From the 1951 film "Scrooge" starring Alastair Sim:
Scrooge: "I am a mortal and liable to fall”
The Ghost of Christmas Past: "Bear but a touch of my hand and you shall be upheld in more than this”
Alastair Sim is not just the best Scrooge, for me at least, he is the only one. No other actor could possibly have done what he did. So many of the later adaptations cut the heart out of the story, the reason why Scrooge hated Christmas so much, why was so mean and why he changes.
His life of meanness and his hatred against Christmas was all because Fan, his only beloved sister, had died on Christmas Day. She had spoken a dying wish he never heard, because his young self had rushed out of the room to embark upon a life of bitterness and hatred and meanness.
The Ghost of Christmas Past: “These are but the shadows of things that have happened. They do not know we are here”
The Ghost of Christmas Past: "Your sister was a delicate creature whom a breath might have withered but she had a large heart. She was married and had, I think, children.”
Scrooge: “One child”
The Ghost: “Yes, your nephew, Fred.”
Scrooge: "She died giving him life.”
The Ghost: "As your mother died giving you life. For which your father never forgave you, as if you were to blame”
The scene dissolves and resolves itself into the room where Fan lay dying after having born the infant who was to be Fred. The shadow of Scrooge as the young man he was bends over her, comforting and urging her, desperate to have her live. The old Scrooge of this Christmas Eve appears beside the Ghost of Christmas Past to witness this long past scene of sorrow.
Scrooge: “Not here, Spirit!”
The Ghost of Christmas Past: “Yes, here!”
Fan faints and seems to give up. Young Scrooge rushes out of the room with one bitter glance at the infant whose birth has been the death of his beloved sister. The doctor bends down and holds her hand as she struggles to say something.
Scrooge: "Oh how could you have brought me here! Have you no mercy, no pity?”
Fan: "Ebenezer, brother, promise me... promise me you'll take care of my boy .... promise me…"
The Ghost: "You heard her.”
Scrooge: "Forgive me, Fan! Forgive me, Fan!”
Can we forgive ourselves for the foolishness of the past, what we should have done and failed to do, what we shouldn’t have done but were too bitter, too ignorant, too wilful to think twice? Can we forgive ourselves? No. We aren’t guilty of earthly crimes, most of us. The law of man will not be our punisher. It’s the failure to love enough, that’s the crime. That’s the failure of our whole course of life, the one which marks our spirit. What do we really fear, that death will be oblivion, or that death will not be the end?
In old age memory opens its ledger and there is all that red ink. And one stands shivering and naked and poor, unable to change what happened, unable to repay. I can’t forgive myself. I’ve tried and tried.
Is there forgiveness somewhere? Was Devine forgiveness born on Christmas Day and does it still live?
