Christmas comes but once a year and brings around the
holiday cheer. There’s more than cheer,
though. There’s something else. Some people call it the spirit of
Christmas. I call it “show some care for
other people and stop only thinking about your damn self all the time.” It seems like a fitting description for that
idea.
Stories set at Christmas often use this arc for one of the
main characters. The person is selfish
in a way that shows little to no care for the people around them. Through a series of events, they open their
heart and learn to pay attention to others.
They learn the Christmas spirit of loving the ones that they are
with. They learn this before dying alone
and unhappy. Their lives change as they
let people in.
The classic example of the spirit of Christmas storyline was
in A Christmas Carol by Charles
Dickens. It doesn’t matter which
adaptation you watch (Alistair Sim, Albert Finney, George C. Scott, Jim Carrey,
Mickey, Muppets, or Scrooged), the
story stays the same. A greedy man
doesn’t care about Christmas. He wants
money. The ghost of his old business
partner shows up on Christmas Eve to say he shouldn’t be so heartless. Ghosts of the past, present, and future show
him how he has been influenced and will be influenced by greed in a negative
way. He learns from his mistakes and
becomes a better person.
Ebenezer Scrooge has become the template for grumpy or
self-serving characters in Christmas movies.
That’s why his line “Bah humbug” has been used to describe these types
of characters. They are sometimes
labelled as humbugs. Though they might
not experience the same series of events as Scrooge, the characters learn that
the happiness of the people around them will bring them happiness, not the
selfish ways they were focused on.
One character who was very similar to Scrooge was Emanual
Girthmore (Kenneth Kantor) from The
Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree.
The only real difference between the two was the series of events they
experienced. Emanual Girthmore owned a
store. It wasn’t a specific type of
store. It just had stuff that you might
want to buy people for Christmas. He
wanted to sell as much as possible so he could make as much money as
possible. When he left the store on
Christmas Eve, he slipped and fell in the snow.
He lost his glasses. The only
thing he could see was a light in the house of Maggie Wiggins (Jane Seymour)
and her children Timothy (Jordan Duffy) and Melissa (Briana Steinhilber). That light changed him. As he said, “I was shown the light.” Through his cold trek in the snow, the light
had saved him. Emanual Girthmore became
a more compassionate person. He now
cared about people at Christmas, not money.
The use of this story arc in The Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree was anything but well
done. The only thing that brought
Emanual Girthmore to the Christmas spirit was to see a light in the
window. That was completely unrelated to
caring about people, yet it caused him to realize that he shouldn’t be so
greedy. The light made him stop obsessing
over money and instead learn that the people around him mattered more than the
money they gave him. The beginning and
ending of the arc were both there. It
was the middle, transitional period that seemed to be missing. Why did he learn? How did the light make him realize that he
needed to be nicer? The 44 minute short
never got into that. They said it
happened and that was it.
Other Christmas movies have tapped into this character type
in different ways. Jingle All the Way followed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Howard Langston
as he searched high and low on Christmas Eve for a Turbo Man action
figure. He had been so focused on his
job that he forgot to get the gifts he was supposed to get. Throughout his journey, he realized that he
should spend less time invested in work and more time invested in his
family. He should be respectful of other
people. Howard Langston was the Scrooge
type in a different way. The Christmas
spirit would come to him as he battled a mailman for the last action figure in
the city.
The Christmas
Consultant had a woman hire a consultant to plan a Christmas party for her
because she was so involved in making sure everything at her job went
perfectly. She didn’t want to get
fired. Owen (David Hasselhoff) would
come into her life and show her that family and holiday cheer were more
important than a job. He would become
family by helping her learn that the people around her were the most important
part of her life. Owen was the bringer
of the Christmas spirit and he brought it in spades. Maya Fletcher (Caroline Rhea) was the Scrooge
type, learning that her job was less important than caring for the people she
surrounded herself with.
Of course, there are better movies than my examples that
have had a similar story arc for a character.
The Night Before was about
Joseph Gordon-Levitt learning that he should be there for other people as much
as they’ve been there for him. Home Alone had a child who hated his
family and wanted to be alone finding out that he actually loved them and
wanted them around. Then, of course,
there’s It’s a Wonderful Life where a
suicidal man is shown what life would be like without him and changes his mind
about ending his life. Each of the
characters fit with the Scrooge type.
They weren’t greedy in the monetary, job based way that many Scrooge
types were. But they fit with the
character blueprint as characters who were only thinking of themselves before
learning to appreciate other people in their lives.
Stories where characters “show some care for other people
and stop only thinking about your damn self all the time” have been around for
a long time. They only fit the Scrooge
character type because that has become the most famous example. Regardless of whether or not you think of
Scrooge when seeing these types of stories, there’s an importance to them. Christmas and the holidays around it (happy
Hanukkah to those celebrating) are about family. Everybody comes together to celebrate. We share this little bit of time every year
with one another. These characters have
learned how important that part of the holidays is. Have you?
Here are some notes to finish off this week:
- Two movies that were mentioned in this post were The Christmas Consultant and Jingle All the Way.
- The Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree was the fourth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Jane Seymour. She was already featured in Roxanne’s Best Christmas Ever, Fifty Shades of Black, and Sandy Wexler.
- I mentioned David Hasselhoff, who was in Anaconda III: Offspring, Starcrash, and Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!
- Arnold Schwarzenegger was also mentioned. He was in Batman & Robin and Hercules in New York.
- Have you seen The Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree? Probably not. But you’ve seen movies with the Scrooge type of character. If you want to talk about any of them, there’s a comments section below.
- Suggestions for movies that I should watch are always welcome. Let me know what movies to check out in the comments or on Twitter.
- When I’m watching bad movies, I sometimes like to share clips of them on snapchat. If that sounds interesting to you, you can add me (jurassicgriffin).
- The holidays aren’t over yet. There’s still another week of Christmas movie fun. Though fun might not be the right word. Next week, Fred Claus will be the movie I write about. Be sure to come back and see what I’ve got about that movie.
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