Reminder: Chesterton, Dickens, and Christmas

Just a reminder that I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at about 6:50 a.m. Central Time/7:50 a.m. Eastern Time. Matt Swaim and I will talk about G.K. Chesterton's great appreciation of Dickens and particularly of A Christmas Carol!

Listen live here; the podcast will be archived here! 

As Chesterton commented in his praise of A Christmas Carol, as much as it is a Christmas story, and as much as it is a ghost story, it is also a conversion story:

The Christmas Carol (sic) is a happy story first,

because it describes an abrupt and dramatic change. It is not only the story of a conversion, but of a sudden conversion; as sudden as the conversion of a man at a Salvation Army meeting. Popular religion is quite right in insisting on the fact of a crisis in most things. It is true that the man at the Salvation Army meeting would probably be converted from the punch bowl; whereas Scrooge was converted to it. That only means that Scrooge and Dickens represented a higher and more historic Christianity.

And everyone loves a conversion story, because it gives us hope that we can change, that we can be better, and do good all the year long!