Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. My name is Jeremiah Regan.

And I'm Juan Davaloz, and we are back with Charles Dickens, a Christmas Carol, onto lecture number four today.

Christmas present, an odious, stingy,

heart, unfeeling man. Now, Juan, our listeners can't see you the way I can, so they don't know that

you're smiling and smirking as we're getting ready to introduce this episode night. I have to guess

that's because you pointed out how Scrooge has a very low view of people getting ready to celebrate

Christmas.

They're broke, but they're spending money.

They don't really have any reason to be happy, but they still are.

And he gets a correction in this lecture.

Yeah, he's about to be proven wrong by the ghost of Christmas present when he goes and visits the Cratchit family who are preparing for Christmas.

He sees that these are decent people who are trying to do their best to enjoy the important

things in life, family, worshipping their creator and their savior. And they're doing it

with joy even though they have very little material wealth and very few of the goods and necessities of life.

And there's some great, that's right, there's some great instances in that passage,

specifically of the cratchets that are funny, but it helps you to enjoy and laugh and

look at the little things in life that make things beautiful. It's not just

the big things. It's not just the big events. It's the little things that also matter.

Perhaps the most poignant encounter that shows Scrooge how wrong he really was is when he sees

Tiny Tim playing with his siblings, playing with his family, and thinks back to

a statement he had made about Tiny Tim and his medical ailments. If he be like to die,

he had better do it and decrease the surplus population. This is a hideously cruel sentiment,

...