Matches - January 24, 2012

Quick walks down the block this morning and again this evening, and much to-ing and fro-ing in the interim... it was one of those days where there was a lot scheduled and not much time to sit and breathe.

I remember a lot more written in to Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Little Match Girl." It is surprisingly short, actually. In this it works better than some of its more florid peers; Dickens comes to mind. Not that Dickens "doesn't work," but in his over-sentimental mood he gets maudlin.

No, Andersen's story is actually matter-of-fact. Oh, and it's set on New Year's Eve, not Christmas.

The thing is, people do still freeze to death. Not many—I'm looking for statistics; I know someone keeps track of cause of death for accidents, but death from hypothermia is rare enough to be hard to find in national statistics as to be hard to find. A CDC report says 2622 people died from "Exposure to natural cold" from 1999 through 2002. Preumably the rate has historically been higher, but since the time that disease has been tracked scientifically at least, that is what the statisticians have paid attention to (see this data from 19th century Britain, for example).

And yet, the vision of the little match girl haunts us. The implication that we could welcome the poor inside with us, that it is our selfishness that keeps them outside, is an accusation hard to argue against.