Episode 211: A Christmas Carol (with Emily VanDerWerff)
/A year ago, we said we’d have Emily VanDerWerff on to talk about A Christmas Carol, and damn it, we delivered! We talk cozy ghost stories, bringing back the tradition of wrecking the homes of the rich, and how trickle down economics ruined A Christmas Carol.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, social inequality, trauma, Covid-19, capitalism, politics, cultural erasure, religious persecution, and depression.
Guest
Emily VanDerWerff is Critic at Large for Vox and co-creator of the podcast Arden. Follow her on Twitter @Emilyvdw.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends The Great Pottery Throw-Down on HBO Max. Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
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Transcript
Amanda: Welcome to Spirits Podcast; a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda and I am doing the intro solo this week because Julia is taking some well-deserved time off. Welcome to Episode 211: A Christmas Carol with Emily VanDerWerff. We joked/threatened that we would have Emily back at the – at the end of last year for this year's Christmas time episode. And, sure enough, we came through and we talked extremely enthusiastically all about Christmas, Christmas media, what that means, compulsory Christmas celebrating in America, and how we, we sort of export that to the entire world. So, if you want to engage with the sort of cultural force that is Christmas and Christmas media, this is the episode for you. And, listen, if you are over it, if you don't want to talk more about Christmas, that's not a holiday you celebrate and you're like, “Damn, I can't believe that we talked about Christmas nonstop for two months.” You don’t have to listen to it. That's really okay. I'm giving you permission. Don't worry. But do you know who would never make you talk about a holiday you don't celebrate or imply that that is the only meaning of being American? It's our new patrons; Gerald, Kasey, and AJ. Thank you so, so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. This time of the year, there's lots of stuff to buy. And we really appreciate that you put your money to supporting our podcast. It's how we have jobs. And we are extremely grateful for it now and every week, including to our supporting producer level patrons; Uhleeseeuh, Allison, Debra, Hannah, Jen, Jessica, Keegan, Kneazlekins, Liz, Megan Linger, Megan Moon, Phil Fresh, Polly, Sarah, Skyla, SamneyTodd, and Alex Forbes. And huge thanks to our legend level patrons; Audra, Chelsea, Drew, Frances, Jack Marie, Ki, Lada, Mark, Morgan, Necrofancy, Renegade, and Bea Me Up Scotty. I was spending a lot of time recently playing Stardew Valley on my Switch and watching comforting TV. And, for me, that might mean rewatching shows that I love, which all of you know is primarily Elementary, the excellent Procedural on CBS that is now over rip that stars Lucy Lou and to Johnny Lee Miller. It's – it’s incredible. But I also started watching, because a family member gifted me with an HBO Max login that we are completely legally sharing, the Great Pottery Throw Down, which is a wonderful show. You can find it both on YouTube and on HBO Max. They recently came to Roku. Finally, I can watch it on my TV. It's very exciting. And it is just lovely British people making pottery. I sometimes do cry at how hard they try and what pottery means to them. But, if, if you really love British Bake Off and you perhaps do not want to watch a baking show because even I can get tired of baking shows from time to time, the Great Pottery Throw Down is completely tonally the same and I highly recommend it. I also highly recommend, if you are able, buying your holiday gifts from local businesses that need your support or from creators online that you want to direct your money toward. And, if Multitude is one of those, we highly recommend that you check out our digital merch. If you want to give delivery workers a bit of a break right now and focus on either local stuff you can pick up yourself or digital gifts that you do not have to get shipped anywhere, digital merch – just, in general, our digital gifts are a great way to go. And we have lots of digital bundles for sale, including PDFs for Spirits. We have the Cool Cryptid Compendium where Join the Party and Spirits collaborated, Julia and Eric Silver, on making some fantastic cryptids that you can bring into your RPG that you don't have to slay or defeat. But, instead, you can make friends with or date. It's incredible. We also have phone wallpapers. We have a music pack, where you can download it and use it to, like, score your home games or play it loud as you play campaigns with your friends over Zoom. So, whatever you need, we have it for you in addition to, of course, tons of physical merch. All of that can be browsed at multitude.productions/merch. All right. Well, no matter if this week is a holiday week for you or it's just another week where, hopefully, you get fewer emails than usual, I hope that you have a very restful one. You deserve it. And we will be here for you next week with a whole new episode. So, enjoy Spirits Podcast Episode 211: A Christmas Carol with Emily VanDerWerff.
Intro Music
Amanda: Well, everybody, a year later as promised, we have with us critic-at-large at Vox and co-creator of the excellent podcast Arden, Emily VanDerWerff back. Emily, if I could, I just want to bestow upon you a new title which is Official Spirits Christmas Ghost Correspondent.
Emily: Oh, thank you so much. I'm gonna make this happen every year now.
Julia: Yes.
Emily: Like, I think you should make this a tradition. I will be on the show before Christmas. We will talk about something Christmas related. I'm just putting my marker on that, that spot on the board. It's gonna be great. We're all gonna love it. Good times.
Julia: Maybe next year, we'll do a Myth Movie Night of your choice of adaptation of A Christmas Carol and you can tell us everything that they did wrong.
Emily: Perfect. I will do that. I actually was just on Blank Check, that podcast --
Julia: Oh, hell yeah.
Emily: -- to talk about 2009 Christmas Carol, which is awful. We barely talked about A Christmas Carol, but we mostly just talked about, you know, pointless stuff. So, we've always got that. No, please don't make me watch that movie ever again.
Julia: Is that the Jim Carrey one where he plays, like, all the characters?
