Before today’s Christmas festivities, a few words in defense of Ebenezer Scrooge

The Kansas Statehouse Christmas tree stands illuminated on Dec. 4, 2024. (Photo by Anna Kaminski/Kansas Reflector)

There’s a reason Ebenezer Scrooge hovers over Christmas.

English author Charles Dickens created the miserable skinflint back in 1843 for “A Christmas Carol,” the novella that has spawned too much cultural detritus to estimate. Scrooge persists because he’s the way so many people feel about the holiday, if you caught them away from family or friends.

Sometimes, you don’t want to be merry. Sometimes, you don’t want to celebrate with your coworkers. Sometimes you want to pull your coat around yourself, hurry home and eat soup in front of a roaring fire before heading to bed.

I bet that sounds like the perfect Christmas to some of my readers this morning. Depending on the year, it might sound that way to me.

The joy of Christmas, of course, is that we don’t have to experience it alone if we don’t want to. We can meet with family and friends or attend community gatherings. The holiday lives within the connections that we make.

Yet Scrooge stands for more than isolation, I think. He represents a certain perverse joy in refusing to be indoctrinated with seasonal frivolity. Maybe Christmas carols make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Maybe you would rather eat Chinese takeout than prepare a sumptuous turkey dinner. In which case, you can join Ebenezer with a hearty, “Bah, humbug!”

Frankly, I’m ready to yell “Bah, humbug” at much of the world after this past year. Let’s never do this again, 2025.

Remember, Scrooge’s sin in Dickens’ story doesn’t have much to do with the holiday of Christmas itself. The day serves as a signpost in a time travel story. The heartless businessman has undervalued the people around him and the difference they make to the world.

You could learn exactly the same lesson on Arbor Day, if you wanted. And you won’t have to eat eggnog or mess with mistletoe, either.

Finally, you just have to hand it to Scrooge: He was a Victorian diva. No one without theatrical flair would declare: “If I could work my will, 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!”

Tell me you wouldn’t want to get together with Scrooge and hate-watch some reality TV. He would be a natural. Either at that or lambasting enemies on social media.

Yes, yes, I understand. Scrooge needed to treat poor Bob Cratchit better. Yet PolitiFact crunched the numbers back in 2022 and found that “Cratchit was making far more than the average worker in London during the Victorian era.” His 15 shillings a week work out to about $21.44 an hour, one expert said.

Vindication for misunderstood Ebenezer, I say. He wanted to make some money and be left alone with his ghost friends.

Anyway, I’ve taken enough of your time this morning. You have family to wake, presents to open, food to make and share. But if you have a Scrooge in your life — or if you perhaps embody some Scrooge-like tendencies — don’t fret. Christmas has places for the happy and grumpy among us alike.

He can eat at his own table if he causes too much trouble.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.