January 16: Martin Luther King Day, School, Some Upon This Earth

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived.  Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

This speech, given by th Christmas Present, is not very well known.  Scrooge accuses the Spirit of depriving the poor of nourishment every seventh day (the Sabbath).  Scrooge says, by having grocers and bakers and butchers and other businesses close on Sundays (and, by extension, Christmas), the Spirit deprives the needy of possible sources of food and charity.  The Ghost's angry reply to Scrooge places the blame for hunger and poverty and injustice directly at the feet of all the Scrooges, the "some upon this earth"--those people whose passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness have created most of the social ills of the world.

I choose this passage from A Christmas Carol on Martin Luther King Day.  A day meant to honor a man who dedicated his life to eradicating all of the human failings the Ghost of Christmas Present lists in the passage above.  Scrooge, at his mean-spirited and greedy worst, embodies everything King fought against.  Really, Martin Luther King's dream was a world without pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness.  It was a dream where, in some ways, the Spirit of Christmas--of charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolance, to paraphrase Jacob Marley--guides all of us, every day.

Today is the first day of a new semester.  I enter the classroom with a sense of renewal and hope.  I hope to teach my mythology students something about the human condition and spirit.  I hope, by the end of the winter semester, my students are somehow changed, have somehow become better people.  I don't want to crank out a classroom full of human beings who are part of the Spirit's "some upon this earth."  I want to teach people the qualities of acceptance, love, generosity, and charity.  That was Martin Luther King's dream.  That's my dream, too.

Scrooges need not enroll in Saint Marty's mythology classes.