Emily: Yep. And it’s directed by Robert Zemeckis. It's motion capture. It is one of the ugliest movies ever made.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: It is disturbing, and gross, and disgusting.
Julia: Yes. Yes, it is.
Amanda: As I was walking into the studio, my partner, Eric, was like, “Yeah. Yeah, just asked Emily what it's like for Jim Carrey to, like, fuck this up.” And I didn't know what that meant.
Julia: What?
Amanda: But now I do.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. No, I love this story. I love being here. Actually, I love when I hear somebody on a podcast and the hosts are like, “We should have you back to talk about this next year.” And then I like scroll all the way up and I'm like, “Oh, didn't happen or, oh, they did.” So, I am really glad that a alternate Emily VanDerWerff who's listening to this show and hearing herself is like, “I wonder if they had her back,” and they did.
Julia: They did. They did. We did it. I was telling you before the podcast started that I put it the day that we recorded your episode last year. I put it in the calendar for this year, “Email Emily on November --
Emily: Perfect.
Julia: -- to get her back on the show.”
Emily: Perfect. I'm so glad you did. And I'm so glad we're all here to talk about Charles Dickens’ immortal classic, A Christmas Carol. I just introduced the subject.
Amanda: [Inaudible 6:01].
Julia: Whoa.
Emily: I don't know what I’m doing – what I'm doing anymore.
Julia: No, you’re doing great.
Emily: I’m hosting now.
Julia: I love it.
Emily: It’s my show.
Amanda: You are, once a year – one special night each year. We, we hang up the stockings. We put out cookies and baby carrots. And Emily comes to tell us about Christmas stuff.
Emily: Yay.
Julia: Emily becomes the ghosts to lead us through A Christmas Carol.
Emily: Yes. Yes. Yes. But, yeah, I, I love the story. I'm so happy to be here.
Julia: Awesome. Well, how about we start with kind of, like, a primer for the people who have been living under a rock and have not read or seen any version of A Christmas Carol?
Emily: Right. Okay. So, A Christmas Carol is a story of an old man named Ebenezer Scrooge, who is a miser. He's very – he hoards his money. He doesn't give anything to the poor. He's kind of a mean, old SOB. He is famous for saying, “Bah! Humbug!” especially about Christmas. And everyone is like, “Oh, Christmas, a humbug. Hahaha.” And he goes home on Christmas Eve night and is, you know, just secure in his mean ways. He goes home and is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, who tells him, “Listen, you got to be nicer to people. And you got to give more of your money away. And you're going to be visited by three ghosts who are going to convince you of this fact.” Scrooge meets the first of these ghosts, who's the Ghost of Christmas Past. This, this is the ingenious thing about this story. Like, the structure of it is just ironclad. Like, you cannot you — cannot mess with this structure. He meets the first ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Past, who takes him back to his past Christmases when he was still a young, fresh faced man who, you know, loved doing stuff, and loved being a person basically, and loved helping his fellow man. One of the flaws of this story is that Scrooge is basically reformed by the end of the Christmas Past. Like, they’re – you give the Christmas present. He's still a little grouchy. But, you know, we're all a little grouchy around Christmas.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: But he goes – then it's Christmas present and he sees the day of Christmas that is unfolding before him alongside the Ghost of Christmas Present, who’s basically Father Christmas. The Ghost of Christmas Past, by the way, is like a little angel candle thing. And then he meets the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who shows him a Christmas right after he's died when everybody is talking about how much they hate him. And, also, Tiny Tim, the small boy that Scrooge becomes unbearably attached to for some reason, has also died. And Scrooge is very sad both about Tiny Tim's death and his own. He wakes up. It's Christmas morning. He looks out a window and yells, “You there. Boy, what day is it?” And the boy says, “It's Christmas. It's Christmas Day.” And then he goes and buys a turkey and brings it to the family of his, his beleaguered clerk, Bob Cratchit, who is also the father of Tiny Tim, who is a weird person to just be mentioning at the end of this story. But that's basically what A Christmas Carol is. It's a story about an old man who reforms his ways. And, actually, he doesn't bring the turkey to the Cratchits in the book. In the book, he just has it delivered. And then, the next day at work, he's like, “Guess what? That was me.”
Julia: See, if my boss showed up with a turkey at my doorstep on Christmas Day – well, my boss is Amanda. So, that doesn't really count. But, if it was a boss --
Amanda: A boss you hate.
Julia: -- with any other job that I had, I would be like, “No, please. Please leave. I'm with my family. Please go.”
Emily: Amanda, how come you're not showing up at Julia's house with turkey on Christmas?
Amanda: You see, when somebody alerts me to, like, the fundamental inequality of me being rich and paying my employees, like, unlivable wages, what I do is just buy them a single turkey.
Julia: That’s totally true.
Amanda: But I think, if I were better, I would – I don't know – redistribute all my wealth. That's just me.
Julia: I mean it was like the first actionable thing he could do, I feel like.
Emily: Yeah.
Amanda: That’s true.
Julia: You know, it was the first thing that came to mind. He can work out the logistics of it later.
Emily: He does usually give money to the money collectors who are shown, you know, collecting money for the poor. And most versions of the story, like, emphasize this moment because I think it is a sign that his reformed. It goes beyond, “I'm going to be nice to Bob Cratchit.” Though, he is also nice to Bob Cratchit.
Amanda: So, why do we like the story? Why do you think it's become such a phenomenon?
