The Baboon Congress

Confessions of a Birthday Scrooge

58 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Tiny Clyde.

I have a birthday this month, never mind which day. And don’t go wishing me happy birthday anyway.

“Every idiot who goes about with [Happy Birthday] on his lips, should be boiled with his own [birthday cake], and buried with a [birthday candle] through his heart. He should!”

If I could have my way, which I cannot, of course, my birthday would be ignored. It’s not anything about growing old. I do not grasp how one day of aging is more significant than any other. As a matter of fact, I go through each year saying I am older than I am. If you ask me how old I am on January 10, 2012, I will not remember and have to subtract years. So I will subtract 1944 from 2012 and say I am 68. Each December I am surprised to realize that I am not as old as I always say.

My birthday problem starts as a child. It was a ritual to put up our Christmas tree on my birthday, which I was expected to consider a gift. From about age ten the gift included the task of going into the woods, selecting the tree, cutting it down, and putting it in its stand. I am not claiming I had a bad childhood. I had a very good childhood, except every year on my birthday. The standard joke was to say that I was being allowed to open one Christmas present early. My mother loved standard jokes. She wore many a standard joke down to the nub, ground it to powder, and still repeated it. I am still not sure that it was always a joke. In any case, the wrapping on my present or presents was Christmas wrapping, a simple economic measure. My mother loved simple economic measures even more than she loved wearing out the same jokes each year.

A few days before Christmas (some unspecified number) is about as bad a time as there is to have a birthday. My granddaughter’s birthday is December 25. So far she has not felt slighted, but when she becomes a sulky teenager, that may change. But I think my date is worse because people, me especially, make a point of overdoing her birthday–in proper birthday wrapping.

My sister’s birthday is March 27, which happens also to be my wife’s birthday. Now think about it. Is there any better time for a girl to have a birthday, even though it may fall on or very near Easter? Think of all the spring clothes she can be given, or, as in my sister’s case, have made for her. So my sister’s birthday was a feast of presents. You know how those girls are—they consider clothing actual presents. Then on my nineteenth birthday, my sister further buried my birthday under familial distractions by getting married that day.

My childhood birthdays happened at a time when I had already received everything needed for the winter. It was also a time of the year of limited money in our family, as opposed to the spring when more money was at hand. We also had a seldom-seen and difficult grandmother who doted on my sister because my sister had been given her name. She would write on the letter with my sister’s presents how in the rush of Christmas she had simply forgotten my birthday.

Dickens, Of Course

Now, (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) I’m not carrying a grudge, especially against my sister, with whom I was as a child and teen extremely close and with whom I still have a close bond. It’s simply that I joined the parade years ago and decided to ignore my birthday too.

(Before I ask the question of the day, I do want to clarify that I would not swear to any of the above under oath. Not one word of it.)

What’s your favorite quote or scene from Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”?

58 thoughts on “Confessions of a Birthday Scrooge”

  1. “It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.”

    It’s not the date, nor your age. It’s just an opportunity for us to celebrate YOU, Mr. B. And we do.

    Like

    Reply

  2. nice post clyde, happy birthday you old curmudgeon
    my dad was a december 23 birthday and he too spoke of getting aced out of a birthday. the money was gone and you got what you would have gotten for your christmas present as half birthday half christmas.
    so do you stilll put up the tree on your birthday? i would think that would be a tradition to continue just to remember your history.
    the christmas carol has so many wonderful scenes and lines.
    “god bless us everyone” . would rank up there.
    “you may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. there’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” is a keeper too.

    Like

    Reply

    1. tim, I love that quote, too.
      There is no way the tree would be put up that late in this house. My wife starts shopping in March, playing carols in June, wrapping in September, and decorating in early November.

      Like

      Reply

  3. At one of previous of my previous jobs I e-mailed my supervisor when I wanted to take a day off to go to the state fair. Without really thinking about it much I ended the e-mail with the words “if it’s quite convenient”. He came out of his office to peer over the top of my cubicle and growl, “No, it’s not convenient, and it’s not fair. If I were to stop half a crown for it, you’d think yourself ill-used.” Since I asked for a day off every year for the state fair, it became traditional to include a Dickensian exchange each time. “You’ll want all day off, I suppose.” “The State Fair comes only once a year, sir.” “Well, Be here all the earlier the next morning.”

    He lives in the DC area now, but I still send him a card every now and then if I can find a Scrooge-themed one. One year it was a postcard with a picture of Scrooge saying “Bah! Humbug!” and captioned “You can stop believing in Santa Claus, but it is not possible, at any age, to doubt the existence of Scrooge.” It was our worn-to-a-nub-and-ground-to-powder joke.

    Like

    Reply

  4. love that “worn to a nub and ground to a powder” phrase, Tiny Clyde – thanks!
    i’m not literate enough to know any quotes from any non-goat books (and if i were literate i’d forget them anyway). but i’ll sure enjoy reading today. happy day. finally got a bit of snow this morning.

