Why has our society decreed that every Grinch and Scrooge who lacks the holiday spirit, every George Bailey who becomes disillusioned with Christmas must immediately suffer a Job-like brainwashing and then reemerge as a tinsel-loving hippie after some desperately redemptive epiphany? Why must these pillars of cynicism and bitterness be brought low, and forced to embrace all that is anathema to them?

Take a look at Ebenezer Scrooge. He is a businessman, working the same long hours as his employees, trying to keep his company afloat in what seems to be a fairly depressed economy. He does not live lavishly himself, and appears very frugal in his overhead. If his employees feel that they are not being appropriately compensated, or need greater benefits, they should demand a raise or go work for the competition. You deserve what you tolerate, man.

So what is Scrooge’s reward for minding his business and trying to make a buck? He is brutally tortured by ghosts. First, his decomposing best friend shows up in chains. Then, he is forced to relive his isolated childhood and the experience of getting dumped by his only love.

Next, poor Ebenezer alone is blamed for the failing health of Tiny Tim. Never mind the ridiculously high child mortality rate, lack of vaccines, or the general ignorance of fetal alcohol syndrome of 1800s London, if Tiny Tim has a cough and a limp, it must be because Scrooge made his father work a half-day on Christmas.

Lastly, in a scene plucked from a horror movie, Scrooge is shown his own corpse and violently pushed into his waiting grave by a faceless specter. Is it any wonder that after the mental torment of ghosts, time travel, reopened wounds, morbid guilt trips and simulated death, Scrooge would go running from his house in his nightshirt, screaming that he would celebrate Christmas every day of the year? Of course not. Torture victims will promise or confess to anything to end their persecution.

George Bailey suffers a similar series of mind-shattering experiences and overblown guilt trips before deliriously begging God to allow him to live again.

The Grinch is victimized only by his own loneliness, but he is willing to abandon his own bitter values, and adopt rituals he previously found repulsive, in order to be embraced by the cult-like Whoos.

All three iconic holiday heroes/antiheroes do achieve a manic euphoria, but only after some sort of extraordinary rendition. Much like the military, a fraternity or a street gang will indoctrinate their members with emotionally abusive and violent hazing, so does our society demand that humbugs be beaten until their blood runs Christmas-red.

Well, I say, this is America, for Pete’s sake, and despite all those recent allegations about the state department, we do not torture people to get them in the holiday spirit! Leave Scrooge alone if he would prefer to spend his profits on payroll instead of mistletoe! Get George Bailey to the doctor, not the Christmas tree. Suicidal one minute and hallucinating about angels the next? He would benefit more from some psychotropics than marzipan. And the Grinch? If the Whoos only want to be friends with him on their terms, then who needs ’em?

Happy Holidays!

—Lisa