Emily: There is sort of this conventional wisdom. This is the most popular Christmas Story outside of the one you hear at church every year if you go to church. And, honestly, the more that Christmas becomes a secular holiday and less a religious one, this, I think, is, you know, kind of its original founding text in a lot of ways. It is just – again, as I mentioned, the structure of it is so perfect. Everything about it is just, like, perfectly tuned to get you to keep watching the story, to keep watching this man's reform. There is a built-in tension in past, present, future that, you know, is exploited perfectly. It's kind of spooky, especially if you read it with the original illustrations. There's that horror element. But, also, like, the fact of Scrooge’s redemptive arc is really convincing. Like, you don't – it's hard to do a redemptive arc and this story does it well. Like, I'm not the world's biggest Dickens fan. I like – I like a lot of his, his writing, but I think this book is – this novella really is, is pretty ironclad as a structure. Now, that's the reason we kept adapting it. And that's the reason we kept telling that story. But it also sort of reflects this thing that we want around Christmas time which is this idea that we're all going to take care of our fellow man and, and make sure that we're helping each other out. I think that my final sort of notion on it is we – this is – I talked to the author, Sarah Archer, a few years back. She wrote a book called Midcentury Christmas, which is about Christmas in the US between World War II and, like, 1965, basically. And that's, like, one of the key eras for defining what we think of as Christmas. But the other key era is, like, the 1840s to the 1860s. And Christmas Carol is at the center of that. This is a story that really defines how we think about Christmas. Like, think of how many people have, like, a Dickensian Christmas Village in their basement or something. Like --
Amanda: Yeah.
Emily: -- that's because of this book. That’s because of this story. So, A Christmas Carol really defines, in a lot of ways, how we think about this holiday, the values we attach to it, the idea of, you know, family togetherness, and taking care of people, making sure no one has too little for one day a year, which is, you know, I'm sure what Dickens intended. That we have one day where we're nice to each other.
Amanda: Just the one.
Emily: But, yeah, it's – it's so central to our understanding of Christmas.
Julia: Absolutely. I think one of my favorite aspects about the, like, history of A Christmas Carol is, like, Dickens was like, “I don't want to write a sequel to this or anything like that. But I still kind of want to make some money off of it. So, I'm just going to do public readings and public performances of this book,” which I think is very cool and I wish was a tradition that we were still doing because I think that there is something, like, inherently cool about telling ghost stories during Christmas time --
Emily: Yeah.
Julia: -- during the solstice, during the darkest time of the year.
Emily: Yeah. And, like, that used to be a big tradition. You know, there's this song, It's the most wonderful time of the year. And there's a reference in it to telling scary ghost stories. And, like, this is a tradition we no longer really have.
Julia: No.
Emily: Like, you'll occasionally see, like, a collection by short story writers like Christmas ghost stories that are newly generated for whatever era it is. But, like, spooky Christmas stories used to be – especially in the UK, they were, like, a big deal. And Dickens was sort of capitalizing on that phenomenon, but, also, like, pioneering it in a way because the way that he told a ghost story that also kind of had a moral at the end, while not exclusively new, like, really cemented that as, as a – as a key part of the form. But you also see just, just very spooky Christmas ghost stories. The thing I'd say they all have in common is they're kind of cozy because I think Christmas is an inherently cozy time of year just aesthetically as we think about it. So, they're about people who are, you know, alone on the holiday. Or it's a whole bunch of, like, strangers trapped in an old country house or something like that. And then they – you know, they meet a ghost. And it's scary for a while until they realize that, like, death is coming for us all. And Christmas is a way we mark the passage of time. And, like, the underlying theme of so many Christmas stories is you only get so many before you die. And, like, the Christmas ghost story just, like, takes that and makes it text.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: I do love a good reminder of my own mortality around the holidays. It's always a plus.
Emily: Yeah. Like, I think – now, listen, I am famous for taking everything and making it, like, weird and sad. Like, I took a perfectly good comedy podcast and turn it into, like, a tragic --
Julia: Oh, hell yeah.
Emily: -- meditation of my own psychological trauma. So --
Julia: Oh, no.
Amanda: That’s why we get along so well.
Emily: So – yeah. But there is this tradition of, like, holidays because they are ephemeral. They're one day out of the year. We grow older and yet the holiday kind of stays the same a little bit. You know, most of them are – functionally, they sort of end up having this element of being about death. You know, Halloween is very explicit about it. But even something like Easter, you know, is about this idea that, like, we're gonna die someday, but, you know, if you're a Christian, you sort of believe that that's not it. You're going to go on to heaven and hang out with Jesus or whatever. Christmas is not necessarily a time of year when we're thinking about death a lot. But I think the older you get, especially, you know, if you have kids or you have nieces and nephews, or you have – you have people who are growing up and you're seeing them grow up alongside the holiday. Like, it does remind you, “Oh, the number of Christmases we have, regardless of how old you are, is one less every year.” And, like, thinking about that is sort of intrinsic to the holiday, which also, again, grew up out of Solstice, out of Yule, out of such Saturnalia, out of all of these holidays that were like the idea of this is the shortest night of the year. This is the year when sort of death is very present. This is the time of year when we're not sure we're gonna emerge from this even though we always do. It's worth celebrating that idea. It's worth trying to make a little more light on that night. There is something very poignant about that, about looking back over the year that was and saying, “You know, we get another year.” And I'm quoting my own podcast. We, we get – you know, we get more time. You know, even if this Christmas is our – is our last one, we got it. We had it. We get to celebrate that alongside the people we love. And, like, I think that's why Christmas has such a melancholy attached to it. It's impossible to celebrate it without thinking about, “Oh, I'm a week away from a new year. And I'm a year older. Time continues to pass. Have I accomplished what I want to accomplish? Do I have the people I love around me? And I think this year of all years, when Amanda cannot deliver her traditional Christmas turkey to Julia because of the pandemic --
Amanda: Mhmm. Mhmm.
