Reassessing Mr. Scrooge

Every year at Christmas time it is the same old thing. Families gather around the hearth, eat too many cookies, drink hot chocolate, and perpetuate the myth surrounding one of literature’s most complex and misunderstood characters, Charles Dickens’s Ebeneezer Scrooge of A Christmas Carol.

The tale of parsimony, spirits, and redemption is what is known as a holiday chestnut, as much a part of the season’s traditions as colored lights, snowmen, and Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas.” From Alastair Sim, Seymour Hicks, and Reginald Owen in early black and white film versions, to Albert Finney, Michael Caine, George C. Scott, and even Jim Carrey in later efforts, the eye opening revelations of old Jacob Marley and his three spooky sidekicks that lead Scrooge to a life of fulfillment and generosity have delighted audiences while ignoring the important fact that Scrooge was grossly misunderstood.

Mr. Scrooge was, by trade, a moneylender. Hello? A moneylender. People get themselves into debt, you give them money, they are supposed to pay you back. He was not a loan shark, nor did he have henchmen with lead pipes to break the kneecaps of his delinquent clients. We are not talking Tony Soprano here. Scrooge was chastised for expecting payment when payment was due.

He was looked down on for threatening to claim the collateral he was rightfully owed as a result of nonpayment by his clients. Is that not what collateral is for? Did anyone force his deadbeat clients to go into debt and live beyond their means? Do we get to keep our houses and cars when we fail to send in our checks with the payment stub by the fifteenth of the month?

As for clerk Bob Cratchit’s meager salary—over which we are urged to have pity—were there no other jobs in all of England? Was he shackled to his desk, unable to offer his services elsewhere? Or perhaps he had simply reached his highest level of competence and should have been most thankful for having a position at all so as to be able to feed his wife and their brood of youngsters.

Scrooge is taken to task for not donating money when solicitors approach him, during business hours, no less. Was he to have been pleased over having his work day interrupted? Could they not have sent a letter with a request for support?

He was, no doubt, a very busy man, what with trying to keep up with his lackadaisical clients and all. Remember, his partner had died seven years earlier, leaving him to take care of everything on his own. Still, Scrooge generously maintained Marley’s name right beside his own above the office door.

Incidentally, was not charity optional in those days as it is now? The solicitors acted as if it were an obligation even though as Scrooge pointed out, he provided his share of taxes to support the prisons and workhouses. He apparently was not in arrears in his obligations as were many of those to whom he loaned money. He was true to his obligations to society.

Let us not forget Scrooge’s nephew, who, rather than showing respect toward his old uncle, insisted that he change to meet the nephew’s expectations. Should not the family patriarch have been permitted to celebrate, or not celebrate, the holidays in his preferred way?

Even though Scrooge politely requested, “Nephew, keep Christmas in your way, and let me keep it mine.” Simple. Clear. Honest. Instead of honoring the request, the simple wish of an older relative, the nephew replied with a curt, “But you don’t keep it.”

And while we are at it, let’s talk about the Grinch…

Kent resident Lou Orfanella is a teacher and the author of 14 books, most recently the poetry collection Objects in Mirror are Closer than they Appear, Brief Encounters: Flash Fiction, and the play A Cabin in the Pines.