Mel BarkerDec 25
Void Chicken

a Christmas carol makes more sense from a Buddhist perspective than a Christian one

the actual mechanism of Scrooge's transformation is way more Buddhist than Christian

there's no salvation through grace, no acceptance of a savior, no forgiveness of sins through faith

what happens is he's forced to see clearly.

he witnesses the causes and conditions of his own suffering and the suffering he creates. he sees dependent origination in action - how his choices ripple outward, how Tiny Tim's fate is entangled with his own actions

Dec 24 at 11:24pmWeb
Show threadVoid ChickenDec 24
the transformation isn't "I accept Jesus and am forgiven" - it's "I finally see, and seeing clearly, I naturally want to act differently." that's awakening, not salvation
Show threadVoid ChickenDec 24

and Jacob marley is in the realm of hungry ghosts

its clearly not Christian hell where's being punished by a judge

his chains aren’t imposed. they're self-assembled. each link is a habit of grasping

he forged them while alive, which is exactly how hungry ghosts work

he wants to help Scrooge. he wants to warn him. but wanting is still wanting.even remorse can be another attachment if it loops back into self-fixation. his suffering isn’t that he can’t act; it's that he can’t rest

Show threadVoid ChickenDec 24

the story also shows compassion as liberation not reward

Scrooge doesn't become generous to earn heaven. he becomes generous because generosity feels like relief. it feels like freedom

that's not moral accounting. That's dukkha loosening its grip

Show threadVoid ChickenDec 24

the threefold teaching of the three ghosts:

past: conditioning, causes and seeds, how patterns were formed

present: interdependence. how suffering and joy ripple outward right now

future: impermanence. not fate, but consequence if the pattern continues

Show threadVoid ChickenDec 24

the ghosts aren't showing him three random sad slideshows

they're showing him the actual structure of how reality works.
And once he sees that clearly - genuinely sees it - change becomes possible

not through willpower. through understanding

Show threadVoid ChickenDec 24

it makes perfect sense as a Buddhist story

it makes almost none as a christian story, god is barely mentioned, faith isn't really relevant to it. no mention of needing to be saved. the ghosts aren't in anything that resembles christian hell

its about scrooge seeing clearly. he doesn't need to repent or ask forgiveness. he just needs to awaken and change naturally follows

And the ending 'I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year' - that's a practice commitment. that's daily life as the site of transformation

not "I'm saved now and when I die I'll go to heaven." he has to keep doing it. It's ongoing

Show threadVoid ChickenDec 24
also the ghost of christmas present is the fucking Green Man but that's a WHOLE different discussion
Show threadThommyDec 25

@Taweret I was actually thinking about anarchist themes in it (but my anarchism is influenced by Buddhism) while watching the Muppet one yesterday.

And weirdly enough one of my favorite movies is a Buddhist telling a Christian story (Tokyo Godfathers).

Show threadTattieDec 26

@Taweret thank you for this fantastic thread!

The Green Man is there very intentionally as well. When I read the book, I was struck by a very clear truth-- this is an excoriation of Puritanism, and more widely the Protestant work ethic. "Keep yourself to yourself, work hard, live modestly"-- Scrooge typifies that mentality, and thinks it will save him.

The Puritans, famously, hated Christmas, denounced it as pagan, and banned it. They had no time for a holiday revolving around shared enjoyment, much preferring that everyone stay indoors, turn inwards, and think about god a lot.

So Dickens met it head on. "Maybe Christmas is pagan. Maybe that's what's good about it. Maybe this Church of England shit isn't all it's cracked up to be, and we should turn to other forms of faith for guidance".

The personal context of this seems to be Dickens' Unitarian beliefs. And Unitarianism, as I understand it, had been heavily influenced by Hinduism by the time Dickens discovered it. Is this the root of the themes of A Christmas Carol?

I dunno. I'm not a theologian. But AIUI Dickens would have been part of a faith that believed that all human religion had value, that inequality was sin, and social justice an act of faith. And that is very much the heart of A Christmas Carol.

Show threadM. GrégoireJan 9

@Taweret Interesting analysis. Certainly, *A Christmas Carol* is not a very Protestant tale, but then, as other commenters have pointed out, some branches of Protestantism aren't very comfortable with #Christmas.

What about the feast? Buddhism, as I understand it, connects virtue not merely with doing good for others, but
with giving up earthly desires. The reformed Scrooge knows "how to keep Christmas well", including in particular the joys of good food, drink, and merriment with friends.

Show threadCadenDec 24
@Taweret I will say that some forms of Christianity do recognize something like this they call "ongoing conversion" (at least I know Catholicism has this, but then Catholicism doesn't believe in salvation by faith alone anyway). I wonder if it was borrowed from Buddhism.
Show threadMark WhybirdDec 25

@tarix29 @Taweret Most actual Christian denominations (i.e. the ones less dominated by modern American evangelism or so-called “fundamentalism”) put a lot of stock in the bit in the book of James about “faith without works is dead”. The Salvation Army*, for example, are so guided by it that despite the name many are surprised to learn that they are a religious denomination rather than purely a charity for helping the poor and homeless, and there are many other examples.

