Three gifts from Charles Dickens relieve trauma this Christmas.
Savor them for a meaningful and fulfilling holiday season.
Gift #1: Channel trauma for success
Lots of folks never get over early trauma.
Almost happened to Charles Dickens.
- At 10, his family liquidates possessions to pay debts
- Father and family locked in debtor’s prison
- At 12, Charles forced to work in a boot-polish factory
Neither family, friends or neighbors saved him from the “Blacking Factory.”
12-hour days working in dreadful conditions eked out $1.40 a week.
“It is wonderful [shocking] to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age…My mother and father were quite satisfied. They could hardly have been more so if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge.” Charles Dickens
But, Dickens used his trauma as a creative battery for success.
Between the ages of 15 and 24, he found jobs in journalism and practiced his writing skills.
From there, he launched his career into books.
Charles used his imagination to raise the social-conscience of his readers about the poor and the oppressed.
So, he made the characters in his books “charitable angels.”
Ebenezer Scrooge unwraps his selfishness and converts to selflessness.
How? The ghosts show him the true meaning of Christmas.
Joyfully help others.
“He went to church and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness.” A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens did the same thing with his life.
He used his trauma to shine light on the the least in . . .
- his books
- his articles
- his public readings
Gift #2: Never stop working your talent
Dickens died on June 9, 1870 at age 58.
The day before, he finished the sixth monthly installment of his last novel.
He was halfway through his fifteenth book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
A young writer, Constance Cross, was granted a meeting to visit Dickens at his home in April 1870.
She asked him if he worried about the demands of such a project when he signed the contract in failing health.
He answered quoting from John 9.
“As long as it is light we must work, for when darkness comes, no one can work.” John 9:4
Dickens wished to die working. Even in poor health, he never quit working.
Gift #3: Never need to say “Good-bye”
Four days before he passed, Dickens and his youngest daughter, Kate, stayed up till the early hours of the morning.
She asked her dad if she should become an actress. That led to a long heart-to-heart where he mused how he should have been “a better father and a better man.”
He was candid about his mistakes and worried he wouldn’t live to finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
The next morning, Kate, ready to go home, walked out on the porch to catch her ride to the train station.
She knew her father was in his study as he hated to say goodbye.
But, the urge was overwhelming.
“Running through the garden, along the tunnel, and up the chalet stairs, she found him writing away at his desk. Ordinarily, he would have raised his head for a kiss and said a few affectionate words, but on this occasion, he pushed back his chair from his desk, rushed towards her, and took her in his arms. Kissing her, he said, ‘God bless you Katie.’ They were to be his last words.” Charles Dickens: Faith, Angels and the Poor/Keith Hooper
Kate Dickens wasn’t by her father’s side when he died three days later.
But, she was “right” with her father.
Isn’t Christmas a great time to be “right” with everyone?