Emily: -- you know, I think we're remembering that ever more – even more than ever.
Amanda: It's gonna come via DoorDash, Julia. I know it's a little – a little impersonal, but just, just look out for it.
Julia: You know what? I still appreciate it regardless. Thanks, boss. But I really like your point. And I'm thinking, now, because now that you put this in my head, how many holidays are just about death?
Emily: Yeah.
Julia: But I think that's like – I think that's why we celebrate them because, yeah, it is an acknowledgment that, you know, there is one less of this year and this is the – marking the passage of time, but, at the same time, like, the acknowledgement of death allows us to celebrate life.
Emily: Yes.
Julia: And it allows us to reflect on how we are living our lives and how we can improve that. And, also, at the same time, reflect on how we have been living our life and be like, “Damn. I'm living a good life. I'm surrounded by people who love me. And I, I've done good things and I've made an impact on other people.” And that's what's important.
Emily: Yeah. And I think A Christmas Carol really zeroes in on that aspect of what are the things in your life that you're proud of, what are the things in your life – who are the people in your life that you love, how have you helped someone else, what do you have beyond yourself that is important to you, that is necessary to you. And the, the, the story is so centered on that and I think it really – before the late 1700s but especially in – this started to change an 1800s, Christmas was a time of drunken revelry, you know. Like, there was a full, like, 12 days, which is where you get the 12 Days of Christmas, when people just got drunk and, like, the poor were like – wandered into rich people's homes and ate off their tables.
Julia: Oh, hell yeah.
Emily: And, like – yeah. And there's a – you know, they were – they were breaking stuff. And, like, it was a wild time. And, so, to a degree, A Christmas Carol is propaganda designed to prop up the capitalist system and, like, make rich people seem like, “Oh, maybe they'll – they'll come help us instead of us having to go help them help ourselves at their houses.”
Amanda: That's so British.
Emily: What I'm saying is, as proud socialists, we must get drunk on Christmas and break something.
Amanda: I know. That's always been my, my primary kind of impression of A Christmas Carol. It’s that it is now held up as something that is deeply nostalgic.
Emily: Yes.
Amanda: And I, I think you're right that it's like it is kind of the urtext of, like, the modern capitalist, secular Christmas.
Emily: Mhmm.
Amanda: Because it wasn't always celebrated that way. And, when it came out, maybe – you know, maybe Dickens was just trying to, you know, like, get a – I don't know – like, an angle on it that he felt had pathos. But, now, I think people hold it up as, like, the thing that we are missing and the thing we must return to when it was pure.
Emily: Yeah. Dickens is really drafting off a movement from the 19th Century to sort of canonize this, this idea of an English Christmas that never existed. There's a famous essay by Washington Irving that I can't quite remember the title of. It's something like an old English Christmas. And he is writing to an American audience about how Christmas is celebrated in merry old England because, in the early United States, there was, like, so much, like, destruction around Christmas time. We see, like, remnants of this tradition. Philadelphia has something called the Mummers, I believe.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Yeah.
Emily: And the Mummers are, like, a weird, like, vestigial organ of this old version of Christmas. They're no longer going around and breaking stuff, but they are going around and, like, performing little Christmas pageants or, you know, going to your house and they are, in essence, carolers, which is another vestigial organ we have of this, this time in Christmas history. And, so, Washington Irving writes this thing and is like, “Here's how Christmas was meant to be celebrated.” He is kind of just making it up and --
Amanda: Yeah.
Emily: -- that filters through a whole bunch of other people. And then it, ultimately, becomes A Christmas Carol, which solidifies this idea that was taking hold but hadn't yet, like, cemented itself. And then A Christmas Carol comes along that and ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, which talking about that next year --
Julia: Yes, writing it down.
Emily: -- yay – are so central to the way we think about the holiday, especially in the United States and the UK. But, you know, that version of Christmas has been exported almost everywhere. Everywhere has weird local traditions. You know, Christmas is KFC day in Japan. There are a bunch of different twists on Santa Claus or Father Christmas around the world, some of which are horribly racist.
Amanda: Oh, yeah.
Emily: And – but, yeah, like, like, it has become one of our chief cultural exports. Like, I've been thinking about waning American power a lot lately --
Julia: Hmm.
Emily: -- which is just, you know, a fun thing to bring up on this podcast. But – and I've been like, “Well, does that mean that Christmas will sort of die off?” And, no, I think, honestly, perhaps, the greatest contribution to worldwide culture America has made is cementing this idea of Christmas, which feels kind of like it can't be removed. Like, we're always gonna have this idea of, you know, the Coca Cola Santa Claus and the, you know, gathering together to wish your good man – wish your fellow man good cheer. And, granted, A Christmas Carol is a very British story, but, like, we kind of took it and commercialized it.
Julia: Hmm.
Emily: And, like, that is what has made it stick around.
Amanda: I think the reason that is so American is because it completely erases any cultures that are not, like, white Anglo-Saxon Christian ones.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: And it's not a thing that is good, but it is a thing that is American. So, I, I think that's a really kind of useful, like, touchstone for kind of analyzing that influence as a whole.
