picks up on Dickens’ veiled Catholicism and brings biblical quotations and spiritual sensibilities to his tale. These are, in many ways, the best parts of the story. 

If Marro again turns his hand to writing about Scrooge, I hope he will relate the doings of the recovered Tiny Tim and of Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, his only link to the memory of his beloved sister, Fan. 

This is Marro’s first novel, and he commits the sins of many a first-time novelist. He overwrites and over-describes. In what seems to be Victorian product placement, he habitually gives the full and exact title of every company or person each time they are brought up. A good 30-40 pages could be saved had he written in a more fluid style. 

There are several anachronisms, typified by an allusion to President Franklin Pierce and “the First Lady,” a title not invented until the 20th century. More vexatiously, Marro ignores the reticence and formality of the Victorian era by insisting that everyone, upon first meeting, call each other by their Christian names. Indeed, one man refers to his friend Florence Nightingale as — horrors!—“Flo.” This unwonted familiarity would be considered impertinent, impolite and, in the case of properly-bred ladies, insulting. 

Despite its flaws, Catholic readers especially may find Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Love a satisfying story of Divine Providence again taking a hand in human affairs. 

“Peter and Jesus by a Charcoal Fire” (Emmaus Road Publishing), written by by Maura Roan McKeegan and illustrated by Gina Capaldi, is a beautiful read-along picture book. It will become cherished by parents who really want to teach their little children something more than “Jesus was a real nice man.”  

From the time he could talk, I spoke to my son, DeForeest, about Jesus. I told him about Jesus’ teaching, his parables, his miracles and most especially, his love. He came also to enjoy Simon Peter, Jesus’ impetuous, funny but loyal friend. It grieved his toddler’s heart to learn that Peter had pretended not to know Jesus when his friend was in danger.

The Gospel episode is well presented in this book written for toddlers to teach them about love, making mistakes, and being forgiven. Aided by the wonderfully evocative watercolors painted by Gina Capaldi, parents can show how Peter, warming himself by a charcoal fire, lost his courage the night Jesus needed him.

On an early spring morning in Galilee Simon Peter and other disciples had been fishing all night but caught nothing. Jesus told them to let down their nets again and, wonder of wonders, the net was filled with fish. 

When they got back to shore, Jesus was already cooking fishes — over a charcoal fire. While they breakfasted, Jesus asked Simon Peter three times if he loved him, and Peter said he did. This is what Jesus wanted to make up for Simon Peter’s earlier lack of courage. God always forgives those who truly love him. 

(Sean M. Wright, MA, award-winning journalist, Emmy nominee, and Master Catechist for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is a parishioner at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Santa Clarita. he answers comments at Locksley69@aol.com.)