Dickens’ Morality

I think I finally figured out the moral of A Christmas Carol. And it isn’t, “It’s better to be charitable.”

Ebenezer Scrooge didn’t just magically become a charitable soul. His own guilty conscience drove him into the fringes of insanity. Patrick Stewart’s portrayal of the Scrooge character captures this well.

The moral is, “It’s better to embrace charity by choice, than to be charitable out of guilt.”