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Santa and Scrooge are for real
(by Barbara Christian - December 15, 2010)
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
Santa and Scrooge are for real
In 1897, back in the day when everyone believed what they read in the newspapers, an 8-year-old girl wrote a letter to the New York Sun, seeking the truth about a disturbing rumor. Her friends said there was no Santa Claus, and she wanted a definitive answer, because, as she put it, "Papa says, 'If you see it in the Sun, it's so.'"
Newsman Francis Pharcellus Church responded by telling her Santa Claus existed in ways she had never imagined.
His phrase, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," has become one of the enduring lines of our Christmas literature, right up there with "Bah, humbug."
Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago.
"I like it when you write about the good stuff going on around here," the Chagrin Falls shopkeeper said, referring to two recent columns listing the 100 best things about the Chagrin Valley.
It is the Christmas season, after all, and he wanted good, positive news like that. He wanted it now, especially during the holidays. That shopkeeper is not alone.
Everyone wants to be merry and bright this time of year. Certainly, no one needs to read about the miseries of life on Earth and all of the bad will between men and women or news stories about bullying children, for that matter.
But in the interest of full disclosure and at the risk of depressing all of you, we are bound to tell you something you are not going to want to hear. Here's the straight scoop. Just as there is surely a Santa Claus, there is also a Scrooge. And as it turns out, Scrooge is in all of us. He exists in the big and small hurts and dismissive attitudes of which we are all guilty at times.
Scrooge is us when we cut someone off in traffic, flip the one-finger salute then ride the shoulder to get on the exit ramp.
Scrooge exists in the black hearts of politicians of all stripe and those Cuyahoga County officials who for years scammed the taxpayers out of untold amounts of their hard-earned money.
Scrooge is a too-slow bureaucracy that allows unstable people to suffer without help and whose sad tales play out in the police blotter almost every week.
There is a Scrooge in every act of self-entitlement, in that haughty woman who bumps your grocery cart then glares at you in an accusatory response.
In fact, Scrooge is with us too when we all fail to apologize for some harm that, no matter how small, is our fault.
Yes, we know, all of this talk of our inner Scrooginess is one big downer, and forgive us if it has made you sad.
But do you remember how Scrooge's sad tale ends? Just like Virginia's story, it has a satisfying conclusion. Scrooge, with some help from his better angel ghosts, sees the light and the error of his skin-flinty ways, and he lives generously ever after.
Smile. It's almost Christmas, and, even though you are harboring your own inner Scrooge, know that, if you will it so, he is primed for redemption.
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