Holiday Cheer for Scrooge
* Scrooge was hunkered over his computer contemplating his next merger, takeover and pension raid when his revelry was broken by his nephew’s burst.
“Merry Christmas, Uncle!” shouted the nephew filled with exuberance and good cheer.
“Bah!” said Scrooge, taken aback by this sudden interruption. He turned to face his nephew with the scowl of the devil in his soul. “What is there to be merry about? The massacre in Oxnard? The massacre on the Long Island Rail Road? The Polly Klaas murder? The mysterious Valley molester? Somalia? Angola? The killings in the Middle East? Northern Ireland? Rising unemployment? Our $4-trillion deficit? NAFTA? Drive-by shootings? Drugs? AIDS? Radioactive Pollution? Need I go on?”
“Don’t be cross, Uncle,” said the nephew.
“What else can I be?” replied the uncle. “I live in a world of fools such as you. A college graduate and you cannot find a job in your chosen field!”
“Why don’t you hire me?” asked the nephew.
“Humbug,” snorted Scrooge. “I’m restructuring. Scaling down. Christmas! Humbug! Just a time for people to rack up bills with their Visa cards that they cannot ever pay. Unless they win the lottery, and a fat chance at that!”
The nephew wasn’t daunted. Rocking on his heels and smiling broadly he declared that Christmas was a good time. “A kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time, the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year when men and women consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
“And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket in a world filled with troubles and woes, I believe the holiday is worth celebrating to remind us there’s still goodness in the human heart if we but plumb it and bring it forth. As we do at Christmastime, and I say God bless it! God bless us and everyone!”
Charles Dickens smiled from above on high. “Amen,” he whispered.
SAMUEL M. ROSEN
Newbury Park
