I’ve been thinking about a mythical, historical Christmas dinner lately. It’s the one that featured a cooked goose, hissing gravy, mashed potatoes, the gush of stuffing, two small children gorged in sage and onion to the eyebrows, and a pudding regarded as the greatest success achieved by the housewife since the beginning of her marriage. But it’s the Christmas toast proposed by the man of the house, I’ve remembered this week.
“I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge,” announced Bob Cratchit in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, “the founder of the feast.”
“Such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge,” Mrs. Cratchit scowls. And then she relents at her husband’s insistence, “I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s.”