Julia: Yeah. And I also think that America has kind of created this, like, subculture of Christmas media. Like, just ignoring the, the sheer ridiculousness that is, like, the Hallmark Christmas movie and that entire franchise. We also have all the, like, traditional stop motion movies and all that. Like, Christmas movie is a specific genre, which is wild.
Amanda: And TV show Christmas episode.
Midroll Music
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Emily: By the way, I forgot to light this before we started talking. But I'm lighting my Simmered Cider handle --
Julia: Ooh.
Amanda: Ooh, very nice.
Emily: -- which feels vaguely on theme in multiple ways. But, like, you know --
Julia: We'll count that as your cocktail for this episode since you it is 9:00 AM for you and we don't expect you to be drinking.
Emily: You know what? I, I'm happy to like – except I have to go to work in a bit.
Julia: Understand.
Emily: You know, like, write stuff, which is what I do for a living which is wild.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: Yeah, the Christmas movie media, like, like, industrial complex is so – like, so American.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: Like, there are obviously great Christmas movies from every country that produces cinema. There's a – A Christmas Tale is this French movie I love, but it's a little bit darker. It's a little bit more cynical. Like, the American Christmas movie, which tends to be, like, centered on the idea of family coming together in some way, which can include, like, like, lovers coming together, which is, like, a sort of a subset of that story, you know.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: And then everything's happy at the end. Honestly, I think, in the last 10 years or so, it has become sort of – has become really detached from what it used to be and what made so many of our favorite Christmas movies and TV shows good. Like, again, there's this unbelievable weight of melancholy to something like a Charlie Brown Christmas --
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: -- or It's a Wonderful Life, or any of these number of stories. And, yet, now, when we get a Christmas movie that has something thorny in it, we're like, “Give us the happy ending. You know, just give us the happy parts.” And I understand that that is a response to a world that has just sort of gone off the rails and that we're all very concerned about, you know, the death throes of global capitalism, which will probably go on for several more centuries, and, you know, climate change and all of these existential crises that we are facing. So, we just want an escape from them by watching a nice Christmas movie. And I don't begrudge anyone that. But, like, at a certain point, Christmas stories are more powerful if they acknowledge we're all gonna die to get things back on theme apparently.
Julia: Mhmm. Mhmm. That's always the theme of our show. It’s, “Hey, remember, you're gonna die.” But we need to change the name of the podcast, Amanda, to Memento Mori. I'm sure that's already another podcast. But --
Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Julia: -- can that be our, like, subtitle?
Amanda: It, it can be a, a theme. Like, a cloak that we put on, I think, with great frequency.
Emily: Harder to market, but better SEO, honestly.
Julia: Mhmm. Probably. Oh, I'm just gonna get a bunch of Google searches for whichever Roman emperor was that they supposedly had the guy follow him around and remind him he was going to die.
Amanda: I'm really interested in how we can use the kind of inevitability of Christmas and the obligatory nature of, like, being an American and needing to participate in Christmas somehow even if that's not a holiday you celebrate. You know, I, I wish that that and the message of texts like Christmas carol can instead prompt us to ask, you know, am I happy with my legacy at the end of my life. Like, am, am I doing things now that a Ghost of Christmas Present would be, like, “Tight. I'm showing you your life and you should be proud,” because – I don't know – that would be – that would be I guess a, a positive. I'm, like, grasping for a thing that we can use to extend this spirit of giving from a, you know, obligatory, like, cultural participation to a thing that, you know, has influence outside of just the month of December.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: You look at this story. It's certainly a very capitalist story. Like, I don't want to say it's anti-capitalist. It does have this vision of capitalism where the richest among us are constantly bestowing their money upon the lower classes. And, like, I think that's a thing that America latched onto because redistribution of wealth became, like, a thing in the Great Depression, World War II, the 1950s until tax cuts sort of eroded at that. That was an era when we made most of our great Christmas media. Like, if you are sort of trying to create propaganda of capitalism is good as long as rich people are constantly giving their money to other people, which is not really capitalism but close enough – like, it's in – it's on the spectrum – then you know, you need to – you need to tell stories about that. It is the thing that you need to sort of – you need to create in people the belief that they are good if they're sharing their wealth. And, of course, what it has become is share your wealth in December, I guess, and then, you know, maybe give your kids really nice presents. And then it's over. It's January. It's done.
Julia: What this sounds like to me is that trickledown economics ruined A Christmas Carol.
Emily: Absolutely. Like --
Amanda: Add it to the pile.
Emily: Gosh, like, I'm thinking about great Christmas movies. And I like a lot of Christmas movies made since 1980. But they are very much more about, “Oh, here are the aesthetics of Christmas. We're going to make this look the most Christmas.” Like, Home Alone is an extremely – I'm using conservative in the sense of just like a general move – generalized movement toward defending a particular way of life against all change. Home Alone is, is basically that. Now, granted, he's defending his house against robbers, which is, you know, acceptable. But --
Julia: You don't want Joe Pesci in your house. Come on.
Emily: I would love if Joe Pesci was in my house. If he came over for Christmas, I would let him in even without a mask. I would be like, “Joe Pesci, do you have COVID?” He'd say, “I haven't been tested in months.” I'd be like, “Come on in. Just come on in.”
Julia: I, I need to admit something to you and to our listeners. And it's that I watched Home Alone and Home Alone 2 for the first time two days ago.
Emily: Oh, wow. What do you think?
Amanda: Wow.
Julia: I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a lot of fun.
Emily: Good.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: I was – I was like, “I need more Tim Curry in the second one.” That was my big opinion.
