Little Dickens

On Christmas Eve, after the socializing is done, after the prezzies are wrapped and under the tree, after the pre-show viewing of “Merry Christmas Mr, Bean”, we pop “Scrooge” into the player and settle down to await our favourite moments. When you’ve seen a film that many times, there’s nothing new to be discovered … right?

Maybe. Maybe not. This year, I came away with a finer understanding of a story I’ve know my whole life. I enjoyed the movie as always (my favourite segment is Christmas Present), but my recent chanting of “let the past go” tripped me up a bit during the telling. If the past can’t be changed, I thought, why bother to revisit it?

Duh. It can’t be changed, but you can still learn from it. We are each a product of our past. History shows how we came to be – Ebenezer Scrooge was quite plainly fashioned in his youth to become the miserable old coot so brilliantly played by Alastair Sim. Ironically, he learned to fear loneliness and poverty so well that he became lonely and lived like a pauper despite the wealth he obtained in pursuit of … not happiness, exactly, but security and comfort. Christmas Past demonstrated that quite clearly, especially when Alice said to him, “You fear the world too much.” She had it right, though he argued intellectually that living defensively is the best protection against insecurity and discomfort.

I guess you could say that fear of the future changed his mind and thus changed his ways; again, maybe so, and maybe not. I saw his heart softening through the course of his night, he just thought himself too old for any change to make a difference. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I learned to articulate three things from “Scrooge” this year:

We are shaped by our past but not bound by it.

No one is ever too old to affect his future.

All we have is now.

So …

Release the past.

Embrace the present.

Change the future.

And God bless us, every one.