In my annual reading of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” I got stuck at the visit of Scrooge’s nephew, which is pretty early in the book. Never finished it this year. I’ve been trying to figure out if I am Scrooge or Fred.
Although we don’t want to admit it, I think we all battle against becoming a Scrooge. And these interesting times we live in make it awfully easy to become a grouchy old man. Indeed, when the nephew pleads “Don’t be cross, uncle”, Scrooge replies, “What else can I be, when I live in such a world of fools as this?”
He has a point. Where to start?
• Congress doesn’t even try to balance the books; they can’t agree on anything except spending more money than they have. They struggle to even hang on to a Speaker, but they’re getting pretty good at impeachment. That might be more a reflection on the people who get elected president, but the sad truth is, all of these people keep getting re-elected.
• Which brings us to our nauseous political climate and the prospect of having the same two candidates in 2024 that we had in 2020.
• The world has too many bad guys and we cannot agree on how to deal with them.
• I worry about the national debt we are leaving our grandchildren, yet those “fools” Scrooge references won’t even acknowledge there’s problem.
• Something called “artificial intelligence” may threaten the human race but I struggle to comprehend what exactly it is. “Big data” is bad enough. I recently got a birthday card from a candidate for next May’s Congressional primary who I have only met once very briefly and have had no other relationship. I am positive he has no idea who I am. What makes him think that I’d be impressed by his birthday greeting? How does he even know when my birthday is?
Like Scrooge, “What else can I be?”
Yet each year when I re-read Dickens’ story and watch a handful of video versions, I am always in agreement with the nephew.
“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come around — apart from the veneration due to its scared name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable time…” Fred opines.
So which will you be in this year’s holiday tale: Scrooge or Fred?
Maybe the point is that despite everything Scrooge throws at his nephew — including his preference to eternal damnation rather than dining with Fred on Christmas Day, a line I’ve always felt Dickens took a bit too far (but I digress) — Fred keeps his good cheer. He does not let Scrooge, or the problems of the world, dim his own optimism.
And neither does the hapless clerk, Bob Cratchit. After being badgered for picking his employer’s pocket for taking a day off, he skips merrily home and spends a blissful day with his family amid their meager means, even toasting to the health of — as the Missus puts it — “such an odious, stingy, unfeeling man.”
“‘My dear,’ was Bob’s mild answer, ‘Christmas Day.’”
It would, of course, be easier to be a Scrooge than a Fred or a Bob Cratchit, if not for Christmas itself. As Fred puts it, “its sacred name and origin” directs us, as Paul wrote to the Romans, to “not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Tiny Tim’s benediction is never more needed. Have a Blessed Christmas, every one.
miller@news-banner.com
