Go Scrooge Yourself

On the United Healthcare Murder and How to Remember You're Already Living in the Greatest Christmas Story Ever Told

“If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,” pursued the woman, “why wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he’d have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.”

“It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,” said Mrs. Dilber. “It’s a judgment on him.” […]

“Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman, “[this] is the end of it, you see! He frightened everyone away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!”

Meanwhile, across town from the corpse-robbers, a touching family scene:

“The children’s faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man’s death!”

Nobody murdered Ebenezer Scrooge, that’s true. Had traces of poison been found, however, had it been a case for Scotland Yard, well, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come hints at a list of suspects longer than Bleak House.

Scrooge is far from the only Christmas icon whose life choices make him a ripe candidate for mob justice. Saturday Night Live memorably illustrated the potential perils of Mr. Potter’s profit seeking. What may have become of the Grinch, had the Whos down in Whoville planned a morning manhunt before their Christmas sing? What of Chevy Chase’s boss, such a vile man that even the police sent to rescue him have second thoughts?

Indeed, many a beloved holiday tale would make a good first act for a Poirot investigation. Holiday Inn? Christmas will be more bloody than white if the jilted lover gets his revenge. The Bishop’s Wife? Only divine intervention keeps that marriage from falling apart and taking a whole parish with it. In case the snowball fight scene didn’t give it away, Elf is simply The Bishop’s Wife remade, with elves subbing for angels. Miracle on 34^th Street? Anytime the postal service is involved, murder is just a matter of time.

What of my all-time favorite Christmas movie, The Shop Around The Corner? Well, had Mr. Matuschek’s bullet reached its intended target, the police would have arrived to find a den of adultery, lies, bitterness, and jealousy.

I know many consider Die Hard a Christmas film, yet it stands out like a sore thumb: it’s the only seasonal favorite where the rotten soul isn’t redeemed.

Only Cary Grant Can Save Him Now

Hans Gruber gets what is coming to him. The magic, the miracle, of Christmas is that the rest of us don’t.

By now you have no doubt seen the coverage of the health insurance executive murdered last week in Manhattan. May he rest in peace. Surprising precisely nobody who remembers the celebrity attained by the murderous sociopaths Bonnie and Clyde, it seems his killer has now become an object of cult acclaim. Whether the target is evil banks or evil health insurers, there’s always an audience for blood.

I don’t want to be yet another voice to lecture you that it’s wrong to exult in anybody’s death. You know that already. But I did want to give a different perspective than the one I’ve been seeing from many sensible voices. They emphasize the fact that the victim was innocent of capital crimes, that it doesn’t matter how cruel his company may have been, extrajudicial killings are not to be praised. All true. Yet allow me to emphasize, this season above all, another truth: we, each one of us, could be killed in that way, and we’d all have it coming. It’s not about the banks, it’s not about the health insurers, it’s about you.

I see people talking out of both sides of their mouths, tut-tutting the murder on one hand, while on the other thinking of their latest denied insurance claim and saying, but I understand. That makes me think of one of my heroes, Rosaria Butterfield, who used to be a far left, radical feminist, God-hating university professor… until she was saved. It makes me think of Clarence Thomas, who used to be a Black Panther style, Malcolm X worshipping, violent student radical… until he was saved. It makes me think of… me. I made Scrooge look good. Every one of us seems completely and totally irredeemable… until we’re not.

I doubt we’d still be gathered around the hearth reading A Christmas Carol all these centuries later had Dickens chosen to end with an unrepentant Scrooge self-righteously lecturing the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come that, actually, it is wrong to steal a dead man’s clothes regardless of one’s personal animosity towards him.

“Put that blasted finger down and do something, Ghost - petty larceny is a crime!”

The point of the story, you see, is not to criticize the sticky fingers of the English underclass. It is to rejoice in Scrooge’s salvation – and thereby our own.

Christmas, I regret to tell you, is not about counting on everyone else to play by Marquess of Queensbury rules while you tread them underfoot. It’s about realizing that you – yes, you – deserve what’s coming to you. The lies you’ve told, the promises you’ve broken, the loves you’ve neglected, the people you’ve let down, the charity you’ve withheld, the tears you’ve caused – all these and more, so much more, are crying out for a reckoning. Your only saving grace? A little Jewish baby, born long ago, in Bethlehem. A baby born to die for you. A savior whose blood washes you clean and makes you new – makes you yourself “quite a baby,” as Ebenezer puts it.

What does this mean? Well, the next time you see the mob starting to form, and you feel an itch to start quoting self-righteously from The Oxbow Incident, consider instead a screening of Kermit and friends – or, better yet, Alastair Sim. Heck, any Christmas movie (well, except Die Hard) should do. Better yet, read the original (great read-aloud resources here, invaluable commentary here).

Be like Scrooge: go to church, keep Christmas well, be as good a friend and as good a man as your city has seen, laugh with all your heart, and rejoice in your salvation.

Merry Christmas, all – and God bless us, everyone!