"Scrooge" (1935)

Scrooge has become such a familiar figure in our cultural imagination that we rarely pause to consider how unsettling he truly is. We laugh at his sharp words and tight fists. We treat him as a figure of exaggeration, someone safely outside the boundaries of normal life. Yet the 1935 film version reveals a truth we would rather avoid. Scrooge is not a distant monster. He is a near cousin. He is a warning to many more of us than we know.

This particular adaptation strips away much of the comic energy that later versions rely upon. It offers a lean, severe portrait of a man who lives as though virtue lies in restraint alone. Scrooge is not an ostentatious villain. He is not one of our modern tycoons who flaunt ill-gotten wealth with a sense of entitlement. He is something quieter and in many ways more dangerous. He has shaped his life around the idea that safety comes from preservation. He works hard, saves faithfully, and refuses to throw money away on sentimentality. He blames the poor for their misfortune and mistakes his suspicion for wisdom. In other words, he looks a great deal like many of the responsible people we know and admire. At times he even looks like the person we secretly believe ourselves to be.

A Christmas Carol is not a warning against wealth. It is a warning against miserliness. Dickens never condemns Scrooge for having money. He condemns Scrooge for hoarding it with such devotion that he forgets the purpose of having anything at all. The film emphasizes this with stark cinematography. Shadows swallow Scrooge’s home and office. Every room feels cold. Every decision feels weighed by the question of what might be lost. He has become monastic without grace. His frugality has turned into fear dressed up as prudence.

There is a particular temptation in that posture for many Christians today. It is easy to imagine that the downtrodden are simply reaping the consequences of foolish choices. Scrooge speaks with the confidence of someone who believes in the moral clarity of the ledger. If poverty exists, he reasons, it must be the natural result of irresponsibility. Yet the Scriptures refuse to let us rest in such simple arithmetic. The prophets condemn oppression and indifference. Jesus speaks without hesitation about the spiritual peril of hoarding. The parable of the Rich Fool stands as a sober reminder that barns filled with reserves can become tombs for the soul. Saving for the future is wise, but saving in order to avoid the needs of the present is the seed of Scrooge’s curse.

Christmas confronts this temptation with quiet boldness. The birth of Christ is an act of divine generosity. God does not hoard His glory. He does not secure His comfort. He gives Himself. The Incarnation is the greatest repudiation of the spirit of miserliness the world has ever seen. It is no surprise that Scrooge’s journey toward redemption begins with encounters that reveal not only the emptiness of his past and the coldness of his present but also the horror of a future shaped entirely by self-protection.

The 1935 film captures this with an understated solemnity. Marley’s warning is delivered without theatrics. The Ghost of Christmas Present speaks with a gentle authority that exposes the cruelty hidden within Scrooge’s logic. The children named Ignorance and Want are presented not as symbols confined to Victorian London but as reminders that human need has never been an abstraction. Scrooge does not see the poor because he has trained himself not to look. It is easier to imagine their condition as the natural order of things than to admit the call of compassion.

The lesson of the story is not merely that Scrooge must change. It is that we can all become Scrooge without noticing. Few of us will ever possess fortunes large enough to tempt us toward luxurious excess. Far more of us will face the quieter temptation to cling to what we have out of fear. We will save for a future that may never come and ignore the present needs that stand before us. We will dismiss the suffering of others with well rehearsed arguments. We will congratulate ourselves for our restraint even as our hearts grow colder.

Christmas calls us away from that path. It invites us to bless others with our possessions. It reminds us that generosity is not an optional holiday sentiment but a mark of genuine faith. Scrooge is redeemed not because he becomes poor but because he learns to hold his wealth with open hands. He discovers that giving is not loss. It is life.

We may never be visited by spirits who drag us through the pages of our past and future. We may never see our own neglected gravestone. Yet the warning remains before us. The world whispers that safety is found in storing up enough to withstand every unseen calamity. The gospel declares that life is found in giving. Christmas is the season when that truth shines brightest. It is the season that insists that the cure for miserliness is not guilt but grace. It is the season that calls each of us, quietly and persistently, to step away from the cold shadows of self-protection and into the warm light of generosity.