    Like

    Reply

  5. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    It’s been a tough transition back to my real life from the weekend off. Therefore, my favorite quote is also appropriate to the crappy weather:

    BAH HUMBUG!

    tiny clyde, I hate to wish you a Happy Birthday. So Bah Humbug to you, too.

    Like

    Reply

  6. There’s lots of good material in “A Christmas Carol”, but I’ve been thinking about this bit lately:

    “Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! To hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.”

    Like

    Reply

  7. Good morning to all. Okay, Clyde, even if I don’t know the exact day of your birthday, I will wish you a happy birthday. I don’t like birthday celibrations, myself, because they I never find that they are as much fun as they should be. There always seems to be more tension created over the planning for the party than they are worth. The birthday parties seem to be smaller version of christmas celibrations which are also filled with tensions.

    Thus I am tempted to say “bah humbug” on birthdays and Christmas and pick that as one of my favorite lines from the Christmas Carol. Still, I do like the more positive approach of Tiny Tim when he said “god bless us everyone” and I do try to avoid being too negative about birthdays and christmas So it is “god bless us everyone” and happy birthday to you, Clyde. . .

    Like

    Reply

  8. I’m with you Clyde, I don’t keep track of my age/birthday either. When I turned 30, my Mom said, “Well, how does it feel to hit the big 3-0?” I said, “Like 29 plus a day. What’s the big deal?” She was disappointed at my lack of enthusiasm.

    My favorite part is when Scrooge, vested with too much Christmas spirit, overleverages his giving, starts an “unintentional” (as court records would later quote) Ponzi scheme, cooks the books, and sends the economy of the entire UK into a tailspin.

    Like

    Reply

    1. That’s probably what happened on Wall Street, or so they are trying to tell us. They were trying so hard to help us out by generating great wealth that they over extended themselves and things went the other way. Now they are back to work on those wealth generating deals and need to pay big money to their top employees and lead executives to keep them on the job.

      Like

      Reply

  9. Great reading this morning. I will go dig up at least an excerpt and find a favorite quote!

    I’m in the lucky group with a birthday on or around Easter (day before your wife’s, TC), but I know tons of people with December birthdays, including 2 grandkids and one who is due any day. If it were me, I would take a year once in a while and move that birthday out a month, celebrate then. But of course, you have to get other people to come along for the ride.

    Like

    Reply

  10. I hear you, Clyde. I have never understood all the excitement with which most people welcome birthdays. Even as a younger man I used to think, “Oh, great. Another birthday. I’m another year closer to my death.” And it feels queer to be congratulated on having lived through another year, as if that were some significant accomplishment.

    The only widely celebrated holiday that seems even more stupid to me is New Year’s. I’ve never understood why we should dance with glee because another calendar year has ended. Once or twice I have been enormously relieved to put a horrible year behind me, but that is hardly the same as celebrating the transition from one year to another.

    Similarly, I have had some trouble buying into Dickens. It somehow seems cheap for a man who has lived a nasty, selfish life to suddenly have a death-bed conversion and decide he loves everyone after all. I sometimes have fun imagining a Republican version of “A Christmas Carol,” with the ghosts showing Scrooge that markets are all-wise and the best way to secure happiness for all is by promoting ruthless capitalism (starting with the fact he should cut Bob Cratchett’s salary, for the guy is an obvious slacker). Maybe Scrooge could improve the profits of his enterprise by getting into the lucrative slave market.

    But while I can see the logic of the curmudgeon’s view of things, it isn’t comfortable either. So I’ll not wish you a happy birthday, Tiny Clyde, but forgive me for wishing you and your wife well.

    Like

    Reply

    1. I don’t mind being a year older, Steve. I do notice that I am older, but there is nothing I can do about it, so why dwell on that. What I don’t like is the way birthdays parties often are not much fun for the person who is being honored. Lots of kids really don’t have a good time at their birthday parties and it seems to me that this even holds true for adult birthday parties. I don’t want to tell any people who make plans for a birthday party for me that I don’t want one if they want to do this and I do hope that everyone, including me, will have a good time.

      Like

      Reply

      1. The final insult is at a Senior Residence, where there is an almost-required monthly birthday “party” honoring all that month’s birthdays.. in the community room, with a lovely sheet cake, crowns for the “Baby” (never under 81) and the oldest. Someone leads the crowd in “Happy Birthday” and you sit down with people you see at mealtime every day and eat cake and drink decafe. Happily, my mom’s new place doesn’t do this!

        Like

        Reply

      2. I know what you are talking about, Barbara, and I don’t like those sad celibration that you see in some nursing homes. I’m glad that you found a place for your mother that doesn’t do that kind of thing.

        Like

        Reply

  11. Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion. But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike. And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

    Like

    Reply

  12. Aaah… A Christmas Carol. One of the most amazing stories of hope and redemption. I love it. CG already got my favorite, but here is another bit I like – Fred’s speech in the early part of the story:

    “But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, ‘God bless it!”

