Happy Boxing Day

My favorite Christmas movie is “A Christmas Carol” or “Scrooge”, particularly the 1951 version with Alistair Sim: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044008/. Unfortunately, the Dickens inspired classic seems to have fallen out of favor. Even “It’s a Wonderful Life” doesn’t get the play it used to. “A Christmas Story” about young Ralphie’s desire for a BB-gun seems to be the new classic.

This year, I caught most of a version of “A Christmas Carol” with Scrooge played by Patrick Stewart. It was pretty good, not as good as the 1951 version, but it satisfied the Scrooge craving.

One of my favorite SNL skits involved imagining the consequences of Scrooge’s change of heart a year later. Everybody took advantage of and abused his generosity. Cratchit was chronically tardy and unproductive. Charities hounded Scrooge relentlessly. His business was going to hell. It was pretty funny, but I don’t imagine that is how Scrooge’s life turned out

Scrooge gained by his opening himself to others and to community. His firm, which he had devoted his life to building, would have continuity even after his death as Scrooge involved his nephew Fred and Bob’s son in the business. What would have become of Scrooge & Marley, Ltd had Scrooge died a lonely miser?

Scrooge began to take pleasure in his wealth by sharing it and allowing himself to live more completely. He became part of his church, his neighborhood, his family, and the business community. He did so freely and without resentment borne of obligation. As he aged and grew feeble, he could rely on the support of loved ones, and he could go to his rest knowing that he would be remembered fondly and that he had made a difference in the world.

This doesn’t mean that he became a socialist or rejected his capitalist ways. On the contrary, he kept the firm going and expanded it. He would have known from the spirits’ lessons that the state was not the answer to the evils that came in the wake of the Industrial Revolution (and there were evils, mind you, as well as good from this transition); rather, it would be voluntary person to person love and engagement that would ameliorate the bad conditions identified by Dickens. And he would have spent his money on himself and others instead of hoarding it with a positive impact on the local economy.

I suspect that I like “A Christmas Story” so much because it holds out the hope of redemption and conversion. Although I am not a miser, being more a spendthrift, I am, like Scrooge, cut off emotionally and socially from my fellow human beings more than I would like to be and more than I ought to be. I am terribly challenged by this and sometimes don’t know where to begin to remedy it. On the one hand, I crave community; yet, on the other hand, I shun it and its demands.