Ruminations on Scrooge

I’m sitting here with The Muppets Christmas Carol playing in the background, which I’m sure is ironic in some pleasant way, and I’m thinking about the character of Scrooge and what he can, or should, teach us.  There is an email listserv I belong to which has, of late, had a “reclaiming Scrooge” thread going.  The idea, as I understand it, is the very laudable desire to reject the commercialism and materialism of our modern holiday celebrations, and what better icon for this rejection than Ebenezer Scrooge?  Dickens did us all a disservice by, inadvertently, creating a character who represents the demonization of thrift, anti-materialism, and many other such values that those of us on this list would like to bring back into our lives.  We should all try to reclaim the values that Scrooge represents, and turn our backs on thoughtless purchasing, participating in holiday festivities just for the sake of keeping up appearances and all the other activities that seem to make us all so bloody miserable—and broke—each year.  This is, to me, an admirable goal, but also a mistake.  It is mistaken in a very subtle way, and a way which, if we ignore it, could be very important indeed.

Okay, why do I think this is mistaken?  I mean, after all, anyone who knows me knows how much I deplore the commercialism of this season.  Why not embrace Scrooge and his values?  To see why not, it is worth our time to revisit the character of Scrooge—both what he is now, and what he was as originally created by Dickens.  The character of Scrooge today is typically someone unwilling to play along with our modern holiday games.  He does not buy presents for others, or attend parties, and just generally acts like a grump through the whole thing.  His unhappiness comes from his rejection of gift-giving festivities and any other function where he could contribute to the churning of our economic growth.  This version of Scrooge, much like the similarly adapted character of the Grinch, is very useful for retailers and the commercial industry.  Participate, or be consigned a Scrooge!  You’ll be miserable!  Old!  Bent!  Greedy!  Sad!  Clearly, no happiness can come from abstaining from our culture’s reindeer games.  Spend your time, and your money, freely throughout our marketplace, and find the joy that can only come from giving expensive purchases to others (at least, before you get your credit card bill).

An honest look at this characterization of Scrooge reveals two things:  first, that Scrooge’s unhappiness does not come from his rejection of buying stuff for others, but from somewhere deeper.  Second, and relatedly, this is not the character as created by Dickens.  Why is Dickens’ Scrooge miserable?  Because he’s anti-consumerist?  Probably not.  There’s a trivial sense in which Scrooge is not an anti-consumerist, since there wasn’t really any notion of consumerism in Dickens’ time, but that’s missing the point.  The concept of anti-consumerism does not successfully back-apply to Scrooge, no matter how we bend the concept.  He’s not an anti-consumerist, he is a miser.  There is a difference, and one which anyone in the anti-consumerism movement (like myself) would do well to remember.  Look at the description that Dickens uses in the opening pages for Scrooge:  “He was a scheming, wrenching, grabbing, clutching, covetous old sinner.”  This is nothing like the ethical position of rejecting the consumer culture; in fact, it’s very nearly the opposite.  Scrooge loves his money, to the rejection of all else.  He spends every ounce of his energy finding ways to get more, have more, keep more money.  And because of this, he passes a miserable and joyless life, even at Christmas.

So in fact, Scrooge is not the much-maligned paragon of my own most dearly held values.  He is miserable.  He is sad.  He is bent, and old, and greedy, and everything else.  And he is this way, in part, because he does not spend his money.  The moral here is not that the act of spending money brings joy—anyone who’s tried this knows that it doesn’t work, or at least not for long (remember that credit card bill?).  The moral is that the love of money, beyond all reason, brings misery, whereas sharing your wealth with friends, family, neighbors, and even strangers, brings joy.  Does this mean being a consumerist?  Do I need to run to Toys R Us and buy every cheap-ass toy I can lay my hands on and start handing them out on the street to find my own inner peace?  Of course not.  Sharing your wealth can come in myriad forms—I leave it as an exercise to the reader to think of all the wonderful ways one can spend their wealth, in all its forms, to better their world.

Why is this an important message for us anti-consumers?  Because the ideal of Scrooge, the idealization of him, can become a real trap for us.  We are in danger of turning our holiday season into a negative holiday—a holiday of “I don’t”s and “I won’t”s.  “I don’t decorate the house.”  “I don’t even get a tree.”  “I don’t visit our family.”  “I don’t bake cookies and other stuff.”  “I won’t participate in that crass commercialism.”  “I won’t buy nonsense that people don’t even use.”  There is nothing wrong with each of these statements in and of themselves.  There are perfectly good and defensible reasons to accept any or all of them.  But we should all guard against letting these statements become our definition of the holidays.  Do not celebrate the holidays by not doing things.  Don’t tell me what you don’t, or won’t do, tell me what you do do.  This is the time of year set aside by our culture to bring joy into our lives.  We can do this in harmony with our values, but it will take work, and keeping our eye on the goal.  Our culture values stuff, and goods, and buying; finding joy without participating in those activities does not come naturally to us.  We have to cut our own paths.  But this path can only be cut by finding new things to do, new ways to celebrate, ways that don’t rely on the commercial industry for gratification.  Otherwise, we will end up just as joyless and miserable as Scrooge—and he will, perhaps, become the best representation of us.