With Christmas approaching, we
are often caught by nostalgia and emotion. Suddenly we think of old friends
whom we have not spoken to throughout the year, but who we still regard as
friends. We are overwhelmed by a collective good feeling, as if we have to make
up for the past year, in which not everything may have been as good as we’d
have liked.
Despite ourselves, the
nostalgia reminds us of days long gone. For me, Christmas is inextricably
connected to a ghost story written by Charles Dickens in 1843, A Christmas
Carol, the story of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is visited by spirits
on Christmas night, showing him the way to better his misanthropic life and
opening his eyes to the poverty around him.
It appears that little has
changed since the 1840s. The world is still full of poverty and refugees and
displaced people in squalid camps, who have been deprived of all human rights
and have no reason to celebrate. Spare them a thought as you sit at the table.
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| Albert Finney and Alec Guiness as Scrooge and Marley |
Recently I re-read A Christmas Carol in an English edition
which is part of my collection of Dickens writings. But I became acquainted
with it first in January 1976, in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, in
heavy weather. I was on my way from Gdansk in Poland to Baltimore on the east
coast of the United States, in a bulk carrier named Amstelpark, in which I
served as Third Mate.
As usual, the ship had a movie
box on board with three 16 mm sound films, which were almost the only
entertainment on board such a ship. Those boxes were often exchanged with other
ships when in harbour, so we had a new film almost every week. On board the Amstelpark,
during that rough crossing, the film box contained the 1970 movie made after the Dickens story, starring Albert Finney and Alec Guinness in the lead roles of
Scrooge and Marley. We showed it three times.
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| Heavy weather in the North Atlantic, mv Amstelpark, 1976 |
Conditions were so rough that
one of us had to hold the projector down as it was running, because it nearly
dropped off the table, so badly the ship was rolling about. I still don't know
whether he was holding down the projector, or the projector was holding him...
I do remember though, that in the following days, whenever we encountered each
other in the corridors of the ship’s accommodation, we greeted each other
hollering "Scroooooge!"
Last night I watched the movie again with one
of my sons - an old, poor quality DVD. The boys used to hate me for wanting to
show that film each Christmas, but now we both enjoyed it.
Tonight is Christmas
Eve, the traditional feast in English-speaking countries. I wish you all a
Merry Christmas, and those who are at sea and may read this, a safe journey.
