Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan, joined by my friend

Juan Davilos. And we're here back with Charles Dickens at Christmas Herald. On to lecture number

six today, the end of it. God bless us everyone. This is a fun one.

I should have said that more exciting, actually. God bless us everyone. God bless us, everyone.

This is a Christmas Carol, and Dickens has chosen to call his chapters staves to really evoke

the musical kind of character he brings out, And God bless us everyone is the refrain.

Tiny Tim says it. Multiple characters say it. And the point is to emphasize that. God will bless us.

God has blessed us. And that's really what this lecture and this stave, the final chapter of a

Christmas Carol, are about. Scrooge, awakening, reborn, deciding to take

advantage of the lessons he's learned from the ghosts who visited him and change the course

of his future and the futures of those with whom he interacts. That's right. This is a completely

new Scrooge that we get in this, Dave. He's happy. He's excited. He's shocking everyone, actually, that he comes in contact with, with his new found sense of joy as he interacts with people in the town.

So the actual actions he takes are kind of well known. He orders the largest Christmas turkey to be taken to the cratchets.

He gives gifts to the philanthropist.

He denied the day before.

And he plays a prank on Bob pretending he's mad at him but actually giving him a raise.

All of these events are signs that they matter.

But the biggest thing is the change within Scrooge, he has decided to live his life in part for others, which enhances his own enjoyment of his life greatly. And that's interesting, right? It's not just he gets a turkey,

he gets the biggest turkey, which, again, right, it's not necessarily prescriptive, but it shows you

the heart of the man, the transformation, the difference in what he used to be and what he is now. Right. The miserliness is gone. Maybe he could have said, well, let's just get them a turkey. Right. But I'll save a little bit of, no, he's not worried about saving a little bit of money on this turkey or that turkey. He's decided he's going to do the thing, he's going to give the gift, and so do it to the full, do it to the hilt.

Yeah, the verse that comes to mind is when Kane offers a sacrifice to God. And it's always, you know, at first, when I first read that, I was like, well, what's the problem with what Kane did? He did offer a sacrifice. Well, he did not offer a good sacrifice.

In the sense, he did not give his first fruits. He did not give at all. And we can see that Scrooge is a new man.

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