Gentle Reader, I am going to turn things on their head a bit today. I am going to write about two of the great villains or antiheroes of Christmas tradition. That's right, Ducks, I am going to write about Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch, and I am going to make a case for both of them.
Both Scrooge and the Grinch are both victims. They are victims of unfair press. And while the writers who invented them did so with the loveliest of intentions, I believe that in so doing that all the Scrooges and Grinches of the world and other Christmas haters are merely the victims of an egregious lack of compassion or insight into society and human nature.
I'll begin with Scrooge. He is of course a miserable old miser with no close friends, all alone in the world and would far prefer to keep his profit margins wide than participate in the lives of other humans. He is really a deeply wounded and broken-hearted man, as we see in the narrative, who has locked himself away from others. He doesn't want to endure further heartache, so he shuts himself off and away, and Christmas or anything else that suggests warm human connection he completely writes off as pure humbug.
As Charles Dickens conceived and wrote it in A Christmas Carol, old Scrooge still had people who would welcome him. In this case his nephew, a young man with a very active social life. He even came by the old guy's office to wish him a Merry Christmas and invite him to Christmas dinner at his home with his large circle of friends. But Ebenezer would have none of it.
Similarly, the Grinch could always feel welcome to celebrate Christmas with the community of Whoville, if he wanted to. If he wasn't such a mean-spirited misery. But Dr. Suess does absolutely nothing to tell us why the little green horror would shut himself away from the community high up in his own dank and fetid little cave. Nor do we know just why his heart happened to be two sizes too small. Was he born that way? Was he the sad outcome of childhood neglect or abuse? Did he have Aspergers or Autism? His sensitivity to noise would suggest that, yes, he was somewhere on that spectrum.
Or perhaps he also had a broken heart, perhaps had been the butt of childhood teasing, then as an adult, a convenient and ongoing target for social exclusion and derision. He might have good reason to live in a cave and keep himself safe from the lovely Who's of Whoville.
Here I am going to posit that we need to reverse the roles a little bit. I could very easily morph into a Scrooge or a Grinch and I have so far succeeded in avoiding this. And for one simple reason. The real Grinch isn't me. The community is the Grinch. The real Scrooge isn't me. The community is the Scrooge. My family was the Grinch. My family was the Scrooge. I have gone through more than twenty years of not feeling welcome anywhere at Christmas. People become invisible and unavailable at Christmas. And when I ask if they would like to spend time, have a visit, a meal or coffee together Christmas Day, they almost always turn me down. They either want to be with their own precious family, and outsiders are not welcome (or, how's that for the Spirit of Christmas?), or they are out of town and would prefer to spend the holiday with whoever they are having sex with, or they are themselves so consumed with depression and self pity for having nowhere to go at Christmas that they feel too proud and ashamed to let others see them so vulnerable.
Well, I am sick of this. I would like to rehabilitate the Grinch, and Mr. Scrooge, but I would also like to see the community rehabilitation as well. Especially the church, where they really ought to be setting an example as role models on what it is to invite and include the stranger, and more often than not they simply couldn't be bothered. Unless others are watching and then they can really go full out on public virtue signalling.
As for myself, I have always made an effort to include others at Christmas. One will forgive me for feeling outraged and insulted that now that I am the one who is alone, no one seems interested in reciprocating.
Merry F**cking Christmas, Gentle Reader!
And remember, the asterisks are snowflakes, darlings, lovely little snowflakes!
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