Scrooge was my favorite Christmas Carol character right up until he confronted his own mortality . . . . and blinked.

Scrooge was honest about his greed, a trait seldom seen in the infamous 1% of our culture. He might indeed have been a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner,” but he was genuine, free from pretense or deceit. He saw Christmas for what it is: Expensive humbuggery.

Yet for all his devious and cunning talent with money, Scrooge was upended by an ancient obvious con: Immortality.

Seeing his own tombstone, offered by the third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Future, boosts Scrooge out of his miserly ways and sends him off spending his money on the Cratchit family.

What the old tightwad never realizes is that his tombstone remained a future reality despite his new found generosity. Spending his fortune on the Cratchits could not prevent his demise anymore than hoarding his money could. That cold, slab of marble etched with the name — Ebenezer Scrooge — reveals a reality beyond wealth or poverty. Having read the novel several times and watched a multitude of A Christmas Carol movies, I’m still deeply disappointed that a grossly wealthy skinflint falls for the illusion of immortality.

On the other hand, that Scrooge's so-called redemption is a not-so-clever deception mirrors the Christmas season itself: the Christian illusion of immortality that started with the fable of a special birth in Bethlehem.

“Bah,” said Scrooge, “Humbug.”

I couldn’t agree more.