The American Spectator

IN THE END, THERE are worse crimes than buying someone you love something they actually want. Lest we forget, the first good act Ebenezer Scrooge carried out after his terrifying night with the three ghosts in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was to hire a boy to go buy the Cratchits the “prize turkey” from the Poulterer’s.

“What, the one as big as me?” the boy asks, taking off quick as a shot when Scrooge promises him a shilling to retrieve the bird, half-a-crown if he can do it in less than five minutes. Thus does the crass pursuit of profit, goods and services pollute even the penultimate moment of one of the most beloved Christmas tales.

Granted, were the Buy Nothings to succeed this year, it would be amusing to watch America’s Class Warriors seize on lower holiday sales reports as proof positive legions of Bob Cratchits in John Edwards’ Other America were being denied holiday cheer by the onset of the Bush Depression. Perhaps compromise is possible. We could all agree to don festive red and green cilices while we shop. Let them cut deep when we reach for a bargain. This way we could be legitimately miserable even in the midst of the good fortune to find ourselves by accident of birth in such a privileged land.

American Spectator Contributing Editor Shawn Macomber is writing a book on the Global Class War.