“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!”, cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
“Bah!”, said Scrooge. “Humbug!”
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
“Christmas a humbug, uncle?”, said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”
“I do”, said Scrooge. “‘Merry Christmas’! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
“Come, then”, returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
Scrooge stopped writing and looked up at his nephew with a stare as cold as the air in the bleak counting house. “Christmas,” said the old miser, “is nothing but a reminder of the inevitable passage of time, an anniversary upon which the fates decide to heap another tragedy upon my life.”
The nephew took a seat as the old man continued, his voice barely concealing a cruel cynical laugh of contempt. “How should I celebrate Christmas, then? Shall I spend the evening alone with my books, as I did as a child? While every other student of the boarding school was fattening himself upon roasts and candied fruits, I was in solitude save for Ali Babba taking sanctuary from your grandfather, a man who held me a grudge for killing my mother in childbirth. My first Christmases were full of pain and disappointment, watching your mother open lavish gifts while I received nothing but my father’s bitter wisdom. ‘The gift of life should be enough for you, Ebenezer,’ he would say. ‘Heaven knows we paid enough for it and have yet to profit from the exchange.’ No, no Christmas of my youth should serve as template for celebration.”
A tear was at the corner of the nephew’s eye, eyes so like his mother’s. She too would cry come Christmas and would secretly offer to share whatever she received with the young Ebenezer to try and keep his spirits up. But he always refused. It was the name slot on the tags he wanted, not the gifts inside. Inside, the nephew felt a burning surge of empathy for the old man; he knew what it was like to be blamed for the death of one’s mother.
“I suppose I had one happy Christmas, at old Fezziwig’s fabric store as an apprentice. He threw the most lavish of parties, especially considering he spent so little on it. I danced then, you know, and was known as being quite agile on my feet. And I met her, Belle, a beautiful young woman in appearance and soul. We danced, we laughed, we loved.”
A smile crept up on the old man, slowly working facial muscles long atrophied to the years. A small hope crept up inside the nephew, before being crushed. “But, the higher the rise, the greater the fall. I poured my soul into my work for her, to earn her, taking the small inheritance I received and lending it out, investing, to build a solid foundation for our future. Christmas after Christmas she expected me to seal our contract, and Christmas after Christmas I was unready. Those were years of building disappointment and a growing gap between us. Should I celebrate those Christmases? A toast to what I had once and lost due to time? Shall I roast a goose to honor the hours of silence that emerged? Or decorate a tree with baubles of her increasingly distant stare? No, not those Christmases, for there I found misery in company where I had only known it in solitude, and was all the worse for it, for she gave me a heart only to let it break and decay.”
“Or what of the Christmas where she left me? Shattered our contract, right there in park. She didn’t even look at me until the words ‘I release you, Ebenezer,’ left her lips. She left me there, completely alone save for the coins in my pocket! The second she stopped being the complete and total center of my existence, the moment I had to share the space on altar to her with the financial needs of our lives, she refused to understand me, to love me, and it destroyed me. I walked out of that park past carolers and happy children playing in the snow, unable to relate to any of them. Some babe born in a pig sty millennia ago and they’re out singing in the snow! Bah! Humbug!”
“I lost myself in my work. Marley, my only real companion, you couldn’t call him a friend. But the cruel fates took him from me on your precious Christmas as well, seven years ago this day! Don’t you see, nephew? Christmas for others may be a time of reconciliation, of loved ones coming together. For me, it is a day of loved ones being cruelly separated. For me, this is a day of humiliation at the hands of my father, rejection at the hands of Belle, solitude at the hands of Marley. It is a day of tears being repressed and somber memories and thoughts discarded. How else could a man like I survive? To open myself up to the world, to Christmas, is to only invite pain. The only way to endure is to refuse to feel.”
“Perhaps when you are an older, wiser man, when funerals outnumber birthdays, you’ll understand. Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”
“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you don’t keep it.”
“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Given my previous record with the holiday, the most I can hope for is that Christmas will return the favor of forced indifference! Good day, sir.”
There was a beat where nobody dared move. Then, the old man shouted, “I said, good day!”
The nephew turned to leave as Ebenezer returned to his books. The former exchanged forced pleasantries with Mr. Cratchit as he put his hat and coat back on. As he turned to leave, he stared back at his uncle one last time. “Merry Christmas, uncle.”
As the door squeaked closed, Mr. Cratchit could have sworn he faintly hear the old man whisper, “Merry Christmas,” in return, but was not sure of it and knew better than to ask.
That was the last time his nephew tried to invite the old man to Christmas dinner. The fates decided to honor Scrooge’s request and give him the Christmas gift of an uninterrupted sleep. Slowly, the years of pain corroded the man from the inside out and he died, years later than he should have. His nephew and Cratchit were the only ones at the wake. The nephew was particularly cold and distant, even for a burial: it was the first invitation to a funeral he had ever received.
