What Dickens’s Christmas Ghosts Can Teach Us About Grief, Loss, and the Holidays

What Dickens’s Christmas Ghosts Can Teach Us About Grief, Loss, and the Holidays

“Bah!” said Scrooge. “Humbug!”

We know the words. We know the old man who says them. Ebenezer Scrooge sits in his counting house on Christmas Eve while the rest of London seems determined to celebrate around him. His clerk, Bob Cratchit, tries to warm himself over a miserable little fire. Then Scrooge’s cheerful nephew Fred arrives.

“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!”

“Bah!” Scrooge answers. “Humbug!”

Fred is not easily discouraged. He tells his uncle that he has always thought of Christmas as “a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time.”

Scrooge wants no part of it.

There are people grieving this Christmas who may understand Ebenezer Scrooge better than they ever have before.

You don’t have to dislike Christmas to wish you could skip it. Sometimes you have loved Christmas very much. That is precisely why it hurts. The music begins. Invitations arrive. Someone asks where you will spend Christmas Eve. Eventually, you open the boxes of decorations and find what you knew would be waiting there: his stocking. Her ornaments. Mom’s Christmas dishes. The angel that has been on top of the tree for forty years.

Everyone else seems to be preparing for Christmas while you may be preparing to endure it.

You are not Scrooge.

You are grieving.

I have always loved the way a good story can help us see something about ourselves that an explanation never could. Charles Dickens gave us such a story in A Christmas Carol. We usually remember it as the story of a miser who discovers generosity. But look again. Scrooge is also a wounded man who has spent years protecting himself by closing himself off from life. On one extraordinary Christmas Eve, he is taken backward into the life he once lived, outward into the life happening around him, and forward into a future he has not yet lived.

Past. Present. Future.

Anyone who has grieved knows something about traveling among all three.

How Can I Face Christmas and the Holidays when I’m Grieving and Hurting? 

Before Scrooge meets the famous spirits, he hears bells. Then comes the unmistakable sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor.

Chains.

His dead business partner, Jacob Marley, appears before him bound in an enormous chain. Scrooge, terrified, asks why.

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” Marley tells him.

I wonder how many chains we drag toward Christmas without realizing it.

Ours may not rattle across the floor, but we know the sound of them. Mom always hosted Christmas. The grandchildren expect the house to look the way it always looks. He loved Christmas, so I have to keep everything going. Everybody expects me to come.

Then come all those shoulds. I should be doing better by now. I should want to celebrate. I should not cry in front of everyone. I should be stronger. I should go. I should stay. I should keep Christmas exactly the way we always did.

Grief has already required enormous emotional energy. Now Christmas arrives carrying memories, traditions, expectations and decisions. Things we once did almost automatically suddenly require thought.

Perhaps before deciding what Christmas should look like, we need to ask what Christmas actually means to us by identifying the values we cherish. 

Family? Faith? Generosity? Hospitality? Children? Music? Laughter? Remembering? Simply being together?

Our traditions are often those values made visible. Grandma’s cinnamon rolls were never only cinnamon rolls. They meant everyone was home. Christmas Eve worship was not merely something on the calendar; it expressed faith. The old ornament may have no monetary value at all, but hanging it connects one generation to another.

When someone dies, it is easy to confuse the tradition with the value underneath it.

If I don’t host dinner, am I letting my family down? If I don’t decorate the whole house, am I giving up on Christmas? If I change something my husband and I always did, am I somehow leaving him behind?

No.

The tradition may change without changing the love underneath it.

Why and How Should We Prepare Ourselves Ahead for the Holidays When We Are Grieving?

Scrooge has no idea what is coming that Christmas Eve.

We do.

The calendar tells us.

Thanksgiving is coming. Christmas Eve is coming. Christmas morning is coming. The family gathering is coming. So is the church service, the annual party, the cookie baking, the empty chair and that first moment when everyone is together and everyone knows who isn’t.

There is something compassionate about preparing for what we already know may be difficult.

