Flashback 2011: Tiny Tim versus the Republicans.

     The election past, we can now peer through weary eyes at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Well I can't — my younger son got married over the weekend, so I've been on vacation, and went looking for columns involving him, and found this, from 2011. A reminder that our once and future president — I'm trying not to say the name, it gets said too much already — is not a cause, but a symptom. The groundwork was laid, and he was summoned, like a demon.

     This season, I avoid most trappings of Christmas; no tree in the living room, no wreath on the door, no caroling. I do this, not out of any liberal media “war against Christmas” — are they really going to ride that hobbyhorse again? — but merely because I’m Jewish; it’s not our holiday, and so failing to observe it is done out of respect for myself, and for the Christians to whom Christmas has actual meaning, and isn’t just a twinkly time of generic wintry celebration.      There are exceptions. I’m not a zealot. I will, for instance accept a well-wrought Christmas cookie, if offered. I do own a rock-stars-sing-Christmas-carols CD, and have been known to play it — I’m a particular fan of Tevin Campbell’s "O Holy Night."
     And Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol," which I used to read to the boys when they were small. To skip "A Christmas Carol" because it’s about Christmas is like avoiding Moby-Dick because you don’t support whaling. Art transcends politics.
     Thus my younger son and I went to the premiere Sunday of the stage version of "A Christmas Carol" at the Goodman Theatre. I’d never seen it, because of my aforementioned Christmas aversion. The production is a holiday favorite and now I see why: It’s great. Lovely sets, generous helpings of music and — best of all — Larry Yando as Scrooge. A seasoned Shakespearean actor, Yando plays Scrooge for the fourth time and is simply perfect — his long elastic face going through the gyrations of greed, fear and amazement Scrooge exhibits in a night of ghostly visits.

       "A Christmas Carol," as you probably know, is a story of personal redemption. The lonely miser — who confronts a request for charity with his famous retort "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" — is forced to see the chances for love he enjoyed then squandered in his Christmases past; the brave forbearance of poor but joyous Bob Cratchit family at Christmas present; and the specter of his own death on a future Christmas, an occasion for joy among his debtors and the pawning of his bed curtains.
     Is this fate certain? Or can Scrooge change, become a better man, in time to save himself and, of course, Tiny Tim?
     The story was written in 1843, but watching it in 2011, in this time of political turmoil, it felt ripped from the headlines.
     The national debate — to the extent that it can be considered a debate and not merely each side firing up their supporters and damning their opponents — is about the same question that "A Christmas Carol" hinges on: Do we live for ourselves alone, for our own greed and profit, or do we try to help the poor boy huddled in the doorway?
     Republicans will no doubt say: "Aha, but Scrooge is an individual! We encourage people such as himself to bear the entire burden of helping the less fortunate, while the government is reserved for creating an environment where the Scrooges of the world can earn the biggest fortune possible to spend — or withhold — as they please."
     That, basically, was the status quo in Scrooge’s time, when debtors went to jail, children were executed for theft, and society was built along lines that would have brought joy to Ron Paul’s anthracite heart (in debates, the Libertarian candidate seems like he’s auditioning for the Scrooge role, patiently re-stating his firm commitment to an indifferent, almost inhuman worldview to those who can’t quite believe he’s serious. "Why yes, I would step over the sick baby.")
     What those who want to strip millions of Americans of the hope of health care, to abandon the elderly, and bury the idea that government should police the excesses of commerce overlook is that we’ve already tried all that, back in the 19th century, and every law, regulation and agency today was created, over years, by a society aghast at the result — though not too aghast. Aghast eventually. Never forget that we created organizations to prevent cruelty to animals, first, and then, out of embarrassment, took the legal protections established for horses and extended them, grudgingly, to children.
     Spoiler alert! Scrooge goes through his wondrous transformation, and basks in the joy that generosity and kindness can bring. Alas, such epiphanies are generally confined to the realm of holiday fiction. Don’t expect those from a certain political party to realize how far they’re strayed from what they once were.

        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 1, 2011