Christmas Present: Ignorance and Want are no match for Pung family

Near the end of Scrooge's other-worldly journey with the ghost of Christmas Present, the shade introduces two important characters: Man's children, Ignorance and Want.

"They were a boy and a girl," Dickens writes in The Christmas Carol. "Yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility.

"Where graceful youth should have filled their features out and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted them and pulled them into shreds.

"Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked and glared out menacing…

"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is doom, unless the writing be erased."

The key, of course, lies in the last line - "unless the writing be erased."

Christmas Present offered Scrooge the chance to mend his ways - use his gifts and talents to "erase" Ignorance and Want, at least in his own personal dealings with family and associates.

Up until last Thursday, the message I had planned to deliver in this installment of my little Dickinson trilogy had that theme at its core.

Ignorance and Want are still very much present with us today - here in Clinton County and around the world - as they have been throughout recorded history, and will be to some extent until this world ends.

Christmas Present includes the faces of hungry children, homeless families, and individuals whose lack of knowledge and limited capacity for understanding breeds the fear and contempt that lead to savage and desperate acts of violence.

We must acknowledge the presence of Ignorance and Want and make a true effort toward their elimination - or "beware the boy" and the doom that is written on his brow.

Not a very cheery Christmas column - but that was pretty much the plan until I received a telephone call from Beth Simon. She knew I sometimes included bits and pieces of information about local folks in my columns and thought she had something that might be interesting.

What she told me provides the perfect 'other half' to this Christmas Present column - news of good cheer and hope for a brighter Christmas Yet to Come.

It seems that Beth's grandmother, Anna Pung of Fowler, got the best Christmas Present possible recently in the form of her first great-great-grandchild, Madison Halfman, the new baby daughter of Mike and Laura Halfman of Perrinton.

A great-great-grandchild is a wonderful blessing; but as Beth informed me, little Madison is a small part of much bigger group of Pung offspring.

Anna and her husband, Harold who passed away 19 years ago, had 14 children - seven sons and seven daughters. Those children produced 76 grandchildren, and they in turn gave Anna 165 great-grandchildren.

Now, that's a family.

Beth says the clan gathers each Christmas and at 93-years-young, Anna still greets each one by name.

That's a remarkable lady.

Just as I know with absolute certainty that Ignorance and Want exist in Christmas Present, I also believe there are many, many families like Anna's who, although they may not be as big in numbers, carry in their hearts and souls those gifts and talents that must be used to erase the doom from the boy's brow.

The final chapter of Christmas Yet to Come is still unwritten - it’s up to each of us to take Christmas Present and draft an outcome we will all want to share in.

Anna has certainly done her part - and will continue to for generations to come.