We cannot prepare grief away. Nor should we try. Dr. Alan Wolfelt, whose work we use in our grief groups at Locke, reminds us that grief is what we experience within ourselves, while mourning is grief expressed outside ourselves. We need places and people where our grief can come out rather than continually trying to hold it in.

Preparing for the holidays gives grief some room before the holiday arrives.

Talk with your family. Not Christmas morning. Not when everyone is standing in the kitchen and somebody suddenly asks, “Who is going to carve the turkey now?”

Talk now!

“What really matters to us this Christmas?”

“Which traditions do we want to keep?”

“Is there anything we simply don’t have the energy for this year?”

“How do we want to remember Mom?”

“What are we going to do with Dad’s chair?”

You may discover that the tradition you are exhausting yourself to preserve does not matter nearly as much to your family as you thought. You may also discover that one tiny thing you planned to skip means everything to your daughter.

And make yourself an escape route.

You can say, “I would love to come, but I may only stay an hour.” Drive yourself if possible. Give yourself permission to change your mind. Let somebody else cook. Buy the pie. Put up half the decorations. Decide which invitation deserves a yes and which needs a no.

These are not failures at Christmas.

They are ways of acknowledging that grief has changed your capacity, at least for now.

You are not deciding what every Christmas for the rest of your life will look like.

You are preparing for this Christmas.

And then, like Scrooge, we are ready to meet Christmas Past.

Why Do Christmas Memories Feel So Powerful After Someone Dies?

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

“Long Past?” Scrooge asks.

“No. Your past.”

And suddenly the old man is somewhere else.

He sees the school where he was once a lonely boy. He sees his beloved sister, Fan. He sees Fezziwig and a Christmas party filled with music and dancing. He sees Belle, the woman he once loved and lost.

The old man who insisted Christmas was humbug begins to feel.

We don’t need a ghost to take us back.

A song can do it.

So can an ornament wrapped in tissue paper. A recipe card in familiar handwriting. The smell of a certain food. The Christmas china. A photograph you weren’t expecting to find.

Suddenly thirty years ago does not feel like thirty years ago.

Sometimes the memory makes us smile. Sometimes it knocks the wind out of us. Sometimes the very same memory does both.

Wolfelt identifies remembering the person who died as an important need of mourning. We do not have to remove someone from our family story in order to heal. We gradually learn how to carry that relationship differently.

So let Christmas Past come.

Say her name. Hang his ornament. Make Dad’s fudge. Tell the grandchildren the story about the year the tree fell over. Laugh about the gift Grandpa bought Grandma that she absolutely hated but pretended to love. Agree to laugh AND cry. Talk to the kids that it’s ok to feel happy AND sad. 

And if the story begins with laughter and ends in tears, let it.

Scrooge’s journey also shows us something important. He can return to the past, but he cannot stay there.

Neither can we.

Christmas will not be exactly as it was before the death. That truth hurts. But accepting it may also release us from trying to recreate something that cannot be recreated.

We can treasure what was without requiring what is to look exactly the same. It never will. And I’m sorry. But the sting will soften if you allow yourself to mourn outwardly. It takes lots of time.

How Can We Live in Christmas Present While Missing Someone We Love?

Then Scrooge hears a booming voice.

“Come in! and know me better, man!”

The Ghost of Christmas Present takes him out into the world as it is—not as it was and not as Scrooge wishes it to be.

Eventually, they arrive at the Cratchit home.

It is hardly a picture-perfect Christmas. Money is scarce. Dinner is modest. Tiny Tim is seriously ill. There are genuine worries sitting at that table.

And yet there is life everywhere.

Mrs. Cratchit prepares dinner. The children chatter. Martha hides as a joke when Bob comes home. Bob arrives carrying Tiny Tim on his shoulder. Dinner is served. The pudding comes. They talk and tease and laugh.

Scrooge watches.

Then something happens that would have been almost unimaginable a few hours earlier.

He begins worrying about someone else.

“Spirit,” he asks, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live.”

Grief can make our world very small for a while. That is understandable. Someone central to our life is gone, and our heart keeps noticing the absence.

