Christmas Day has passed, and now we find ourselves in the Christmas season. I’ll admit that it doesn’t always feel that way: Regardless of what the liturgical calendar says, or what color vestments the priests wear, the days after Christmas always feel like a denouement more than a beginning. Some years, “the Christmas season” is just an excuse for me to avoid taking the tree down until the Epiphany. By Dec. 27 or 28, my mind is already wandering far away from the manger.
But if that’s all that the two weeks between now and the start of Ordinary Time are for me, then I’ve missed an opportunity. All through Advent we prayed and hoped and waited. The Christmas season is a chance to take stock of what that holy preparation, and its joyful conclusion, have seeded in our hearts.
Christmas, after all, is supposed to have the power to change us. The Incarnation, of course, has a seismic impact on all of human history. But in our cultural imagination, each individual Christmas has the ability to make us a little kinder, a little more loving. Consider how many Christmas movies are conversion stories: “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946), “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (1966) or last week’s Catholic Movie Club film, “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947), just to name a few. The true mark of that conversion isn’t just how the characters act at Christmas but how they take the lessons and spirit of Christmas into their hearts and live it out throughout the year.
My favorite Christmas conversion story is Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol—and my favorite film adaptation is “The Muppet Christmas Carol” (1992), directed by Brian Henson and written by Jerry Juhl. It’s the same story you know: In Victorian London, miserly moneylender Ebenezer Scrooge (Michael Caine) is visited by three spirits who show him his past, present and future in an attempt to save him from eternal damnation. The primary difference is that, here, felt puppets, instead of human actors, play most of the other roles. (The cast features veteran Muppet performers Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson; it was the first film they made following Muppet creator Jim Henson’s death in 1990.)
Far from detracting from the story’s drama, the Muppets’ color and vibrancy provide a counterpoint to Scrooge’s dourness that only heightens the film’s themes. The Cratchit family, materially poor but rich in love and gratitude, always act as an instructive contrast to Scrooge: human warmth against his cold, passionless pursuit of wealth. How much more striking is that contrast when you bring in the ardor and fury of Miss Piggy (Oz)? It also helps that Caine plays the role like he’s performing in “the Royal Shakespeare Company,” as he told Henson when he accepted the role. Caine’s performance is layered and powerful, slowly revealing Scrooge’s underlying vulnerability and making us believe in his eventual change of heart.
The whole film is wonderful—it’s one of a handful of Christmas movies that I make sure to watch every year, without fail—but I chose it for this week specifically because of the ending. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote what I consider one of the greatest finales in literature: a perfectly cathartic echo to Scrooge’s cruelty at the beginning of the story as he puts his new outlook on life into action. He hasn’t just been swept up in temporary Yuletide generosity, the kind that overwhelms nonprofits with donations every year; he’s learned what Christmas truly means, and intends to let it guide his life from now on. As Gonzo, embodying Charles Dickens (and performed by Dave Goelz) says: “It was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”
That idea of “keeping Christmas” is an invitation and a challenge to consider what Christmas really means to us. Is it something that we can pack up in a box and tuck away in the basement until after next Thanksgiving? Is it just a few weeks of different hymns and then back to normal? Or can we allow the joy, mystery and power of the Incarnation to change our lives?
“The Muppet Christmas Carol” is streaming on Disney+.
