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A Further Perspective
Lessons From Scrooge
A Christmas Carol offers guidance for our lives this season — and year round.
A Christmas Carol is to my family what the Bible was to my grandparents or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was to young families forging through the eighties. If I’m home for Christmas, I’ll often see the play performed at the renowned Guthrie Theater, in Minneapolis. If not, I catch a film version or hunker down with the actual novella in hand. Published in 1864, the story captured the hearts and minds of readers then — even compelling them to action — and offers maxims everyone should consider today.
Live Modestly
Ebenezer Scrooge and his
mantra — “Bah! Humbug!” — has become so infamous the character
itself has become a proprietary eponym. Tell someone who’s rolling
his eyes at another Christmas carol “Don’t be a Scrooge!” and he
will laugh or cringe at the inference. Nevertheless, Scrooge isn’t
all bad. One of my favorite lines, which nearly always makes a live
play audience chuckle, is the narrator’s observation that “Darkness
is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.” (Attempt it with a British accent
and laugh even more.) Obviously Scrooge hoarded his money, was a
lousy boss, and behaved selfishly, but as it relates to American
excess, Scrooge’s miserly ways were onto something.
According to Business Insider, Americans throw $165 billion worth of food in the trash and waste $146 billion worth of energy every year. Likewise, NerdWallet contends nearly half of the households in the United States carry a credit card balance and those indebted homes owe an average of around $15,000. (While this is actually slightly lower than 2009 figures, they estimate it’s because of defaults, not repayments.)
So while you may not forgo paying your heat or electricity bill à la Scrooge, making steps towards living within your means, like going without cable or that daily $4.00 latte can help pave the way towards more meaningful living.
Give Generously
One of the early
conflicts in the story is the pitiful way Scrooge treats his
employee, Bob Cratchit, father of Tiny Tim, a cripple. He
reluctantly allows him Christmas Day off, unpaid of course, and
never utters a kind word for work well done. (“[A] squeezing,
wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!”)
After the three spirits, Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come,
visit Scrooge, he vows to change his perspective on people, wealth,
and the holiday: “Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all,
and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a
second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as
good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city,
town, or borough, in the good old world.” Many well-known writers,
business people, and politicians have reacted to reading A
Christmas Carol by giving more in some way.
Americans are a charitable people, some say the most in the world. In 2010, Forbes reported corporations gave $4.9 billion. According to this pie chart from the Congressional Budget Report, donors who make up to $200,000 give the most — between 57-67% — to religious organizations, which often use their gifts to aid the poor. As income rises, say among those who make $1 million or more, they give less to religious organizations (17%) and even less to the category dubbed “Organizations Devoted to Helping Meet Basic Needs” (4%). We are generous, but we can still do more. Consider living leaner, so you can give more to those truly in need.
Spend Wisely
Ebenezer Scrooge got to see
what no one does: his future. When the third Spirit, the Ghost of
Christmas Yet to Come, begins his tour, Scrooge has already started
to realize how quickly life passes, begging him to “Lead on! The
night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead
on, Spirit!” When he peers into his future and realizes he is
mocked for his miserly ways and dies a wealthy but lonely man, he
weeps and beaks down at the sight of his grave. He proclaims with
anguish hoping to change his fate: “I will honour Christmas in my
heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past,
the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive
within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh,
tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”
The next day, with the magical gift of prophecy (unfulfilled) in mind, Scrooge becomes a different man, spending his time, money, and himself much wiser than before: On the things — and most importantly, the people — who matter. None of us has the gift of foresight, or a Spirit who will show us how people perceive us at the end of our lives, but we don’t need one to analyze our priorities, shift focus, and concentrate on the people in life who matter most.
Who says a book written almost 150 years ago has no truisms for life today: Bah! Humbug!
About the Author
Nicole Russell writes from Northern Virginia.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (8) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Nicole Russell
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Albert Constantine Jr.| 12.24.12 @ 9:44AM
The story of Scrooge is instructive in the season in which it occurs. While thrift, capitalism and free markets are superior qualities or systems to order or sustain a society; on their own, they can be heartless and cruel, unless the people who practice them are themselves moral. As a result, the religious awakening during the celebration of the birth of Jesus imbues Ebeneezer with the spirit of His compassion, where he chooses to share his bounty with those less fortunate than he has been.
