Say what you will, but The Muppet Christmas Carol is one of the best Christmas movies of all time. My family and I watch it each year and it’s rare that we reach the credits with dry eyes. The funny thing is that, among the plethora of Christmas movies out there, The Muppet Christmas Carol is the most theologically-rich. And if you don’t think the caroling rabbit puppet is adorable...well, I don’t know how to help you.
Dickens’ classic tale is loaded with salvific metaphor and symbolism for repentance and regeneration, but it’s the subtle moments that really shine. This year, one part stands out in particular. Fresh off revisiting his painful history with the Ghost of Christmas Past, Ebenezer Scrooge is yet again awoken by the toll of the clock. He jolts up in bed, shrouded by the fabric of his canopy bed in the dark, and searches the room for the second spirit foretold. “Nothing,” he exhales.
Suddenly, a warm light overtakes everything and, in the doorway, looms a large, bearded face. “Ho Ho Ho,” the Spirit chuckles. “Come in and know me better, man!”
The Ghost of Christmas Present is the definition of bounty. Not only is he so big that he takes up an entire corner of the room, his space is decorated with cornucopias of harvest goods lit by candelight. The Ghost is brimming with laughter and often repeats himself. When Scrooge tells him he seems absent-minded, the Ghost replies, “My mind is filled with the here and now, and the now is Christmas!”
A quirky Christ-figure but a Christ-figure nonetheless, the Ghost of Christmas Present seems to lend itself as the personification of Romans 2:4, “the kindness of God leading to repentance.” Of course, each Ghost has a role in Scrooge’s road to salvation. While Christmas Past tills the ground with a return to prior pains and choices, Christmas Future pushes Scrooge through a katabasis that leads to his reckoning. But it’s Christmas Present that plants the seeds and draws Scrooge, not just out of his numbness, but into the warm heart of Christmas.
In my work for a local newspaper, I rarely come across a press release or lead that doesn’t frame its message in the reality of this year’s events. Phrases like “despite the challenges of COVID-19” and “in this uncertain time” are used ad nauseam. As if a global pandemic weren’t enough, a contentious election and a host of cultural divides take up much of our daily mental bandwidth. Were 2020 to have an anthem, John Mayer’s “Age of Worry” would fit nicely.
Many of us are entering the holiday season with more sadness than cheer. With gatherings still discouraged, family traditions have been postponed, church services are canceled, and the distance between neighbors is felt more than ever. But over and over again, Scripture calls us to ‘fix our eyes’ on Jesus, and in this unsteady year, the evergreen importance of that call seems especially verdant.
In its own way, I believe The Ghost of Christmas Present can be a Christ-figure for us. “Filled with the here and now,” the Ghost does not despair, despite his intimate knowledge of the suffering around him. It’s he who materializes Scrooge in his nephew Fred’s house and shows Scrooge the cruel joke he is to his family. It’s he who shows him the homeless state of the lonely caroler. It’s he who takes Scrooge to Bob Cratchett’s house and introduces him to the suffering of Tiny Tim. And yet, the Ghost, though still and reverent in these moments, does not lose his joy.
In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton details a unique observation of Christ’s life,
“The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”
When our own joy is fettered and frayed, the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Hebrews 12:1-2 says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
When we fix our eyes on Jesus, His joy is our joy. When His joy is our joy, we can endure, living long-range in fulfilling expectation of when we are united with Him in glory.
If we are Christ’s, we not only lack nothing, we possess all. In 2020 as in 33 A.D.
There is something deeply beckoning about the Ghost of Christmas Present’s call to “Come in and know me better man!” and something really special about the ‘presentness’ of that call. It’s every day, in every moment: an invitation into the heart of Jesus. It’s not a call we answer once and check off our list. It’s not something we can neglect once and live to regret. The Hound of Heaven will chase you, woo you, forgive you, and adopt you.
So for those of us who like to hang around in the doorway of faith, thinking there’s a banker on the other side waiting to judge our ledger like we Scrooges all do, don’t be so quick to exhale, “Nothing.”
The warm light of Christ overtakes everything. Come in and know Him better.