“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.’’ E.S. in A Christmas Carol


For many years, I have been using Dickens’ classic tale and the character of Scrooge as a means of illustrating concepts of later-life integrity and despair in a course on human development. Erik Erikson termed the last of his eight life crises, ego integrity versus despair. He thought that the task of achieving ego integrity, the sense that one has lived a successful life that mattered, began in middle adulthood but was most central in late adulthood. Despair occupied the ruminative opposite of integrity, and was characterized by regret, guilt and the hopelessness. There is no hope, after all, to reverse time and give it all another and wiser try.

But maybe for a lucky few deep, deep reflection (and a visitation from three spirits) could illuminate toward acceptance and a second chance.


The despairing Ebenezer Scrooge’s existential confrontation with a troubled past, present and potential future illuminates our Holiday season and depicts a question central to aging and death: “was mine a meaningful life?” Scrooge’s reconciliation with the past allows for an affirmation of Christmas and the values of charity and kindness.

But perhaps none of us ought to count on the chance visit of three spirits in our later years to make things good. Instead, as we hear Dickens’ story at holidays to come, may we all be reminded of Erikson’s profound theory of integrity vs. despair, and come again and again to our own sense of the meaningful life.