Scrooge did not assail the economic system, scrapping it in favor of a more fair one where everyone would share equally in its lack of prosperity, nor did he demand that all adopt his brand of concern for the less fortunate, forcing them to turn over increasing shares of their wealth to be redistributed. As such, “A Christmas Carol” is a story of a path to individual redemption, instead of the road map to increased misery that the other approaches always portend.
Harry the Horrible| 12.24.12 @ 10:03AM
Dunno. The older I get, the more sympathy I have with the unreformed Scrooge. He did a lot of stupid and selfish things, but the more I read about welfare and food stamp abuse, the more I wonder why there are there no poorhouses.
Too many of the "less fortunate" have turned the safety net into a comfortable hammock.
Petronius| 12.24.12 @ 10:27AM
A wonderful twist on the old overenterprising miser is my favorite Christmas film, We're No Angels starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, and Aldo Ray as 3 convicts who escape prison on Devils Island. They have nothing except a pet venomous snake named Adolph, the facilitator of a little cosmic justice in a real ghostly fashion as the hand unseen, and want nothing but a little common decency extended toward them for the 2 days they spend at their liberty. They take up with a merchant who can't run a fever, Leo G. Carrol, and his family to end up defending their interest from the Scroogy brugly other, Basil Rathbone. It's a great take on seasonal misrule as well as misadventure, and that ultimate fantasy, the happy ending. The moral of the story is, you can sometimes be at the bottom of the ladder and on top of the world, like the Cratchitt household.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 12.24.12 @ 10:36AM
One of my Christmas favorites, which I think was one of (if not) the last films that Bogie made.
Occam's Tool| 12.24.12 @ 4:14PM
Kindness is different from extortion. Liberals, having no real kindness, know only extortion. If charities had to depend on the donations of Biden and Obama, this might have some cause, but given that Conservatives tend to donate much more to charities than Liberals do, it is nonsense.
7-08| 12.25.12 @ 12:42AM
Here is a Christmas story:
My mother is 92 and in my care, we lost my father, also 92, several years ago. It is just her and I now. Every year we make and decorate sugar cookies for Christmas, and this has been such a sacred ritual that there is a drawer in the kitchen dedicated to the tools needed. In the assortment of rolling pins, spatulas and baking sheets are two dilapidated aluminum cookie cutters. She always asks if they are there and I have often wondered why she keeps them.
I finally ask her and here is what she said; “Mike, when your father and I were first married we built the old house on Adams street. The first Christmas we did not have the money, and the lumber yard did not have the wood to finish anything but the basement. We did splurge and buy some cookie cutters, those two are the only ones left. They are metal just like all the people that came out of the war. I only eat the cookies made with those cutters because they remind me of your father and they taste sweeter.”
Merry Christmas everybody.
Clearcreek| 12.26.12 @ 2:56PM
Nay, Ms. Russell, I must disagree. We can, in fact, have the Spirit of past/present/future, for we can have the Spirit of God Himself, resident within our hearts. He is Lord of days to come, and He is able to change hearts, minds and futures all three. In fact, it was His work in English society which laid the foundation for Dicken's story, and He it is who softens the hearts of sinners toward the less fortunate. Indeed, my family is "rich" (liberal's definition) and yet without Christ, we too would be Scrooge.
As this year closes, perhaps on a wintery day, you & I should each visit a cemetery. If you do, and if you run your fingers over the stone letters of some rich and powerful name, you will be reminded of how fleeting all that Scrooge used to love is.
Only two things in this fallen world will last forever: God's truth in Scripture, and ... Tiny Tim. May we all live with the Spirit's help now so we might join him when graves are broken and the new age comes.
Aristocat| 12.27.12 @ 3:41AM
Yes, I visited an old cemetery and read this inscription: "As you are now, I once was. As I am now, you will be."