We walk into the room and see the empty chair first.

Of course we do.

But the Ghost of Christmas Present turns our head just a little.

Who else is sitting at the table?

Who is missing him, too? Who needs your hug? Who drove three hours because being together mattered? Which grandchild is tugging on your sleeve while you are remembering Christmases when your own children were that age? Talk with them. Lean in. The others are grieving too.

Noticing them does not diminish the person who died. It reminds us that life continues. 

Wolfelt’s companioning approach does not ask us to fix sorrow or hurry somebody through it. We make room for what is actually there. At Christmas, perhaps that means making room for more than one truth.

Someone is missing. And someone is here.

You are sad. And something just made you laugh.

You wish life were different. And there may still be something good happening right in front of you.

You can cry at Christmas dinner and laugh ten minutes later. One does not cancel the other.

Laughter is not betrayal.

Is It Okay to Change Holiday Traditions After a Death?

The Cratchits may also release us from another burden.

Their Christmas is far from perfect. They work with what they have.

Perhaps we can, too.

If family is what matters, someone else can host. If faith is what matters, Christmas Eve worship may be the one thing you keep—or perhaps this year your worship is sitting quietly at home listening to “Silent Night.” If remembering matters, you do not have to reproduce twenty traditions. Light one candle. Hang one ornament. Tell one story. Order out. 

Keep the value.

Let the tradition breathe.

And remember that people in the same family may need different things. One person may want Dad’s chair left exactly where it has always been. Someone else may find staring at it unbearable. One person wants to talk about him all evening. Another can barely say his name.

Neither is grieving incorrectly.

That is another reason to have the conversation before the holiday arrives. We can give one another room rather than waiting until emotions are high and assuming everybody needs Christmas to look the same.

How Do We Face Christmas Yet to Come After Someone We Love Has Died?

The final spirit is different.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come says nothing.

Scrooge follows him into a future he does not want to see. Finally, frightened, he asks:

“Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”

Those of us who have experienced a death already know something we never wanted to learn.

The future can change.

We thought there would be another Christmas together. Another trip. Another anniversary. Another year of watching the grandchildren grow.

Then the future we imagined changed.

So perhaps we can ask a gentler question than Dickens’s silent ghost seems to ask Scrooge:

What do I want to carry forward?

Not everything.

Just what matters.

Maybe it is a recipe. A blessing before dinner. A ridiculous ornament. A story your grandchildren need to know. Your wife’s generosity. Your husband’s hospitality. Your mother’s faith.

And perhaps there are things you do not need to carry forward.

Remember Marley’s chains.

Can Christmas Ever Feel Meaningful Again After Someone Dies?

Morning comes.

Scrooge wakes up.

He is alive. It is Christmas Day.

He throws open the window and calls to a boy in the street. He sends an enormous turkey to the Cratchits. He goes to his nephew’s home.

“I will honour Christmas in my heart,” he declares, “and try to keep it all the year.”

But Dickens does not rewrite Scrooge’s history.

The lonely little boy still existed. Belle was still lost to him. His sister Fan was still dead. Marley was still dead.

Christmas morning did not change Scrooge’s past.

It changed how he lived in the present.

Perhaps that is why this old Christmas story still has something to say to those of us who grieve.

We cannot return to Christmas Past, although we can visit it and treasure what we find there. We cannot know exactly what Christmas Yet to Come will bring.

We have Christmas Present.

This Christmas.

Keep what has meaning. Change what needs changing. Talk with your family before the difficult moments arrive. Let people help. Say their name. Tell the stories. Cry when the tears come.

And when laughter unexpectedly finds its way into the room, let that come, too.

There may be an empty chair at your Christmas table this year. The empty chair matters. So do the occupied ones.

Perhaps that is where Dickens and grief finally meet—not in pretending everything is merry, and certainly not in forgetting who is missing, but in discovering that love and sorrow can sit together at the same Christmas table.

Tiny Tim gets the last word:

“God bless us every one!”

Those gathered around our tables this Christmas—and those we will forever carry in our hearts.