Merry Christmas

THE CRATCHITS’ CHRISTMAS DINNER (Adapted) CHARLES DICKENS

Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present stood in the city streets on
Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a
rough but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow
from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of
their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come
plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little
snowstorms.

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker,
contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and
with the dirtier snow upon the ground, which last deposit had been
ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons;
furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where
the great streets branched off, and made intricate channels, hard to
trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and
the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed,
halF frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty
atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent,
caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear heart’s content. There
was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there
an air of cheerfulness abroad that the dearest summer air and brightest
summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.

For the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial
and full of glee, calling out to one another from the parapets, and now
and then exchanging a facetious snowball–better-natured missile far
than many a wordy jest–laughing heartily if it went right, and not
less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half
open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were
great, round, potbellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the
waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling
out into the street in their apoplectic opulence.

There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in
the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking, from
their shelves, in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and
glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples,
clustering high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes,
made, in the shop-keeper’s benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous
hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there
were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance,
ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep
through withered leaves; there were Norfolk biffins, squab and swarthy,
setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching
to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold
and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though
members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that
there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and
round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.

The grocers’! oh, the grocers’! nearly closed, with perhaps two
shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not
alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or
that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the
canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that
the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or
even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so
extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other
spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with
molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint, and
subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or
that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly
decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its
Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in
the hopeful promise of the day that they tumbled up against each other
at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their
purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and
committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible;
while the grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the
polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have
been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas
daws to peck at, if they chose.

But soon the steeples called good people all to church and chapel, and
away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and
with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores
of by-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people,
carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of these poor
revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood, with
Scrooge beside him, in a baker’s doorway, and, taking off the covers as
their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his
torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when
there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled
each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their
good-humour was restored directly. For they said it was a shame to
quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there
was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners, and the progress of
their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker’s oven,
where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.

“Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?”
asked Scrooge.

“There is. My own.”

“Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Scrooge.

“To any kindly given. To a poor one most.”

“Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge.

“Because it needs it most.”

They went on, invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of
the town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had
observed at the baker’s) that, notwithstanding his gigantic size, he
could accommodate himself to any place with ease; and that he stood
beneath a low roof quite as gracefully, and like a supernatural
creature, as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall.

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off this
power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and
his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to Scrooge’s
clerk’s; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his
robe; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped
to bless Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the sprinklings of his torch.

Think of that! Bob had but fifteen “bob” a week himself; he pocketed on
Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost
of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house!

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed out but poorly in
a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a
goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda
Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master
Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and
getting the corners of his monstrous shirt-collar (Bob’s private
property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day) into
his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned
to show his linen in the fashionable parks. And now two smaller
Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the
baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known it for their own, and,
basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits
danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies,
while he (not proud, although his collar nearly choked him) blew the
fire, until the slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at the
saucepan lid to be let out and peeled.

“What has ever got your precious father, then?” said Mrs. Cratchit.

“And your brother, Tiny Tim? And Martha warn’t as late last Christmas
Day by half an hour!”

“Here’s Martha, mother!” said a girl, appearing as she spoke.

“Here’s Martha, mother!” cried the two young Cratchits. “Hurrah!

There’s such a goose, Martha!”

“Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!” said Mrs.
Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and
bonnet for her with officious zeal.

“We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,” replied the girl, “and
had to clear away this morning, mother!”

“Well, never mind so long as you are come,” said Mrs. Cratchit. “Sit ye
down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!”

“No, no! There’s father coming!” cried the two young Cratchits, who
were everywhere at once.

“Hide, Martha, hide!”

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at
least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down
before him, and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look
seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore
a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!

“Why, where’s our Martha?” cried Bob Cratchit, looking around.

“Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit.

“Not coming?” said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits;
for he had been Tim’s blood horse all the way from the church, and had
come home rampant. “Not coming upon Christmas Day?”

Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so
she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his
arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off
into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the
copper.

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had
rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his
heart’s content.

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful,
sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever
heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the
church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to
remember, upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men
see.”

Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more
when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.

His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny
Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister
to his stool beside the fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs–as
if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more
shabby–compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and
stirred it round and round, and put it on the hob to simmer, Master
Peter and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose,
with which they soon returned in high procession.

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of
all birds–a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter
of course–and in truth it was something very like it in that house.
Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan)
hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour;
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot
plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the
two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting
themselves, and, mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into
their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came
to be helped. At last the dishes were set on. and grace was said. It
was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly
all along the carving knife, prepared to plunge it into the breast; but
when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth,
one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,
excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle
of his knife, and feebly cried, “Hurrah!”

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was
such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness,
were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and
mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family;
indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small
atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet
every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular were
steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being
changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone–too nervous
to bear witnesses–to take the pudding up, and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough? Suppose it should break in
turning out? Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the
backyard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose–a
supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of
horrors were supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A
smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating
house and a pastry-cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s
next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit
entered–flushed, but smiling proudly–with the pudding, like a
speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of
half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly
stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly, too, that he
regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since
their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that, now the weight was off her
mind, she would confess she had her doubts about the quantity of flour.
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody thought or said it
was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat
heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a
thing.

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth
swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and
considered perfect, tipples and oranges were put upon the table, and a
shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew
round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a
one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass–two
tumblers and a custard-cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks,
while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob
proposed:

“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!”

Which all the family reechoed.

“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.