"What is Christmas but finding yourself another year older but not an hour richer?" said Scrooge in the shape of my role-playing 9-year-old nephew Alex last Saturday. He had just seen a production of A Christmas Carol at the Shubert in New Haven, Connecticut.

Alex wore his magician's top hat, a black tunic, and a snowman's felt scarf; and he shook a broken plastic saber--a stand-in for a walking stick--as he thundered the words of the famous Victorian cheapskate.

And there he had me: Christmas finds us another year older but not an hour richer.


I couldn't think of an apt reply. He usually role-plays the big elf we all know and love as Santa; here he stood as the very antithesis of that selfless Spirit.

Before I had my coat off, he gave me my stage directions: "Ask me about the poor people, Aunt Sandy."

"Okay, Alex. What about the poor people?"

"Are there no prisons? No workhouses?"

"Scrooge, are you going to be a grouch all day, or what?"

"Don't ask me that, Aunt Sandy. Ask me about Bob Cratchitt."

I did.

"Cratchitt is late!"

"But Scrooge. Why are you such a grouch?"

"I'm not a grouch! I'm rich!"

And there it was: money as a stand-in for happiness

What better argument to counter Scrooge than Scrooge himself? He is the paragon of misery: alone, isolated, sour, dark. Being another year older but not an hour richer is not a very good return on an investment.

Yet, his family loves him and invites him to dinner; the doers of good in town believe his heart can be reached. When they fail, the walk away but not cheerlessly. That Spirit can't be broken.

The less fortunate--let us say the downright poor--are living the Gospel in this Victorian tale. Though money and food and heat and decent clothes would make them feel better, their spirits are not bound by their poverty.

That Spirit is kindness and compassion and good will. Choosing to nurture that kind of spirit changes the world in a steadfast way that is not subject to the cruelty and whims of a workhouse economy.

The exploited people smile in Scrooge's face because they have it in them to do that. In the end, Scrooge wants what they have. In the end, Scrooge makes use of his money to meet the bodily needs of the people who have always held him in their hearts. When the Spirit makes its way through the locked doors of his heart, the Spirit becomes the architect of his undoing.

What is Christmas, indeed.