On a cold December night, the kids and I snuggled into pillows and blankets to watch “Mickey’s Christmas Carol,” my all-time favorite version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” It reminds me of high school French class – the first time I remember seeing Scrooge’s story condensed into a perky animated dose of Christmas cheer – and remains, like watching the 1936 cartoon “Christmas Comes But Once A Year,” a nostalgic tradition to be revisited each December. (If you’ve never watched that one, by the way, you should – it’s marvelously creative).
I believe Scrooge’s enduring popularity has something to do with how we perceive him. We obviously don’t identify with his miserable, miserly existence – certainly, WE are not like that – and we probably don’t see ourselves as the long-suffering Cratchits, either. We are the middle-class outsiders, the nosy neighbors disapproving of Scrooge’s greed and then rejoicing in a personal conversion that benefits the impoverished Cratchits and all humanity.
But Scrooge is an archetype, and his story is a simplified account of what happens to the human heart in the absence of love and compassion – that is, in the absence of God. If we are peering into our own hearts, expecting the blank spaces to look like Scrooge’s and congratulating ourselves when they don’t, we are fundamentally misunderstanding human nature.
I recently finished two memoirs by Rhoda Janzen, an English professor, poet and writer, and the two books, “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress” and “Mennonite Meets Mr. Right,” are so different in tone that it’s hard to believe both were written by the same person. It’s really the starkest example of a conversion story I’ve ever seen play out across two memoirs.
In the first book, she’s a lapsed Mennonite who has achieved much – impressive education and job, expensive lake house, elevated social circle, designer wardrobe and 15 years of marriage to a man who looks good and makes her look good. But then he leaves her for a guy named Bob, she gets into a terrible car crash, and she goes home to her Mennonite community to recover.
What stands out in “Little Black Dress” is the snark, (often grossly) bawdy humor and sharp wit. What else stands out: Beneath the glossy surface, her life was deeply troubled. Her husband was unstable and verbally abusive. The lake house is so expensive, she obsesses over whether the payments will be made. She’s got good friends and loved ones, but she’s got all kinds of issues – with male-dominated religions, the “patriarchy” (now unfashionable terminology, she observes) and anyone who doesn’t affirm standard secular-academic views.
When I was in a creative writing class in grad school, I hit this moment when I realized I could make a cheap joke out of someone else’s embarrassment, and I hit the delete button. Janzen got there and kept writing, and she left a long string of bodies in the dust – trashing her ex-husband and mocking her Mennonite community, her fellow urban intellectuals, family members’ quirks, and on and on.
After finishing the book, I pondered why a memoirist would slash and burn her way through so many relationships – fiction provides a better disguise, or just cracking a few jokes at some other (absent) person’s expense at a cocktail party is less risky – when the answer arrived in the second book, “Mr. Right.” Coming home to her Mennonite community showed Janzen what was missing in her life – God, the fruits of the Spirit and happiness.
A guy who wears a Jesus nail necklace, a former delinquent type who joined a Pentecostal church, becomes her husband in her second memoir. And the tone is, well, comparatively boring. She gets diagnosed with breast cancer (a couple of church elders pop up offering prayers, even though no one has been told) and she’s expecting to die, but the giant tumor inexplicably disappears.
She doesn’t use the word “healing” and only spends about one sentence on it. Instead, the chapters roll along on such tame topics as tithing (which cures her financial obsession); praying; baptism; overcoming her dislike of organized religion; abstinence; home renovation; and et cetera. Gone is the snark, the mockery and (most of) the toilet-level humor. The tone is different because she has survived great turbulence in her life and turned back toward love and God.
Even if we don’t read ourselves in Scrooge’s story, we can probably see ourselves in Janzen’s. We all drift from faith and love and God at times; we all get caught up in worldly obsessions; we all sometimes mislay our generosity of spirit; we all hit painful, unplanned crossroads in life that force us to stop and reflect on who we’ve become. And at Christmas time or any time, we can all benefit from revisiting the best of our past – even if home is no longer a physical place or family member to whom we can return – and perhaps rediscovering a little of who we were back then.
A blessed Advent and Christmas season to you and yours!
