Session 1

Bah! Humbug!

Don't Let Them Call You Scrooge!

A few holiday seasons ago, Sedalia, Missouri, resident Kevin Walker decorated his front lawn for Christmas. But Walker didn't set up a Nativity scene or an inflatable, illuminated Santa. He decorated his lawn with a Grim Reaper, a tombstone, and a black wreath with Bah Humbug in glittery letters.

As you might guess, plenty of neighbors called to complain. Walker told a local radio station the display was his protest of all the commercial hype surrounding Christmas in the United States. But what did the station call him in its coverage? "The biggest Scrooge in America."

Like Grinch, the word Scrooge has entered our culture's common vocabulary. Even people who've never read A Christmas Carol know the term Scrooge is used to describe someone who doesn't enjoy Christmas. If you aren't feeling holly, jolly, ho-ho-ho, you'd better keep those feelings to yourself unless you want someone to say, "Stop being such a Scrooge!"

But let's be honest. Not everything about Christmas is so great, is it?

Kevin Walker has a point. Did you know that in 2015, the average American planned to spend $882 on Christmas gifts? That's a lot of money for presents given in honor of a baby born into poverty two thousand years ago.

And for a holiday about a "silent night" when "all was calm," Christmas in America sure gets busy and loud. One of the "must-see" holiday highlights near me is a sound-and-light show full of animated toy soldiers and Nutcracker-dancing ballerinas, shown on a 2,100 -square-foot, high-resolution LED video wall. It's impressive, but hardly conducive to sleeping in heavenly peace.

What drives me craziest about Christmas are those radio stations that interrupt their regular programming for a month (or more) of nonstop holiday songs. Turn on those stations and you'll hear "Jingle Bell Rock" or "Winter Wonderland" for the umpity-umpth time. How many versions of "Let It Snow" does the world really need?

Am I sounding Scrooge-ish yet?

Actually, I enjoy more about the Christmas season than I don't. But I do think our culture makes people who are feeling bad at Christmas feel even worse by insisting that it's the hap-happiest season of all. What about families who can't afford nearly $900 worth of Christmas gifts, because they're struggling to pay the monthly bills? What about people who crave peace and quiet because daily life stresses them out? What about folks who flinch when they hear "it's the most wonderful time of the year" because the loss of a loved one or a job or their health is too recent, too raw?

If you don't happen to feel merry this Christmas, that's okay. Just don't let anyone call you a Scrooge! Because guess what? In A Christmas Carol, not even Scrooge is a "Scrooge" the way our culture uses the word. He's actually far worse off — and no one who's already feeling down in December deserves to be accused of being like him!

Scrooge's World of One

When Scrooge threatens to hit a young caroler who's warbling outside his office door, he's not just sick and tired of holiday songs. He's lashing out at what the best of those songs represent.

A little earlier, Scrooge's nephew describes Christmas as "a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time ... when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely" (Stave One) to each other, especially to "people below them" in society. But when this boy "below" Scrooge dares sing a Christmas song — probably hoping to get a little food or money in return, as was the custom — Scrooge hears only an unwelcome demand on his time and resources.

For Scrooge, Christmas is nothing but an intrusion into the world he's built for himself, a world with a population of one. The narrator tells us Scrooge likes to "edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance" (Stave One). His last name, Scrooge, was Victorian slang for "squeeze," and his fixation on money has "scrooged" everyone else — along with all friendship, love, and compassion — out of his life.

Scrooge is "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner" (Stave One). His worst sin is the way he shoves other people aside — human beings who, in his nephew's words, "really [are] fellow-passengers" (Stave One) through life. When we forget that people around us are human, especially people less fortunate than we are, we run the risk of becoming less human ourselves.

A Scriptural Scrooge

Scrooge is so miserly with money, you might not notice how much he's like a rich man Jesus told a story about (see Luke 16:19-31). Unlike Scrooge, the rich man in Jesus' story spends wealth freely, but only on himself. He wears robes of purple fabric (very expensive in the ancient world and often reserved for royalty). He eats lavish feasts daily. He never spares a thought for Lazarus, the beggar who lies at his house's gate, sick and covered with sores, with only the wild and dirty dogs that lick his wounds for company. Lazarus would have been happy to eat crumbs from the rich man's table, but the man either doesn't know Lazarus is at the door or doesn't care (and neither explanation puts him in a very good light).

Nothing about this sorry situation changes until Lazarus and the rich man both die. Then everything changes. Angels escort Lazarus to a heavenly banquet, where he reclines next to no less a VIP than Abraham, first ancestor of the people of Israel. But the rich man is "tormented in the place of the dead" (Luke 16:23). When the man asks why, Abraham explains that he "received good things [in life] whereas Lazarus received terrible things" (Luke 16:25).

Even now the rich man still thinks only about himself. He begs Abraham to send Lazarus to him with cool water, and to warn his brothers about "this place of agony" (Luke 16:28). Even in his awful afterlife, the rich man is treating Lazarus as less than human, with no identity of his own. He could have bridged the distance between Lazarus and himself when Lazarus was on the rich man's doorstep. Now the gap between them is fixed in Lazarus's favor.

Mary's Christmas Carol

Jesus' story illustrates one of his key teachings about the kingdom of God — one day God's rule will be fully revealed and acknowledged, and God's values and priorities will carry the day. "Those who are last" in this world "will be first" in God's world; "those who are first" now "will be last" then (Luke 13:30; see also Matthew 19:30; 20:16; Mark 10:31). God will not let those who are poor, hungry, and weeping suffer forever (Luke 6:20-21). God will work a wonderful reversal of their fortunes.

That's the message of the "Christmas carol" that Jesus' mother, Mary, sings. When she learns she will give birth, she visits her relative Elizabeth (an older woman pregnant with a miraculous baby, who grows up to become John the Baptist) and sings about what her son's arrival will mean:

With all my heart I glorify the Lord!
In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior...