A Christmas Carol might be Charles Dickens’ most long-lasting work, despite being one of his shortest. There are those who still read and enjoy his other works, such as Oliver Twist, which again regains modern legs with a musical rendition; or David Copperfield, who at least lends his name to someone moderately famous in the modern time. Dickens’ classics are still frequently read, but most typically only among the well-educated. He does not seem to be holding up as well as might be hoped for a historical literary figure, with the exception of A Christmas Carol. There is something uniquely powerful about this story of wealth and power humbled and then redeemed that is particularly appealing. Perhaps it is also particularly American, which is interesting because, of course, Dickens was not.
I am confident that A Christmas Carol is well-loved in other countries, but I would not be surprised if it loved most by Americans. The British may perform it once in a while, but Americans will adapt, and re-adapt it, over and over again. Until it is absorbed from infancy through cultural osmosis. I believe that this may be because of a very American mythos surrounding the nature of work and the right of every man to as much wealth as he can hold. There is something very Ebeneezer Scrooge about America. And at the other end of the story, we Americans love a redemption story.
When it came time, as it does every year, for me and my family to partake in this cultural ritual, I turned on my personal favorite version, The Muppet’s Christmas Carol, conveniently on Disney+, which I had recently subscribed to. Michael Caine’s performance as Scrooge is solid, and Muppet zaniness is largely in the backseat compared to the strength of the story. Watching this version though, I saw many signs of that Americanism that I was alluding to.
I know that the charitable coffers are filling and hopefully overflowing by those who, at the end of the year find they can afford to give more. Americans are quite generous overall. And in that generosity, we are led by our elites; the wealthiest among us often donate quite visibly. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are combining to make monumental change to this world through philanthropy. So it seems hard to imagine these men, with such vast wealth, as modern day Scrooges. Scrooge, after all, is known for being so stingy that he doesn’t burn a fire in his own house for warmth or light. He gives nothing to charity–why should he when he gives nothing even to himself.
So, in looking for a modern day Scrooge, I had to look a little further than the obvious ‘most wealthy’ Americans. Or did I? Jeff Bezos has a net worth even more than either Buffet or Gates. Even though he’s lost a bit of his net worth this year due to some personal misbehavings and general market forces, he had a net worth of $114B (Forbes, Oct, 2019), topping the list of richest Americans, beating out Gates by a few billion and Buffet in third by a significant margin.
Bezos, like Buffet and Gates likes to make his charitable giving particularly splashy. But unlike Buffet, or Gates, he’s not giving nearly as much. Buffet gave away over $3B each of the past two years, to the Gates foundation alone. I linked his personal pledge above where he has committed to giving away the entirety of his accumulated wealth of stock over a period of time. Meanwhile, Bill Gates has given $4.8B of his own money away over the past two years combined. While this is less than Buffet, it is still significant, amounting to close to 5% of his total current net worth. Bezos’ giving in this story? $131M, per the Vox article linked. Not only is that a fraction of what Gates gave away (and even less in comparison to Buffet), but remember that Bezos has more net worth than either of them. We expect our wealthy members of society to give more because they have more. That certainly should be true even among the billionaires.
Bezos and the other billionaires don’t just make the world better through charity, though. They have personal projects that they work on out of a combination of personal interest and desires, along with altruistic goals. For Bezos, much of the money he’s spending is on big projects like his giant space-dick. As a fan of science fiction, and as a firm believer that the only way that humanity can survive long-term is to be diversified in our planetary investments, I’m largely OK with the spending there, even if I can also admit that it looks really stupid at the same time. But the fact of the matter remains, that Jeff Bezos gave very little in real terms to his less fortunate man. (Caveat, the donations from that previous article are 2018 data. Bezos’ 2019 giving seems to be significantly improved.) Bezos is the best fit for our modern Scrooge.
What does this mean, though? Bezos is unlikely to be visited by phantasms showing him the error of his ways, and if they did he might simply misinterpret it as a need to give more to his space programs. The analogy here does seem to break down, because despite the classist rhetoric we are hearing, we are not in the 19th century. We have more egalitarianism and generally speaking more income and wealth equality overall. Certainly, the privation of the poor is less significant, if only in absolute terms. But that doesn’t seem like enough. Because it’s not just about material goods and livelihood.
Watching Michael Caine’s Scrooge parade around town, it was clear he was disliked by all, but his wealth and power protected him. In his personal life, he’s shown to be miserable and austere. He quips with Marley that there is more of gravy than the grave about this spectre, but there’s more of the grave about Scrooge himself than anything else in the story. He has no inner life at all. Despite all of the pages written about him, we know very little of what inspires him to get up each morning and go to work. Clearly, by doing so he will make money; and he loves money. But at the very least he has lost sight of what that money is for, what its purpose is. The spirits’ work, then, through the course of the night, is to show him the inner life once more. To remind him that as a child it had existed, to see how it might have been lost in pursuit of something great, that itself was lost. And of course, most chillingly by demonstrating that all his money and power cannot protect him from his inevitable death; and what waits for him beyond death.
What waits for Scrooge? Chains and torment, according to Marley. A legacy that only inspires disgust among his fellow men, according to the Ghost of Christmas Present; for even his own relatives mock him behind his back. And of course, from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the knowledge that the legacy persists only briefly, before he will be forgotten, mourned by no one. His wealth split up, torn from his body and bed, because it cannot belong to him anymore.
The idea of legacy and the after-death experience matters to the modern Scrooge as well. This is why Bezos has legacy projects, such as The Washington Post, or Blue Origin. These are, if nothing else, to serve as a reminder to the world, once he is gone, that he was here and did something. And these will last more than if his wealth, like Scrooge’s, were merely wealth. He is investing in a legacy of good will. Scrooge as a rentier is also limited, whereas Bezos has given us Amazon, a legacy of its own that shall last as far as I can project into the future. These is a distinction that sets Scrooge apart from real world counterparts. But it also shows just how far Scrooge had gone, that he was so dead inside that he could be numb to the refrain of humanity clearly about him even without the spirits.
But these elements of Scrooge are fiction to allow the story to unfold just so. If Bezos is not as Scrooge-like as might seem necessary to make a compelling argument then consider this final distiction, a thing that seperates Scrooge, and his redemption from that of our real life versions, and where, perhaps, they will not bee redeemed: the concept of the eternal punishment.
Marley’s chains, the ones he forged in life, drag him down and torment him even though he lives no more. If we were to ask Bezos his position on the afterlife, I imagine it would be agnostic, at best. Clever researchers indicate that Bezos might have, at least once, leaned towards an Old Catholic tradition, but the data pointing to this all comes from before most of his enormous wealth and power. Far too often, the rich, like Scrooge, will find it impossible to turn towards a God because they see an almost divine-like power in their own hands, instead of being humbled by how far from divinity they are even at their most powerful.
That is certainly putting words and a spirituality in him that may not exist, but if I am correct, then it explains why A Christmas Carol doesn’t work quite as well for Bezos. If giving 0.1% of his money away is enough to satisfy the humans about him into, mostly, thinking that he’s an alright guy, doing well and doing good with his charitable efforts–because in absolute terms they are large–then why do more? Keep the rest and spend it on projects he finds more important, or just horde the wealth. There’s no further benefit if the only threat is the human legacy one.
I think this might be why America loves A Christmas Carol so much. It feels good to see the rich man get his comeuppance. But it also feels good to be the rich man and feel like we can just buy our way back to a spiritual salvation. Donate the proper amount to the right charity and all can be forgiven, even if it is essentially a deathbed conversion. But forgiveness cannot be bought.
This is why Christ is necessary in A Christmas Carol. It isn’t just that without Christ there is no Christmas time to speak of–a pagan Yule does just as well for a spirit of communal blessing. But A Christmas Carol is not just a story of turning away from selfishness and an inner life of austere solitude, to enjoy the company of our fellow men and support them as well. It is ultimately about mortality.
What happens “after” is often lost, because it is discussed at the very beginning of the story, when Marley comes to visit, before any of the Christmas spirits do. What Christ brought, the promise of forgiveness and redemption, when He incarnated is precisely what Scrooge needs. It’s what Marley reminds him of. And, if we allow ourselves to be honest, it’s what Bezos needs. And, to Mr. Bezos, for picking on you so shamefully, for being as judgmental as I have been to this point, let me say also this–you are not alone. You are merely one Scrooge among many. We all need this redemptive moment. Your need is merely much more public.
There’s much more that needs to be done. But Scrooge’s efforts are a good start. So, for Mr. Bezos and the rest of the Scrooges out there. Give generously. Give until it actually hurts, in percentage terms, and, “not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you.” It is not only for the good of your fellow man, but for the good of your own soul.
Despite the secularization of the holiday and the story of A Christmas Carol, there cannot be redemption without the Christ in the center of it. To humble the Scrooge and soften his heart. Scrooge cannot give of himself without restoring his inner life and finding his Christ-like moments. It is done out of fear of the eternal punishment that awaits, at least at first. But in the moment on Christmas Day, he finds great joy in the sharing. He finds a happiness that had eluded him for decades. That joy sustains far more than any fear impels. Without Christ, without a spirituality, neither will exist in A Christmas Carol or in Scrooge, either Ebeneezer or modern day versions.
