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To: PieterCasparzen

When it was written, Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was understood by all and sundry who read it as a critique not of miserliness, but of Puritanism, with its disdain for feasts, for ostentation of any sort, and its idea that God’s favor included (or perhaps was most shown by) material prosperity. The choice of Ebenezer as the name for the protagonist was meant to make the point more obvious: the Puritans much more so than other Christians in the 16th through 19th centuries were given to using Hebrew-derived names.


5 posted on 11/26/2011 12:31:55 PM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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To: The_Reader_David
The choice of Ebenezer as the name for the protagonist was meant to make the point more obvious: the Puritans much more so than other Christians in the 16th through 19th centuries were given to using Hebrew-derived names.

I had figured that Ebenezer ("rock of help" in Hebrew) had something to do with his character.

7 posted on 11/26/2011 1:40:21 PM PST by Fiji Hill
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