— A Christmas Carol (1843), Stave 4
About this quote
हिन्दी में
मैं क्रिसमस को अपने हृदय में सम्मान दूँगा, और पूरे साल उसे निभाने की कोशिश करूँगा।
What it means
Two different actions are promised, not one. Honour … in my heart is private regard; keep is the calendar word — a feast is kept, on a date, by doing something. The second half therefore converts a feeling into an observance, and that is the only half anyone else could ever notice.
The word that makes the promise credible is try. He does not vow to succeed, which is an odd thing to withhold in a conversion scene, and it is why the sentence survives being printed as pure warmth: what is actually offered is an attempt sustained over a period, not a height of feeling.
What it teaches you
Test a generous intention by asking whether it has a recurring occasion attached. A standing monthly transfer, a fixed day for the visit, a repeating reminder to check on the relative who lives alone — that is what keeping means here, and such arrangements work precisely because they do not require you to feel as moved in March as you did in December.
अर्थ और सीख
यहाँ दो अलग-अलग वादे हैं: हृदय में सम्मान देना भीतरी बात है, और निभाना कैलेंडर का शब्द है — कोई पर्व निभाया जाता है, किसी दिन, कुछ करके। कोशिश करूँगा कहना ही इस वचन को भरोसेमंद बनाता है, क्योंकि यह सफलता का दावा नहीं करता। सीख: किसी अच्छे इरादे को टिकाना है तो उसे किसी नियमित तारीख या दोहराई जाने वाली व्यवस्था से बाँध दें, वरना भावना कुछ ही दिनों में ठंडी पड़ जाती है।
Where it comes from
Scrooge at the graveside, in the final and bleakest of the three visitations. The promise is made in terror, which the story does not hide.
What keeps it from being sentimental is the phrase ‘all the year’. Dickens’s complaint was never that people failed to feel generous in December; it was that the feeling reliably expired in January.