    Like

    Reply

  13. And I always tear up at the end (no matter which version):

    “Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him. “

    Like

    Reply

  14. I will admit that I have a high need to celebrate, so Tiny Clyde it’s probably best you don’t live at my house. Your birthday would not go by uncelebrated. My mother and my youngest niece both have birthdays within a week of Christmas and we are careful to celebrate those events separate from any celebrations for Christmas. And has been noted above, the celebration is for the person as much as the official change of age. Plus, there is that high need to celebrate that I have…
    Is it a surprise, then, that my favorite scene from “A Christmas Carol” is at Fezziwig’s – when Scrooge is young and enjoying himself? There’s food and dancing and laughter. The other stuff is good, too, and Scrooge learns some good lessons (though I agree, Steve, it is sort of a death bed conversion…), but a good party where people are having fun, that’s the best.

    Like

    Reply

    1. I’m with you, Anna. We are big celebrators at our house as well. When the teenager was younger, she used to lament her January birthday, thinking that a summer birthday would be more fun and there would be more to do. So when she was 11 or 12, instead of celebrating in the cold of January, she had her party in June!

      Like

      Reply

  15. went to Wright, MN for goat feed this a.m. – with the obligatory bkfst at the BlackJack Grill. while we were eating, Steve asked what the blog question was this morning – i told him, but he thought i said favorite line from a (any) Christmas carol. so he said “everybody knows a turkey” and i was confused. he said – you know –
    “everybody knows a turkey
    and some mistletoe will help to make the season bright.”

    Like

    Reply

    2. That’s a very different question.

      My favorite quote from a Christmas carol is –

      In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
      Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
      Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
      In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

      Like

      Reply

  16. Greetings! A bah humbug birthday greeting to Clyde — sometimes it’s just fun to celebrate for whatever reason. My absolute favorite scene from Christmas Carol (especially the old version with Alistair Sim) is when he wakes up in the morning in an absolute tizzy of joy and bubbling vitality of a new outlook. Jumping around, dancing, singing, buying a huge turkey, gifts, etc., and feeling amazed at how a paradigm shift has affected him to the very core. An acting tour de force it is as well.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Just watched this one the night before last. I like this scene as well… especially when he tries to stand on his head and Mrs. Dilber throws her apron over her head and runs out screaming!

      I have quite a few versions of “A Christmas Carol” – Alistair Sim, Gene Owens, George C Scott, Patrick Stewart, Mr. Magoo, Henry Winkler, Albert Finney. Love them all.

      Like

      Reply

  17. The “Tiny Clyde” was Dale’s idea. Bonnie, Krista, Jim, and Dale, now that I told him the truth, can all see extra humor in “Tiny” in front of a person who weighs 230 pounds.
    The link to the online text was also Dale’s fine idea. My son about a month ago commented that he had read it again, online, and had forgotten how vibrant is Dickens style and narration. For Christmas, at his request, I bought him a book called “What Jane Austen Ate and What Charles Dickens Knew.” Very fun book about aspects of life and culture in Regency and Victorian England, very well written.
    I am not always a fan of Dickens because he is so wordy, simply because he was essentially paid by the word. (Almost all his novels were serialized in magazines who wanted them to go on and on since they were so popular, the min-series of Victorian England.) When Dickens writes briefly, as in “Christmas Carol,” I find him simply excellent. He does know how to start a story too. Almost every first page of his stories is arresting. So I will post the start of it:
    MARLEY WAS DEAD: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
    Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

    Like

    Reply

  18. Dickens in the year 20111, on TLC right now “Virgin Diaries” “The lives of adult virgins faced with the challenges of losing their virginity.” Sort of an update of “Pickwick Papers,” perhaps.

    Like

    Reply

    1. That picture is close to exactly 57 years old. I cannot date many pictures to the year, but this one I can by the clothing, and thus to the exact day. Because it is me.
      I do not like pictures of myself, but I have this theory: I believe in every family’s set of pictures, are a few pictures which are of greater worth than family memories. A few might capture some historical data and a smaller number just are broader statements, catch the feel of a time and what life was like and about then in a few square inches. My mother took hundreds of slides. About 30 have some historical worth, such as the one of about 6 big Yellowstone Mallets (steam engines) lined up in the yards of Two Harbors. Four others I think are in the other category. This seems to me to be one of those along the lines of the wonderful visual imagery of “A Christmas Story.”
      So it is me, but don’t think of it as me.

      Like

      Reply

      4. i do blog under the premise that everyone figures out these minor indiscretions.
        nice day of dickens tiny clyde. great quotes all. the scen of marley with the chains is always etched in memory as is the ghost of christmas future in the black hood giving the cmon over here finger to scrooge.

        Like

        Reply

      5. It really does look like a scene from A Christmas Story. I thought it would be more recent because of the color – all our 50s photos are black & white – but I forgot about color slides…

        Like

        Reply

Leave a comment