Tiny Tim Lives

Charles Dickens is generally credited, on the strength of just one of his many books, A Christmas Carol, with nothing less than the invention of Christmas as it is now popularly celebrated. When he composed the tale in the last months of 1843, what he had on his mind was his own survival, since his publisher was threatening to cut his royalties in half because of a slump in the sales of his books, and his wife was pregnant with their fifth child. But he also had in mind the survival of London's poorest residents, which is why A Christmas Carol, while it is perennially associated with the overwhelming access of cheer in Ebeneezer Scrooge in the story's final "stave," is otherwise very somber and sobering.

In his marvelous introduction to the story, G. K. Chesterton informs us of so much about Christmas and how Dickens observed it and transformed it. He is especially insightful in his observation that it was no confusion of pagan and Christian calendars that placed Christmas in winter:

It is the element not merely of contrast, but actually of antagonism. It preserves everything that was best in the merely primitive or pagan view of such ceremonies or such banquets. If we are carousing, at least we are warriors carousing. We hang above us, as it were, the shields and battle-axes with which we must do battle with the giants of the snow and hail. Man chooses when he wishes to be most joyful the very moment when the whole material universe is most sad.

George Orwell said as much when he remarked that we can only know happiness in terms of contrast: we recognize happiness when we find it in life because we know its opposite so well. Scrooge gives us a picture of man at his most unkind and at his most generous. This is why it is so difficult for an actor to be successful in the role. For, while some of the actors who have played Scrooge are most convincing at portraying one half of the role, they too often fall short in portraying the other.

Dickens wasn't so sophisticated about politics that he could explain to us how to make a world in which both Scrooge's insatiable greed and Tiny Tim's tubercular leg would be equally inadmissible. He didn't want to remake the world, despite how horribly ill-made it was when he found it. But he could use his art to place before us the two figures of Ignorance and Want in the form of children hidden in the folds of the second ghost's garments:

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable.They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked; and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

''Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end!''

This strange moment is often omitted from the Christmas Carol films. It introduces an element of polemics to the story. Those children continue to be, 175 years later, a powerful rebuke to a world that prides itself in - but can never live up to - its progressive values.

Despite Dickens's injection of serious purpose to his story, it was an immediate success (the first edition, published on December 19, was sold out by Christmas Eve), and it remains a favorite among his books. When he took up public readings, as always to make more money from his writings, he read A Christmas Carol to his delighted audiences. The English actor Seymour Hicks first performed as Scrooge in a stage production of A Christmas Carol in 1901. After playing him thousands of times on stage, he appeared in the role in a film made in 1913. It was only fitting, therefore, that Hicks should be the very first Scrooge in a sound film released in 1934 when he was 63. He was followed by Reginald Owen, Alastair Sim, Albert Finney, Michael Hordern, George C. Scott, Michael Caine, and lately by Jim Carrey and Patrick Stewart. And who can forget Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder Christmas Carol?

I don't remember which Scrooge was the first that I saw when I was a boy, but it was either Alastair Sim or Mr. Magoo (voiced by Jim Backus). Of all the ones I've seen, it's hard to tell which was the best Scrooge. The worst was Bill Murray in the insufferable "updating" of the tale called Scrooged. As I mentioned before, the role presents a singular difficulty to the actor, for, while it was relatively easy for Dickens to pull off the great change of heart that transforms Scrooge from a despicable, avaricious misanthropist into a sweet, lovable old philanthropist, it is exceptionally difficult for an actor to accomplish it in the span of a ninety minute movie. Alastair Sim failed because he was simply too endearing to begin with. He does the reformed Scrooge sweetly, but he fails to convince as the cruel old skinflint. George C. Scott presents us with the opposite problem. He is perfect as the bilious bastard through three quarters of the film, but is uetterly unbelievable as the loving and kind benefactor in the last quarter. Michael Caine acquitted himself beautifully, despite being surrounded by muppets. Jim Carrey is simply unqualified as the first (thoroughly creepy) "performance capture" Scrooge.

The problem with all the different film adaptations of the book is, since none of them is distinguished in cinematic terms (nobody has a reason to remember who directed each of them), the only thing that makes them distinguishable from one another is the actor who plays Scrooge. Only the lead actor can breathe life into the old tale. Which one is my favorite? Moira Armstrong directed a television adaptation in 1977 with Michael Hordern as Scrooge. It had a very small budget. (Why are only American films made wretched by shoestring budgets?) The outdoor scenes are drawings with the actors superimposed on them. And videotape doesn't age well. But, honestly, it is a far more evocative version than Robert Zemeckis's Walt Disneyfied version, with its CGI animation, the same sort that made The Polar Express the most unintentionally scary Christmas movie ever. And, as I already mentioned, Jim Carrey rings every false note.

Michael Hordern was Marley's Ghost to Alastair Sim's Scrooge in 1951. Consigned to supporting roles for most of his career, he was finally given a chance to play leading roles in the 1970s. Though he lacks the necessary menace to make us hate the former Scrooge, he is splendid in the latter stages, even better than Alastair Sim at his wimsiest. And, probably because I only recently unearthed a copy of the programme, which is just shy of one hour in length, Hordern is my favorite Scrooge.

What is it that brings about Scrooge's great metamorphosis? In his review of A Muppet Christmas Carol, Stanley Kauffmann wrote: "Foreknowledge of the sentimentalities in A Christmas Carol is no safeguard: it always makes me cry. Oscar Wilde, no Dickens enthusiast, said: 'One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell [in The Old Curiosity Shop] without laughing.' Well, one must have an even stonier heart to read of the melting of Scrooge without melting a little."

Is it the vision of his own corpse carelessly covered by a sheet or a headstone engraved with his name that so frightens Scrooge that he is moved to be a different man? The 3rd Ghost reveals to Scrooge what the unimposing portion of his world would be like upon the event of his death. In another well beloved Christmas tale, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is so afraid that he will be ruined by the accidental loss of a bank deposit that he resolves to take his own life, since his life insurance policy makes him worth more dead than alive. Before he can throw himself off a bridge, however, an angel falls in the river and, when George rescues him, the angel gives him a guided tour of what his small own would be like if he'd never been born. Such is the conceit of the tale that, of course, everything is worse off without George Bailey. Not even Dickens would stack the deck so shamelessly. When he has seen enough, George begs the angel to take him back, and they all lived happily after. But George only wanted to end his life, not nullify his whole lifetime. Capra wanted to show how interconnected our lives are, and how the removal of just one life affects the lives of everyone around it. Ten years ago on this blog, I proposed a remake of It's a Wonderful Life that took the story to an opposite extreme. The hero of the remake is shown how little his world is affected by his absence - except for one almost unnoticeable detail.

Scrooge begs the ghost of the future to give him another chance to make a positive impact on his world. And I believe the point at which I, too, always cry whenever I watch A Christmas Carol, is when Dickens tells us of the death of Tiny Tim. The Ghost of Christmas Present forebodes it:

"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."

"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."

Scrooge learns that the greatest rebuke to his greed is the effect it has on the most innocent life that it touches. The suffering of children is the most powerful challenge to all our principles - to our faith in goodness or in a beneficent God. For how can we believe in either when a child suffers or dies? If one child cannot be spared pain and death, of what use is a government, our laws, or progress? It is for Tiny Tim that Scrooge pleads for, and is granted, a second chance. His heart is broken by the fate of the child so that it should be made whole again.

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!