Emily: How did you feel about, about a certain cameo in the second film?
Julia: Oh, not great, but I understand why they did it. But, umm, no, not great.
Amanda: I know.
Emily: Yeah, it takes you out a bit.
Julia: It does. It really does. I booed and my husband was like, “Okay. Calm down.”
Emily: But, yeah, I think you look at these Christmas stories from post-1980 and it’s so much more about materialism in some way or another. It's not about, like, charity so much as it is you should give other people presents and giving makes you happy. But that gets distilled down to, “Oh, I should give my family presents. I should get my friends presents.” And, yes, you should. That's cool. Do that please. Give me presents. Actually, you can DM me on Twitter for my address. I would love if you just started mailing me stuff. A friend of mine just mailed me a thousand stickers that say boneless that are supposed to go on, like, like, you know, meat packaging at the grocery store.
Amanda: That's fantastic.
Emily: She found a place to order them online and she sent them to me and said Merry Christmas. What am I gonna do with a thousand stickers that say boneless?
Julia: I don’t know.
Amanda: What can’t you do? What can’t you do?
Julia: Put it on everything. Put them on everything. Everything is boneless now.
Emily: Everything is boneless.
Julia: You just will it into existence.
Amanda: It’s so fucking funny.
Emily: I’ll just put it on every day for the next thousand days.
Julia: Perfect. I love it.
Emily: The best part of this story is she originally sent me stickers that are partially frozen.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: And the store messed it up.
Amanda: Also, good.
Emily: So, now, I have a thousand stickers that say partially frozen and a thousand that's say boneless because of the store's mix up. So, I have so many stickers meant for grocery stores.
Julia: I love that they felt like they had to do right by you so they sent you a thousand more of a different brand. That is incredible.
Amanda: It’s very, very good.
Emily: Yes. Please get your friends gifts is the point of this. Please get your friends stickers that say boneless and/or partially frozen. The point of, of A Christmas Carol is Scrooge doesn't just get turkey for the person he works with. He also gives a whole bunch of money to the poor. Like, there's an element of this story that's about redistributing your wealth. And, and, like, that is the part that so often gets erased. I recently rewatched the Robert Zemeckis’ Christmas Carol, the 2009 version, and, for all that movie’s faults, it really zeroes in on, “Oh, you should be giving your money away.” Zemeckis has this weird leftist streak in him --
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: -- which is – I say – I call it weird because he made Forrest Gump, which is, like, a movie that was seized upon by the, the Christian right.
Julia: Yeah.
Emily: But he has this real leftist streak in his filmmaking. And that movie – the themes he chooses to emphasize in A Christmas Carol are themes of, if you don't help people, no one is going to because the government inevitably will be taken over by people who won't help them. Like, it is, to some degree, if you are a rich person, if you are Jeff Bezos, who has inevitably been visited by three ghosts, like, you should be giving as much of your money away as you can possibly stand. And that theme, for some reason, when America got hold of the story kind of diminished and went to the background. I don't know why that happened.
Julia: Hmm. So odd.
Amanda: I wish – I wish that we could see – that we could see that as like a necessary condition of kind of returning to the romanticized past.
Emily: Yeah.
Amanda: Because I, I do think that kind of – you know, speaking about tradition, like, a lot of Christmas movies that I am thinking of – and I just saw A Nightmare Before Christmas for the first time and that – and even Diehard. Those are both fundamentally about, “I want things to be like they were before but better. Like, I want my, my marriage and relationship with my wife to be like it was before but better. I want, you know, my life here in Halloweentown to be like it was before but better and more fulfilled and with a companion. And, hey, how we get there is with, with less income inequality. And that would be a very practical and quick way to return to the sense of security, but not just for you. And, and that's just – I don't know. I feel like the, the logical leap is, like, so small and yet would be so profound.
Emily: I don't know if this is going to resonate with you living in America in the year 2020. But I, sometimes, feel like most people on the planet want everything to be better without having to do anything.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Yeah.
Emily: For that to happen without having to give anything up, without having to, you know, find a way to, like, live your life in harmony with other people. It's A Wonderful Life is my favorite Christmas story. And it is a Christmas story that is fundamentally about building love and hope among community and finding ways to make things more equitable. It's a story about the ways that your life touches other lives when you attempt to do good things, and you attempt to do the right thing, and you attempt to give of yourself to other people. It's also about the downside of that, which is you can give so much of yourself that you give yourself away. And you end up in a desperate place. But I think it is a story about, like, the importance of propping each other up, of helping each other. You see a lot of that in American storytelling and American Christmas traditions from the 1940s on because the 30s and 40s were this era when we've literally had to do that to get through a depression and then an extremely deadly war. And, like – I don't know – I don't want to have a depression and/or an extremely deadly war anymore. Like, that seems bad.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: But it would be nice to, like, realize that these stories are saying something beyond – I don't know – be nice to people.
Julia: No change requires sacrifice.
Emily: Yeah.
Julia: And I think that is something that we have forgotten.
Amanda: I also don't think it is a coincidence that so much of the Christmas media that we find to be the most authentic is also created by Jewish people, including Philip Van Doren Stern, who wrote the Greatest Gift upon which It's A Wonderful Life was based, all of the good Christmas carols as well. And it's – I don't know. Like, it's this, this – like, Christmas is just invented. And I don't think that the things that strike us as fundamentally true about it as being, like, you know, Christian-American sort of cultural thought is necessarily Christian at all.
Emily: Yeah.
