Bah Humbug!

What a lovely little way to start what I hope will be the week of A Christmas Carol! I hope to watch seven different adaptations of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol this week. There are almost twenty different film versions of this story, not including all of the television shows framed after it. Although Mickey's Christmas Carol was a television special that first aired in 1983, it still makes my list - as a true classic version of the tale. Scrooge McDuck (voiced by Alan Young) and Mickey Mouse (voiced by Wayne Allwine) star in this rendition directed by Burny Mattinson, along with a host of other recognizable Disney characters, including the classic characters and some side characters from Robin Hood, The Great Mouse Detective, and The Wind in the Willows.

In case you have escaped all knowledge of this story, I will summarize it here quickly. A miserly old businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge (Scrooge McDuck), has lost all meaning of love and goodwill, and is only interested in money. He has no mercy, no charity, and (seemingly worst of all) no Christmas spirit. His clerk, Bob Cratchit (Mickey Mouse), works for him for very small wages and very little appreciation. One Christmas, after going home, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his old partner-in-business, Jacob Marley (Goofy). Marley warns Scrooge that, for all of his bad deeds and lack of goodwill, he will forge an heavy chain he will carry for the rest of eternity. When Scrooge, notably scared by the experience, asks Marley if there is anything he can do to stop it, Marley tells him that three Christmas Spirits will visit him that night, and that he must do as they say.

Scrooge is shaken, but refuses to believe after Marley's ghost has left. Marley was right, however, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future show Scrooge how he has shaped his own destiny. He will be unmourned at his death, and grave-robbers will steal from him. Scrooge's eyes are opened and he realizes his past and current wrong-doings. When he awakes on Christmas morning to find he hasn't missed everything, he is overjoyed. He gives a great deal of money to the charity workers who had approached him the day before, he visits his nephew Fred (Donald Duck) and makes merry with him, and he visits Cratchit's house, bringing toys and food for his family. Indeed, Scrooge becomes like a second father to Cratchit's poor crippled son, Tiny Tim, and never fails to keep Christmas again.

I remember this rendition scaring me as a child. I still had a little jolt of fear when I heard Goofy moan "Scrooooge!!" as the door-knocker. I guess I was kind of sheltered, but I actually like that, at one point in my life at least, I felt the fear and awe that Scrooge must have felt to have those Spirits visit him.

Mickey makes the sweetest Bob Cratchit - unassuming and dear.

While I may have the nostalgia for this that I missed for A Charlie Brown Christmas, I am very pleased and surprised that I still enjoyed it after all of these years. I recommend it for children big and small.