Humbug Indeed

Writing at The New Republic, Natalie Shure explores what condition may have actually ailed A Christmas Carol's Tiny Tim Cratchit, the young boy whose envisioned death is one of the pieces of the puzzle that changes Ebenezer Scrooge from a wealthy miser into a wealthy philanthropist. After muddling around with several choices, she settles on a form of non-pulmonary tuberculosis usually called Pott’s disease. It attacks the spine and like its cousins that affect lung tissue, is often made worse by polluted air, crowded conditions and poor nutrition -- all situations in which Ms. Shure believes young Tim would have found himself.

After getting paid for a summary of A Christmas Carol and for some quick literary analysis of same, Ms. Shure then strengthens her paycheck by reporting other guesses about the youngest Cratchit's illness and including a sentence suggesting she will set right what 19th-century Londoner Charles Dickens misunderstands about 19th-century London. 

Ms. Shure suggests that Dickens' primary motivation was to advocate a restoration of specifically Christian charity among the wealth of the day. Dickens himself, corresponding with a government official who had helped research and publish a Parliamentary report on the devastating state of poor children in industrializing England, had already made plans for a pamphlet on the matter but later withdrew from that plan after Carol's success. One of his goals was to make the broader public aware of the plight of poor children who, denied adequate nutrition, health care and education, could slip away as easily as did Tiny Tim. Though the youngest and least well of the Cratchit brood, both his presence and absence affected them greatly.

Anyway, back to Ms. Shure, who after several paragraphs confronts the obvious reality she has avoided to that point: Tiny Tim suffered from nothing, because Tiny Tim wasn't real. You'd think that would be a good endpoint for a silly article, but Ms. Shure then points out that the thousands of real Tiny Tims throughout the factories and mines of England's growing industrialization did suffer and their modern incarnations do as well. Only "robust social welfare programs funded by progressive taxation and a strong public sector capable of delivering crucial health care resources to the entire population" can save them and they can't rely on the hope that the world's plutocrats will be suddenly and spectrally moved to share the wealth that will make a difference in the lives of the world's poor.

In the last paragraph, we finally learn that this whole misreading of Dickens and misunderstanding of his efforts to help the people at the bottom of his society has had the purpose of advocating that the government take under threat of law what Christianity would ask be given out of sacrificial love.

Ms. Shure redeems herself slightly by noting that in her favorite version of A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit is played by Kermit the Frog and his wife by Miss Piggy. But she throws it out the window by closing with an aphorism from the stupidist Marx of all, Karl, that makes clear she's not much better with the New Testament than she is with Charles Dickens: "God bless us, everyone—to each according to his need, from each according to his ability."