*News on the day after Thanksgiving often shows people at the doorways of some stores in pre-dawn displays of violent incivility, literally stepping on one another in the mad rush to claim some big discounts on electronic gadgets just as soon as the businesses opens. (I wonder which of these electronic playthings will be obsolete by next year, setting up another mad rush for the next generations of the same items in Christmases to come.)

*Women at one store a few years back were overheard as they looked at an elaborate creche scene of Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, animals, and shepherds. One of them said, "Can you believe this? Why are they forcing religion into the holidays?"

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew, "Christmas among the rest.

"But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas-time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

"And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

"A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"

Which all the [Cratchit] family re-echoed.

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