There's only one Ebenezer Scrooge

Ghost of Jacob Marley

There's only one show that never grows old for me at Christmastime, and that is the 1951 film in black-and-white, "A Christmas Carol," which starred Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge. It is such a masterful performance that no other version of the show can touch it. You can have your "Charlie Brown Christmas," your Grinch, "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" -- even the rather wonderful "A Christmas Story" with Ralphie and the Bumpass hounds and fishnet-stocking-legged lamp. For me, it's all about Ebenezer Scrooge.

I was just four years old, maybe five, when I first saw "A Christmas Carol," and I still find surprises in it after all these years. It seems especially appropriate this year, as I enter the Christmas season with a thanksgiving I haven't felt for a long time, having been too sick the past few years to celebrate Christmas at all.


Dickens is said to have been the first writer to "secularize" the Christmas story, but I find the true spirit of Christmas here -- the wonderful rebirth and change of heart in old Ebenezer happens to young and old alike at this time of year. The real spirit of Christmas swoops down and touches us when we least expect it.


Now, my wish for all of us is that we don't have to be visited by Jacob Marley's ghost to be shown our "Christmas Past," "Christmas Present" and "Christmas-yet-to-come" to wake us up to the wonders of Christmas. It's there all year round, every year, just waiting for us. It can be a piece of music, the look in a child's eye, or the reminiscences of someone in her final stage of life. The red kettles and ringing bells of the Salvation Army, the sound of a church bell, the family in need we never noticed before, the light of a candle -- any or all of these things can open the door to what Christmas really means. 


I'm afraid I've been a bit of a Scrooge the past few years--thinking more about my illness, my fears, my life--than the new life of the Christ child. And here we are, nearly 2012 years later, retelling the story of a manger, a brilliant star, shepherds, and wise men, the age-old story eliciting our better angels and giving us reason to celebrate and to share what we have with others. Even if you don't have money to spend, maybe especially if you don't, you can slow down a bit, do a kindness for a stranger (or a neighbor), volunteer to make someone else's Christmas a little brighter. It has never been about the presents and the shopping and the holiday parties, except that those things bring us together with friends and family members and give us an opportunity to be generous to others in small ways.

Ebenezer Dancing with His Stunned
Housekeeper

The Redeemed Ebenezer

Alastair Sim's Scrooge appeared beyond redemption until he awoke from his dream on Christmas morning, threw open his shutters, and let love into his stone-cold heart. Christmas is magic. All we really have to do is throw open the window and let some of that magic in!