(* their attitude to homosexuality is an entirely other thing that isn’t really relevant to the point.)

I’m not endorsing a belief system here; I’m just answering the question about the non-Catholic parts of Christianity.

Source: I’m a preacher’s kid (not the Salvos, though).

Show threadMx. Luna Corbden 🐸Dec 25

@Taweret Christianity's true talent is morphing whatever feel-good symbols it needs and claiming them as it's own, using them to propagate and justify itself.

These core truths of Buddhism are visible to any observer of reality, like Dickens, who needed to slap the Christmas filter on it, since that's just what one must do in 19th Century England.

Show threadMichael W Lucas Dec 25

@Taweret

Have you ever noticed how "brilliance" is often just looking at something from a different angle?

Because yes, this is perfect.

Show thread🔥Cassandra🔥Dec 25

@Taweret Thank you for this insight.

I just listened to the story, read by Helen Zaltzman: https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/christmascarol

Allusionist 222. A Christmas Carol — The Allusionist

Today, we read the novelisation of The Muppet Christmas Carol , also known as the 1843 festive lit hit A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

The Allusionist
Show threadpurple: licenced to sticky plasterDec 25

@Taweret I suppose my comment here would be ‘is it supposed to be a Christian story?’

I certainly agree it's not particularly steeped in Christian symbology, beyond more general points of charity, ‘christlike’ behaviour, and love thy neighbour (not money), but I'm not sure it ever claimed to be? Or that anyone did?

It's certainly interesting to see how it aligns with Buddhist ideas though, even if probably unintentionally.

Show threadMandrake 🐎Dec 25
@Taweret This is why any adaptation of ACC which adds an extraneous scene where Scrooge briefly goes to Hell has failed the assignment. What's saved isn't Scrooge's soul, but Tiny Tim, who did NOT die.
Show threadClifton RoystonDec 25

@Taweret

It would never have occurred to me on my own, but I love this, and you are dead on about every point you make about the story and its alignment with Buddhist understanding and morality.

Show threadDavid ZaslavskyDec 25

@Taweret Every time I see a comment like this that doesn't mention Robert Marley I get a little triggered

And then I remember that Robert was a Muppet addition 😆

Show thread⁂ Fish Id WardrobeDec 25
@Taweret i've recently been reminded, through a lovely reading in a podcast, that we see *other* ghosts in chains, desperate to help the people they should have helped when alive, but can't because they are dead and those people can't see them.
Show threadMedea Vanamonde 🏳️‍⚧️Dec 25
@Taweret also…kinda Gnostic
Show threadBradley Dec 25
@Taweret I was listening to a podcast this morning that was talking about how Christianity is noticeably absent in A Christmas Carol and they jokingly said that the first person to take Christ out of Christmas was Dickens.
Show threadMedea Vanamonde 🏳️‍⚧️Dec 25
@Taweret it reminds me a bit of Dante’s Inferno
Show threadTarren (They/Them)Dec 25
@Taweret @darth_hideout Interesting fact: Dickens was actually #Unitarian / #UnitarianUniversalist, and he wasn't aiming for the Christian savior-based Christmas image when he wrote "A Christmas Carol." (This brought to you by the #ChristmasEve #UU service which was based on #AChristmasCarol with some UU Christmas history thrown in for good measure.
Show threadssake1Mar 13
@tarrenvane @Taweret @darth_hideout
Regarding "A Christmas Carol," Dickens wasn't even the original author. All the spiritual elements came from one of the original co-authors, a young American woman named Abby Poyen Whittier. I think Dickens was no Christian, at all, but merely played the role, as he played the role of an author and social reformer. He was actually a massive plagiarist and an imposter.
Show threadBelisaurusDec 25

@Taweret I'm pretty much convinced that Christianity originated by a syncretism between Jewish theology, Greek culture and Buddhist teachings, and it is the ultimate product of Hellenism.

If we want to really understand the Gospel and truly follow Yeshua, we need to know and practice the Dhamma. Otherwise, it degrades down to mere idolatry and hypocrisy.

The Gospel projects the Purpose, and the Dhamma charts the Method.

Show threadFardels BearDec 25

@Taweret

Dickens was a skeptic, though he did place great emphasis on Christmas as a way to bring out compassion in people. I agree, it's a thoroughly Buddhist story. I just wrote an essay on A Christmas Carol for an OU module - wish I'd seen this post then. I would have credited you.

Show threadMaxDec 25

@Taweret I was thinking about this thread in context of the loose adaptation “Spirited” with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. I think it doubles down on the Buddhism given its deeper questions about karma, emphasis on the ripples a person makes in their life, and in how ghosts retire by reincarnation.

I don’t think it was intentionally trying to expand the Buddhism, but in expanding the original that was the obvious direction.

Show threadBruno NicolettiDec 26
@Taweret @Taweret That’s a very Calvinist view, Catholicism insists that salvation is a combination of faith and works, not grace. (Ex-catholic and devout athiest here).
Show threadGuillotine Jones, FlâneurDec 26
@Taweret
Wow, string of numbers, mind blown!