On Point: The case for Scrooge

Published December 19, 2006 at midnight

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As you lug those last-minute gifts into the house, quietly cursing Charles Dickens and Clement Moore for the commercial monstrosity that Christmas has in part become, you may find yourself guiltily admiring Ebenezer Scrooge. "What's Christmas time to you," the old miser lectured his nephew, "but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer."

Is there no one, you may wonder, who will make the moral case for Scrooge?

Actually, there is. In an amusing essay he published two years ago in Slate.com, the economist Steven Landsburg tells us "What I like about Ebenezer Scrooge."

"Scrooge, by living in three sparse rooms, deprived no man of a home," Landsburg explained. "By employing no cooks or butlers, he ensured that cooks and butlers were available to some other household where guests reveled in ignorance of their debt to Ebenezer Scrooge.

"In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser - the man who could deplete the world's resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and wide.

"If you build a house and refuse to buy a house, the rest of the world is one house richer. If you earn a dollar and refuse to spend a dollar, the rest of the world is one dollar richer - because you produced a dollar's worth of goods and didn't consume them."

Landsburg's point is that "savings is philanthropy" - a slogan that would horrify leaders of the nonprofit world, but worth remembering the next time someone accuses you of pinching pennies.

So is our contempt for Scrooge nothing but an economic misunderstanding? Can we pin on "Bah! Humbug!" buttons with a clear conscience?

Sorry, no. While Scrooge's economics may be sound, their pure expression is a personal and social catastrophe. The philanthropist both loves and is loved. His death is mourned; the miser's is celebrated.

So here's what you do if you celebrate Christmas and the last-minute crush gets you down: Banish any sympathetic thought of Scrooge, set down those packages, and pat yourself on the back.

More gore, but a better film

Mel Gibson assured CNN's Anderson Cooper last week that his new film Apocalypto is no more violent than Braveheart - an absurd contention, but perhaps Gibson hasn't seen his Scottish saga in a while. Or maybe he means that Braveheart's onscreen death toll is higher, which it certainly is. Battle scenes have a way of piling up a movie's body count.

Braveheart is no match for Apocalypto, however, in the number of scenes whose visual gore makes the viewer wince. Don't miss this film if you like the color crimson.

If Gibson was going to compare Braveheart with Apocalypto, what he should have said is that his latest film is even better. The pre-Columbian milieu is spectacular. The characters are wonderfully drawn (if overdrawn in the case of the chief villain), with the women and children in particular often portrayed as complex and resourceful.

And to Gibson's credit in this PC age, the movie's depiction of the appalling nature of ancient Mesoamerican temple rites is unflinching; if anything, a major sacrifice would have been more blood-drenched than this film lets on.

For those who like to speculate on Gibson's psyche - and there is no shortage of armchair Freuds since his anti-Semitic rant several months ago - Apocalypto will provide a cornucopia of possible clues.

Not to mention a heart-pounding chase through the jungle.

Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes On Point several times a week. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

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