I know this is the season to deck the halls and make everything warm and bright, but that’s just not happening for a lot of our fellow Americans. Don’t get me wrong, I love this time of year as much as everyone who’s able to fulfill their families’ holiday wishes, but to an alarming extent, things haven’t changed significantly for many of us since Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” during the holiday season of 1843.
The background for that classic is that Dickens had grown up in poverty himself — his father served several stints in debtors’ prison — and it made Dickens very aware of and sympathetic about the plight of the working poor. Several of his books before “Carol” had dealt with those class issues — most of us can probably recall at least “Oliver Twist.”
But then in October of that year, Dickens was asked to give a speech at the Manchester Athenaeum (not our Manchester), and the poverty all around his visit there made a profound impact. He quickly realized that one speech about social justice and reform wouldn’t have nearly the punch of a captivating story that many of his readers would take to heart. The result was that once back in London, Dickens became a man possessed, and in the space of two months, he not only wrote the entire tale and had the volume lavishly illustrated, but then he published it himself in time for Christmas.
The reaction was a cultural phenomenon in Britain, on a par with the Beatles 120 years later. Printing after printing sold out immediately, and the little book has never been out of print. Countless movies have been made (I’m partial to the 1938 version with Reginald Owen as Scrooge) and schools and theatres all over the world have made it an annual holiday event. Only “Our Town” may rival its popularity on stage.
As I started to say, though, the trouble is that the story’s message has rarely been realized on a national scale, and that sad state of affairs continues in the United States of 2025. I could bury us all in statistics to prove the case, but just think of these local low points: There’s been no increase in the federal minimum wage since 2009, and New Hampshire has held that Scroogy line the whole time, despite that every other New England state now has a minimum of about twice the rate. Even if many employers pay more, it’s the principle of the thing as much as anything else. And when we talk about the New Hampshire “advantage,” whose advantage do we mean when the age for someone to become a new homeowner here has increased from 28 to 40 in a single lifetime?
And now we’ve given big fat tax breaks to those who don’t need them at all — even here in New Hampshire, we’ve just repealed the interest and dividends tax, which only people with interest and dividends on their investments care about. But on a national scale, we’re now going to make it so even people working two jobs can’t afford health insurance any longer. When I was at the court, we had many uninsured defendants being sued by health care providers, and whose only recourse became bankruptcy, though they often couldn’t afford even to file for that protection. Which meant they had no credit at all, couldn’t get a car loan to get to a job, couldn’t pay rent or feed their families, and eventually ended up homeless and living with their children in a dilapidated car. But heaven forbid they should get any help with groceries because “why don’t they just get a job — or another job — instead of walking around with their hands out?” The trouble is, you often can’t get a job if you don’t have an address, and how can you work anyhow if you have to pay nearly all you earn for child care? It’s a vicious world at the poverty level.
At least Bob Cratchit had a job to start with and a place to live, and somehow he managed to feed all those kids on what Scrooge paid him.
This is what much of America’s dark underbelly looks like these days, and it must seem to those suffering under these circumstances that there’s just no way out at all. Most of us hardly notice these folks because we rarely interact with them, and we don’t know their back stories.
Look, I’m not trying to spoil your eggnog. And I’m not counting on us to forsake all the good fortune we may have worked hard to achieve. I’m not a socialist either, and I’m not trying to redistribute wealth from top to bottom. But those at the top already receive at least six times the tax benefits, subsidies and government giveaways than those below the poverty line — you can look it up — so why are some of us so reluctant to throw a few life-saving crumbs down the ladder to those floundering below us? All I’m suggesting is just to level the playing field a bit, and the tragedy is that we could do that with a congressional vote any day of the week.
So, this holiday season, while we make our year-end contributions, let’s keep remembering the Peterborough Players and Monadnock Chorus, but let’s not forget the local food banks, End 68 Hours of Hunger, and Toys for Tots cards we can pick up all over town.
And if you want to know more about the expansive divide between most of us and those nearly invisible others, I suggest “Poverty, by America” by Matthew Desmond. It’s a quick read, but the statistics and consequences of our current economic policies will overwhelm you.
In the meantime, let’s all have a merrier Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, whatever, once we know we’ve done whatever small things we ourselves can do. Oh, and we’ve voted whenever we can.
L. Phillips Runyon III has practiced law in Peterborough for 50 years and was the presiding justice of the 8th Circuit Court for 27 years.