Amanda: Or, at least, the way that Christianity has, like, had an impact on the world for the last couple of centuries. So, it's – I don't know. I feel like there is – there is no right way to do it. There is no obligation to have, or celebrate, or, or like enshrine, or make illegal Christmas. And, instead, I – you know, again, like, I wish the – I wish the takeaway was, like, how do we make, at this time next year, you know, us feel a little bit better about ourselves, our neighbors be a little bit happier and more secure.
Emily: There's a wonderful Christmas song, which I encourage everyone to look up on Spotify or whatever your, your music platform of choice is after you're done listening to all episodes of Arden, available on all major podcast platforms.
Julia: Do it.
Emily: There's a song called It's Christmas So We'll Stop. It's by Frightened Rabbit.
Julia: Ooh.
Emily: And it is about the idea of, “Oh, today is Christmas. So, we're gonna stop being mean to each other. We're going to be nice. We're going to give of ourselves to each other. But tomorrow is December 26th. And it's going to stop. Then we're going to go back to the way things are. And then we'll have 364, 365 in a leap year, days of being venal, and selfish, and envious, and just all of our worst impulses. And then we'll come to December 25th and we'll be nice again. And, like, it's a very sad song. I love it. It's one of my favorite Christmas songs. But, like, underlying it, is this, this idea that, like, what if – what would it really mean to keep the Christmas spirit all the year through as Scrooge resolves to do sort of at the end of the story. Like, what would that mean? It would be a lot different from the world we have now. And, like, the thing about it is Christmas Carol roots that in the individual’s choices. But, to make every individual make those choices, you require some sort of societal movement.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: It doesn't necessarily have to be like a governmental legal movement or that's like the easiest way to make it happen. But you do need to create this sort of shared sense of community. And we just don't have that, you know. We have Christmas and Christmas is the time when we all are kind of together even people who don't celebrate Christmas. Like, Jewish Christmas is a tradition of, you know, going to the movies, and eating Chinese food, and all of that. You have, you know, people who just celebrate the secular sides of the holiday. You have people who are, like, very, like, anti-Christmas and don't celebrate. But, like, it is kind of one of the few times in the year when we all are sort of continued to be drawn together by this one thing and we have a shared story. And what would happen if we extended that to the rest of the year?
Amanda: Yeah. Or it becomes like a self-care day --
Emily: Yeah. Mhmm.
Amanda: -- or time of year where it's, like, you know, society is telling me I'm not welcome in some of these ways. So, I'm going to, you know, turn to the people who do welcome me and, you know, make sure I'm taking care of myself too.
Emily: Yes, perfect.
Amanda: I'm still thinking about how so many, like, Christian and, like, American holidays are, are about death. And, instead, I – you know, that's why I love that Jewish holidays are all about, “They tried to kill us. They fail. Let’s eat.”
Emily: Yeah.
Amanda: And it's a – it's a fundamentally, I think, more practical, optimistic and, like, interesting thing to ritualized.
Emily: Yeah, the core – I mean the core story of Christianity is this guy was here for a while, then they killed him, then he came back to life. And, like --
Amanda: One day, he'll come back and save us.
Emily: Have you done an episode about Jesus?
Julia: No.
Amanda: No.
Emily: I'm here for it if you ever decide.
Amanda: That would be very interesting.
Julia: You got it.
Emily: I have the baggage to prove it.
Amanda: Maybe that's next Christmas. It’s like, “Hey, what are we talking about here anyway?”
Emily: But, yeah, like, like, that's the central story. So, you celebrate his birth. And you still have to talk about, well, the most notable thing he did – yes, he – like, he gave us all of these amazing lessons and all of these ways you should live your life that are still applicable today. Except, we're not going to really talk about those because a lot of them are, like – again, well, you should give all your money away. What are you doing with all this money? But then he died and that was very sad. But then he came back and that was very happy. And, someday, we will die, but then we'll go to heaven. And that'll be great. So, it's wrapped – it's so wrapped up in the Christian worldview. And the Christian worldview is so dominant in Western culture that Christmas couldn't help it become a little bit about death. But that's cool. I like thinking about death. I like thinking about how everything is temporary. I think it is worth thinking about how not – tomorrow's December 26th and we're going to go back to the way things were. But I also like thinking about how would we build a better world. If Christmas gives us a vision of that, how do we find our own way to deliver a turkey to our employee’s house?
Amanda: Yeah, including if it's – you know, if it's your, your Christianity and relationship with Jesus that makes you want to, you know, apply, like, Christian principles of giving --
Emily: Yeah.
Amanda: -- you know, helping the poor, helping your neighbors to the rest of the year. Like, that's great. I think whatever your motivation is, you know, that is the thing that we should be reflecting on as we turn to the next year in the spirit of mutual aid, in the spirit of, you know, knowing that when institutions fail us, all of us can do what we can do to help the rest of the world.
Emily: Yeah.
Amanda: That is my, you know, period of reflection as the year gets darker and then starts to get light again.
Emily: Yeah. I, in the past year, have gotten really into witchcraft. I wouldn't like call it – like, I don't call myself a witch because I feel like I should have to, like – I don't know.
Julia: Pass a series of tests?
