Saturday
we went to the musical version of A
Christmas Carol at Pioneer Memorial Theater. It was not morose or scary but highly
entertaining; somehow retaining the crucial message.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a
cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him
so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this
nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and
handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew.
"You don't mean that, I am sure."
"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What
right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry?
You're poor enough."
"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right
have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're
rich enough."
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said
"Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug."
"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.
"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in
such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry
Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills
without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour
richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a
round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my
will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with
'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and
buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in
your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't
keep it."
"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much
good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"
"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by
which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew.
"Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of
Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its
sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that --
as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know
of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to
open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they
really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures
bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a
scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me
good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!". . .
This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people
in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with
their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their
hands, and bowed to him. . .
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the
gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we
should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer
greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common
necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen
again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in
operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I
could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour,
then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something
had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge.
"I'm very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of
mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us
are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means
of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when
Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down
for?"
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you
ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry
myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help
to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those
who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better
do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I
don't know that."
"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's
enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with
other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon,
gentlemen!"
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen
withdrew. Scrooge returned his labours with an improved opinion of
himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
At length the hour of shutting up the countinghouse arrived. With
an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to
the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put
on his hat.
"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not
fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself
ill-used, I'll be bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used,
when I pay a day's wages for no work."
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of
December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin.
"But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier
next morning."
Ebenezer's disregard for
the plight of the people awakened in me a recent memory of when someone
attacked half of our nation’s population, in Scrooge-like disdain, for being losers, leeches, and
moochers.
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right? There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement, and that government should give it to them. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. . .and so my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
He also opposed the use of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions
to deal with global warming. He
supported the Patriot Act, continued operation of Guantanamo Bay detention
camp, and use of enhanced interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists.
Here are some facts:
1) Most of 47 percent of
Americans who aren't paying income taxes don't get away tax free: Nearly
two-thirds pay payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban
Institute and Brookings Institution.
2) Of that smaller group that
pays no income taxes or payroll taxes, more than half are elderly -- and over a
third are low-income, earning less than $20,000 a year, according to the Tax Policy Center.
3) Finally, as New York Times
columnist David Brooks pointed out that people who rely on government funding
are a diverse group of stakeholders, including everyone from veterans receiving
health care from the V.A. to students receiving college loans. It's not just
the poor and elderly.
Is it possible that more
than 150 years after Charles Dickens wrote The
Christmas Carol some of us seriously need to join Ebenezer Scrooge on his
journey through space and time to land in the fiery hearth of redemption
through the spirit of Christmas?
*****
Did someone else see what I saw? Of course, I saw the Ghost of Christmas Past and he's looking at the Ghost of Christmas Future. Letter to the editor:
Scrooge and GOP
Published: December 7, 2012 01:01AM Salt Lake Tribune
My wife and I went to “A Christmas Carol: The
Musical” at Pioneer Theater. It is especially appropriate this year.
Ebenezer Scrooge had plenty of solutions for the poor, hungry, sick,
destitute and homeless — workhouses and poor farms. He even suggested
the poor could solve the problem themselves — by dying. Evidently, he
hadn’t thought of self-deportation or he surely would have included
that.
Today’s Republicans are doing their best to
convince the masses they have changed their ways and should be returned
to power. After seeing his three ghosts (of the past, the present and
the future), Scrooge didn’t just give lip service and empty promises to
change, he actually gave a Christmas turkey to Tiny Tim and his family.
Makes one wonder what the Republicans will do after having seen their
own ghost of elections yet to come.
We highly recommend the play. The sets are great, and the talent as good as any theater.
Wayne Bickley
Sandy
