We are one week away from Christmas, and in our family, that means we are well into our family “Christmas Movie Night” schedule. The shows and films we watch in the final days before Xmas are usually some of the most near and dear to me. Tomorrow night we’re watching “A Muppet Family Christmas,” Wednesday evening after Bible class we’re watching Winnie the Pooh, Frosty, and the Grinch, on Thursday it’ll be X-Mas specials featuring Charlie Brown and Garfield, and then on Friday, one of my personal favorites: Mickey’s Christmas Carol.

I have always loved A Christmas Carol. It’s a wonderful book full of beautiful writing, a clever and sometimes piercing social commentary on that era of England, and one of the very first “time travel” stories ever put to print. I try to re-read the book every year around this time, and this year I spent several nights reading a modern-English version of it to Caleb and Joshua. The Mickey Mouse version is, of course, just one of several versions of the Dickens classic that I watch off and on between Halloween and Christmas Day. I won’t waste your time going over the plot; surely you know it.

I do want to call attention to one of the story’s most enduring catch-phrases, uttered frequently by the central character, Ebenezer Scrooge:

Bah! Humbug!

Sadly, the meaning of this phrase has been lost over the years. Most tend to think of it as simply an expletive, or an outburst of Scrooge’s disdain for Christmas, as if he was saying “Psh! Rubbish!” or something like that. On the contrary, the word “Humbug” has a very important meaning and it’s central to the story. Scrooge, as you know, is a bitter and miserly old man, who sold his soul and his ability to love for the riches of the world. Now, decrepit and alone, he’s far too cynical to allow his hard heart to make mirth and merriment during the holidays or any other time for that matter…but especially during the holidays.

In fact, it’s the extra bit of joy on everyone’s faces in December that brings out the worst in him. As everyone around him cheerfully says “Happy Christmas!” Scrooge responds with “humbug!” What does it mean?

Essentially, it means “it’s a lie!”

Scrooge can’t believe that people would genuinely mean to wish him happiness any day of the year, and since it happens more frequently than usual in December, he finds all the refrains of “Happy Christmas!” to be insincere and phony. Scrooge is a man who hates himself more than anything, and thus he hates people wishing him well and inviting him to be “happy” during the Christmas season. When someone says it, he throws it back in their face and says, basically, “you don’t mean it; you don’t actually wish me to be happy, you liar!”

That’s “Humbug.” When paired with a dismissive grunt of “bah” you have the catchphrase of a man who has closed his heart even to the invitation to be loved. How sad. Fortunately, as you know, he learns the error of his ways and, as he says, “learns to honor Christmas in his heart and keep it all the year, from that day until his last day.”

Next week is Christmas, which means we’ve only seven days at most before people stop wishing us to be “merry” and “happy.” It’ll be up to us to be merry and bright without prompt. I hope we will. Despite how dreary the year may have been for some of us, there have been many opportunities to rejoice and be glad. I hope we are looking for those opportunities, for they are God’s little pick-me-ups to help us through hard times such as these.

I hope you all have a wonderful, happy, and merry Christmas next week.

And I mean it, sincerely, too.

~ Matthew