Bah! Humbug!

It's the day of Christmas Eve. If this post is going to get written, this is definitely the time. "Bah! Humbug!" is probably the most famous line delivered by Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge. For family, I will take the trouble to point out that this is NOT Charles Dikkens, the well-known Dutch author.

Is Christmas a humbug? It seems to be a question worth asking, although by the time I finish, I hope to have shown that no good answer can be given. "Bah!" need not delay us much. It is phatic speech, so we don't need to look for a meaning. It is an expression of disgust and is clearly appropriate to Mr. Scrooge on the occasion of Christmas. But what is a humbug?

Ordinarily, I turn to etymology for help, but this time some people offer guesses and other just give up. Skeat thinks possibly hum, an old verb meaning “to hoax or cajole” and bug, a contraction of bugbear, “a spectre or ghost.” You have to admit that isn’t very much help.

But a humbug, and this word was in use with this meaning at least a century before Dickens brought it to our attention, is “something made or done to cheat or deceive,” a fraud, a sham, a hoax. That gives us something to work with. Is Christmas a fraud, a sham, and a hoax?

We come now to the question of what “Christmas” means to those who are putting it on and what it means to those who are receiving it. That’s not a lot of analysis, but it is enough to establish that something may be offered as a sham and received as a genuine gift or offered as a genuine gift and received as a sham. This isn’t like “valuable property” in Florida which, when you examine it, turns out to be a swamp. This is like a thoughtlessly given present that turns out to be absolutely perfect and that turns the recipient’s day into a glory of celebration. Where’s the humbug?

If the humbuggery of Christmas is a matter of a transaction between persons, then both how and why it is offered and how and why it is received, matter a great deal. A superb receiver can make “Christmas” truly wonderful in exactly the same way that an engaged student can make an otherwise mediocre lecture wonderful or an ardent parishioner can make a mediocre sermon wonderful. (I was going to say “an uninspiring sermon,” thereby falling into my own trap is attributing the effect to the product as if the spirit in which it was received could not redeem it—oops.)

So I think I would say that Christmas could be a humbug to many who trade upon the season and to many who endure it because they cannot find an acceptable way to evade it. But the moment you say “… a humbug to…” the meaning is transformed. Anyone with the wit, the insight, and the self-discipline can un-humbug Christmas for himself and for everyone around him.

Daunting, isn’t it? Merry Christmas to all and to all, a good night.