The Ghosts of Christmas Past
"External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he."
- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
Jesus said "For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me." (Matthew 26:11) Today, homelessness spills into streets in cities across the country, food pantries regularly run out of food and elderly people on fixed incomes have to make hard choices between food and medicine. So, yes, they are still with us.
For centuries, empires and nation-states have tried to solve the problem of the poor. After all, poor people can be unsightly. They can be rude. Difficult. Messy. But Jesus also had other things to say about them. Things like, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40).
The poor, per Jesus's words, are the personification of Him here on earth. He sticks up for them. He says he will comfort them. He identifies as poor. Help the poor, you help Jesus. Abuse the poor, you abuse Jesus.
Unfortunately, we humans have been blowing it with the poor for a very long time. Since we're in the Christmas season, I thought it instructive to spend some time reviewing the problem of the poor in Victorian England, particularly during the time Dickens wrote his immortal "A Christmas Carol."
The Victorian era's approach to poverty was built on a foundation of cruelty masked as virtue. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 created a system that turned poverty into a crime and punishment into policy. The workhouses of Dickens' time were more than mere shelters – they were prisons for the poor, designed to make poverty so unbearable that any alternative would seem preferable.
Families entering workhouses were immediately separated. Husbands from wives, parents from children, siblings from each other. The reasoning behind the policy was cold and bureaucratic. Family bonds might provide comfort, and comfort was not part of the program. Their poverty was seen as a moral defect, a personal sin of laziness or vice, rather than the predictable outcome of an economic system that concentrated wealth in the hands of factory owners while denying workers basic protections, fair wages, or any meaningful path to financial security.
The daily routine in workhouses was deliberately punishing. Adults were assigned meaningless, backbreaking labor like breaking stones or picking apart old rope, a form of hard labor that involved separating the fibers from old ropes to create a material used to fill gaps and seal seams, known as oakum picking. Children as young as seven worked alongside adults. The food was barely edible – thin gruel, dry bread, and the occasional piece of cheese. Living conditions were squalid. Disease ran rampant through overcrowded dormitories.
This system wasn't born of necessity. It was a choice. The same Victorian era that produced these workhouses also saw unprecedented wealth creation. While children died of preventable diseases in workhouses, the upper classes enjoyed an explosion of prosperity brought by the Industrial Revolution. It wasn't about poverty management. It was poverty punishment.
The echoes of this systemic cruelty reverberate today. When we cut funding for social services while simultaneously giving tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals, we're headed toward making the same choice. When we criminalize homelessness rather than address its root causes, we're following the Victorian playbook. When we blame poverty on personal failings rather than examining structural problems within society, we're channeling the spirit of the 1834 Poor Law.
Christianity's teachings on poverty stand in stark contrast to these punitive approaches. The early Christian church was radical in its approach to poverty, with the Book of Acts describing believers selling their possessions to ensure no one among them was in need (Acts 4:34-35).
The biblical mandate is quite clear. "If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?" (1 John 3:17) This isn't presented as a suggestion. It's a fundamental demonstration of how faith needs to be acted on. The Bible presents care for the poor not as charity, but as justice, not as optional but as essential.
Today's approach to poverty should never mirror Victorian cruelty, It should rather reflect our knowledge of poverty's complex causes. Research shows that poverty is often the result of systemic barriers like inadequate education, lack of healthcare access, and generational cycles that are difficult to break without some external help.
When Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol," he wasn't just telling a ghost story – he was indicting an entire system of structural cruelty. The real horror wasn't Marley's ghost but the ghost of indifference that allowed children to die in workhouses while the wealthy dined on Christmas goose.
As we approach another Christmas season, we should remember that the measure of our society isn't found in our GDP growth or stock market gains, but in how we treat "the least of these." The ghosts of Christmas past still haunt us, but they don't have to define our future. We can choose a different path – one that recognizes that poverty is not a personal moral failing but a collective challenge that requires 360-degree community-driven solutions.
The poor may always be with us, but how we treat them is entirely our choice. In the end, that choice reveals not who they are, but who we are.