Emily: Somebody should send me a thousand stickers that say Witch.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: And then I can just, like, put it on every day and be like, “Hello.” But what I love about witchcraft is the idea of the Wheel of the Year, which is, like, there are these fixed points in every year and they're tied to the natural world. And, of course, it's a northern hemisphere thing. Witchcraft traditions from the southern hemisphere, which they wouldn't call witchcraft but, like, we sort of lump in as like folk religion, folk magic, that sort of thing, have a different concept of the Wheel of the Year. So, I'm thinking from a northern hemispheric Western perspective, just to be clear. This idea that there are these fixed points in time and certain days of the year tie to the natural growing season. And, of course, the 21st, the start of winter is Yule, which is a time when you make a big fire and, like, there are all these mystical figures that come out of the woods. And they're there and they're among us. And we gather and we accept that, like, everything ends and then everything starts over again. One of the reasons that Christianity became so powerful force in Europe after sort of it started in, you know, the Middle East was because it's already an approximation of that philosophy. It's an approximation of, “Oh, there's a dark time. And then you come out of the dark into the light.” And a lot of religions have that, but Christianity makes it so explicit that, like, I think that's one of the reasons it became, in essence, a very viral religion in the early, you know, whatever century. I can never remember what to call centuries. I just – I never can.
Julia: First, I guess at point, you know.
Emily: First, second, third, somewhere in there.
Julia: Yeah, somewhere in there.
Amanda: The way --
Julia: After Jesus.
Amanda: The way --
Julia: The time after Him.
Emily: Post Jesus. That, that was really – that was the post Jesus discussion show.
Julia: Mhmm. Mhmm.
Emily: That was like the Talking Dead of Christianity.
Julia: The Talking Dead prep for Jesus. Oh, boy.
Amanda: Yeah, we're still in it. We're still in it. We're in season 2020 of it because we were like – the way we're remembering things before, no, no, no.
Julia: Umm, umm, umm.
Amanda: Jesus was born. That means we should start them all over.
Emily: I’m getting canceled by, by being on this podcast.
Julia: Welcome.
Amanda: Well, I feel like I have so much to think about, reflect on, and, and put into practice to try to make the world better around me at the end of this year, which I think is a pretty good thought to go out on.
Emily: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Emily: It's worth thinking about what you would see if you were visited by your own three ghosts. What would they show you? What would you learn about yourself? What are you not doing? What could you be doing? What are you doing? Like, celebrate the things you're doing that are good, that are useful, the ways that you feel you've had a good year. There's this thing writers do on Twitter where they link to some of the work they loved most over the past year. And it always makes me feel kind of shitty to self-promote so much. But, you know, it's worth being proud of the stuff you did. If you like, in the middle of quarantine, learned how to bake bread really well or, you know, read Warren Piece, or whatever you did, or even if you just stayed alive this year, that's a good thing you did. You made it. We're here. It's the end of another year. It's gonna be – you know, it's as dark as it gets. We're putting up lights to sort of fight against that dark. And there's something beautiful about the idea that even today, as this goes out on December 23rd, it's a little bit lighter. And it's gonna keep getting lighter until it doesn't. And that's what's great about Christmas, and life, and time.
Amanda: Well said. I think, if America can tell the rest of the world that Christmas is a compulsory human event, Emily, you can promote what you have to do and celebrate being alive. So, why don't you tell us where people can find more of your work?
Emily: You can find almost all of my writing on vox.com. It is – just, you know, follow me on Twitter. I link to everything there. I'm twitter.com/EmilyVDW. I – right now, I'm doing a really great series at Vox of people telling me their stories of 2020. I just have found some of the most amazing stories. What's already up there is a story about a woman who, who nursed an injured baby pig back to health. There is a story up there about a man who, like, reconnected with his son because he suddenly had to become a stay-at-home dad. There's a story about – actually, this is going up tomorrow. But it'll – you know, who knows when this will be listened to. There's a story about a woman who fell in love with her mailman. Like, it's all just like wonderful stuff. So, check that out. You also can check out my podcast, Arden. It is a fiction podcast, a fake True Crime show about two women who soft cold cases and sort of slowly fall in love. Our second season is just coming up on its ending. Our finale drops to 28th, which is, you know, a great time to be dropping a finale of a podcast.
Julia: Mhmm.
Emily: But it is our second season. We've been doing a take on the play Hamlet. I'm really proud of it. I really think we've done some good work. And I really would love people to check it out. And, if you like A Christmas Carol and you are an Arden backer in, on either Patreon or Indiegogo, on Christmas day, you are going to get let's say an Arden-themed Christmas Carol-ish treat. And that'll go out to everybody on January 1st. But, by then, who wants to think about Christmas? So, subscribe today.
Amanda: We're – we’re all free for another year. Another 10 months at least.
Julia: Yeah, I was going to ask when the Arden, A Christmas Carol Special, was coming out, but you answered my question for me, which is great.
Emily: I'm just – I think the central conceit of it is really funny. We have – we have a billionaire on our show. His name is Andy. And he is very upset. He has not been visited by three ghosts because that's when you know you've made it.
Julia: Hmm.
Emily: Look forward to that.
Julia: You've also written an article about one of my favorite movies of all time recently, which is Moonstruck.
Emily: Oh, yeah. I, I have – I have an essay on Moonstruck in the criterion DVD of that film.
Julia: It is worth getting. Pick it up.
Emily: Yeah.
Amanda: Extremely cool.
Emily: Great movie.
Amanda: A good reason to buy a DVD. Well, Emily, thank you for joining us again. We cannot wait to welcome you back. Look out for it, December 2021. And everybody, as it gets a little bit lighter out, remember --
Julia: Stay creepy.
Amanda: Stay cool.
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Amanda: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Allyson Wakeman.
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Transcriptionist: Rachelle Rose Bacharo
Editor: Krizia Casil