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Scrooge Updated

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Christmas memories are not as dear to me as they are to so many others. As a child, our tree, purchased on the eve of Christmas was reminiscent of Charlie Brown’s; dry, scraggly, bedraggled, leaning to one side or the other. We five gathered around it, opening gifts and, later, singing carols to Mom’s piano playing.

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It is just here, in beautiful, meaningful Christmas Carols that the season derails for me. Oh, I get the gracious thought behind the words, the joy of salvation come to earth. I get the giving and gracious receiving as symbol of that one Best Gift of all. I get the family, the gathering, the warmth of fellowship and friendship inherent in the time and place. I get the excitement of children opening gifts and their first enjoyment of things new and unexpected. I get all that. It was spoiled for me by what blends most others, the carol singing.

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You see, we didn’t just sing around the tree, in church and at Christmas parties. Oh, no. We sang door-to-door every night of the week for three weeks before Christmas, sometimes four. We did not sing to bring joy to our neighbors, however. Singing carols, for our denomination meant door-to-door begging. If you are of a certain age, you’ve probably been dunned by a group of beggars masquerading as joyous carolers.

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A small group, four to eight, led by a designated beggar, asked for charitable donations for the needy in Africa, the poor in South America, the disaster in India. All very legal, a tidy 501 C3 behind every request; each pleading buttressed by the coercion of Christmas carols sung at this most giving of times.

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The same song, sung thirty times a night, dreary and droning by the tenth, drowned the season in cold money grubbing for me. It lingers yet, these fifty years later, robbing the season of its legitimate joy. I am Scrooge, with no nighttime spirits to deliver me from my melancholic cynicism. Every year, chastened by family and friends, I try to muster the happiness of the season, but fail miserably, sink back into my well-worn rut. Though I search for the true meaning, the spirit of the season, nothing within me responds, leached from my heart in the acid bath of youthful memory.

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It's a new Christmas season. All the ads tell me so. “Bah! Humbug!” saith this twenty-first century Scrooge.

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10/25/20

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