Thanks for the patience with all of the reposts this week. Unpacking takes ten times longer than packing, and doing it in the run-up to Christmas is… logistically challenging. It’s Christmas Eve, and that means the traditional viewing of “Scrooge” from ARSH 1951. With the recent push for so-called “Noahide Laws” which would categorize significant portions of the Bible and the Holy Mass and any proselytizing of Jews as “antisemitic hate speech”, this piece hits even harder this year. Let us pray with Holy Mother Church:
“…for the faithless Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord.
Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.“
I have written on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” before, but it has been several years, and I think a recapitulation is in order given current events.
The ARSH 1951 film “Scrooge” starring Alastair Sim is the definitive film version of “A Christmas Carol”. It is traditional viewing for me on Christmas Eve night, and has been since childhood. For those of you with any ties to the Kansas City area, the old independent Channel 41 would show “Scrooge” at 10:00pm on Christmas Eve annually, followed by either Luciano Pavarotti’s ARSH 1978 Christmas concert, or (sigh) the non-Christian Mormon choir singing Christmas Carols.
But “A Christmas Carol” took on a whole new life and depth of meaning for me when, after my in-depth study of Diabolical Narcissism several years ago, I realized that the reason why “A Christmas Carol” is such a compelling story, is because it depicts an all-out miracle. The “transformation” of Ebeneezer Scrooge is nothing less than the supernatural healing of a full-blown Diabolical Narcissist psychopath.
The pre-conversion Scrooge character is a classic DN. He is a cerebral narcissist – highly successful in his profession, a miser, caring for nothing but “his work” – which just happens to be usury (Usury? In London? Nooo….), sitting alone in his room every night, lovelessly single, devoid of human empathy, haughty, critical and disdainful of everyone and everything, looking down on and actively resentful of normal, loving people – embodied by his clark, whom he psychologically abuses, Bob Cratchit, and his family.
Love, joy, gratitude and generosity disgust and enrage Scrooge. He hates occasions of happiness, and actively seeks to disrupt and destroy them, especially holidays. The people around him walk on eggshells to his face – but either pity or dislike him behind his back. In the “Ghost of Christmas Future” act, Scrooge is genuinely surprised to discover that almost everyone is glad that he is dead – the exception being Bob Cratchit himself, the most direct recipient of Scrooge’s abuse. Bob Cratchit is thus a metaphor for Christ.
Not only does “A Christmas Carol” firmly establish in its opening act the total lovelessness of Scrooge, the total self-purgation of all charity from his soul, but it even shows HOW IT HAPPENED, and the exact moment when Scrooge made the conscious choice to expel all love from his soul and to never love again.
That moment happens when young Scrooge’s beloved sister, Fan, dies in childbirth. Ebeneezer Scrooge’s mother, it is revealed, also died in childbirth, and Scrooge’s father blamed him for her death, and “never forgave him”, abusing him, and them sending him away. As is so common, Scrooge, already wounded, repeated the very error of his father and blamed Fan’s newborn infant son for her death. Even worse, Scrooge, whether implicitly or explicitly, also declared war on God – Love Himself – by rejecting love and consciously emptying himself of it. The very moment of this decision is shown at the 32:54 timestamp.
Immediately, Scrooge descends into psychopathic usury, and, as we have discussed, even descends into that horrific sexual perversion – ASEXUALITY, by dumping his fiancée and living a life of LOVELESS, MISERABLE, ELITIST SOLITUDE. Even his only “friend”, Jacob Marley, he held in indifference and even contempt.
The other point here which is TOTALLY lost on the modern world is the fact that EBENEEZER is quite possibly the most HEBREW name ever, and that EVERYONE understood when Dickens wrote the book that Scrooge was one of the many JEWISH USURERS in London. So, this story isn’t merely about the healing of the heart of a miserable old narcissist, A Christmas Carol is the story of the miraculous conversion to Christianity of a JEW.
The story closes with the words, “And it was always said that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”
That, friends, means that Ebeneezer Scrooge, an ethnic Jew and atheist (as almost all ethnic Jews today are), received baptism and became a believing Christian. It is left to the reader to understand that the Cratchit Family were his “sponsors” in this. It is also obliquely implied at the beginning of the story that Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, married a Christian girl – “it was the making of me”, and thus invites Scrooge to their home for Christmas dinner.
So, if you can spare the time this year, do sit down and watch this, and see if the “Christmas morning” scene wherein Scrooge is miraculously healed of his Diabolical Narcissism, and radiates genuine love and joy, doesn’t pack a bit more of a punch. Because for a Diabolical Narcissist psychopath to be thus healed is a greater miracle than levitation, bilocation, or most any other physical miracle.
A Merry Christmas to one and all! God bless you, everyone!