Alison Miller (left to right), Passion Acevedo and librarian Jennifer Schillig gather around the Christmas tree on Dec. 8 before presenting “Scrooge, The Musical” as part of the Monroe Township library’s lunch and a movie program.
“Are there no prisons?” asked Ebenezer Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said one of the gentlemen asking for a contribution to help feed the poor at Christmas.
“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir.”
“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” Scrooge said. “I’m very glad to hear it. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned. They cost enough, and those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die,” the gentleman responded.
“If they would rather die, they had better do it and decrease the surplus population.”
Those chilling words came from the lonely but very rich London businessman who thought “poverty was not his problem,” said librarian Jennifer Schillig, who hosted a screening of “Scrooge, the Musical” at the Monroe Township library on Dec. 8.
The screening was part of the library’s lunch and a movie program. Schillig explained that when author Charles Dickens published “A Christmas Carol” during England’s Victorian Era in December 1843, upper-class Londoners generally cared very little about the poor.
Yet Dickens knew all too well about living in poverty. When his father was sent to debtor’s prison, the 12-year-old got a job at Warren’s Blacking Factory, a deteriorating building with scurrying rats on the banks of the Thames River.
For 10 hours a day, six days a week, Dickens put labels on boot polish pots of blacking for a mere pittance, and knew first hand about struggling families
“Dickens is best remembered as advocating charity for the poor,” explained Schillig, director of adult programming and community outreach at the library, which sits at 713 Marsha Road, just behind the Williamstown Farmer’s Market.
As an adult, Dickens fought hard to improve the education of impoverished students “who were under-fed and poorly taught,” Schillig told the library audience, who brought their own lunch and were treated to free popcorn donated by Regal Cinemas and a cup of hot cocoa.
Believing that literacy helped empower the lower class, Dickens visited the Ragged Schools for poor children, among them Field Lane. He then gave speeches and wrote magazine articles about the obstacles facing students at the schools and requested donations of funds to improve them.
In his most brilliant plea for charity, he wrote “A Christmas Carol,” the beloved story of Scrooge’s experiences on Christmas Eve and his “excessive torture of one’s self” before visits by three ghosts turn him into the most generous man in town by Christmas morning.
“The appeal of ‘A Christmas Carol’ is that anybody can turn their lives around,” Schillig noted.
The first movie adaption of the story was the 1901 short silent film “Scrooge, or Marley’s Ghost.” Since then there have been more than 100 movies and thousands of plays performed in theaters around the world about Scrooge’s redemption, according to Schillig.
One scene in which Scrooge’s heart starts to melt is when the Ghost of Christmas Present takes him to a small cottage where four generations of coal miners are singing songs and enjoying the holiday despite having few material possessions.
The most powerful scene is the Ghost of Christmas Future pointing to the miser’s gravestone in a dark, dreary cemetery. And then comes sheer joy when Scrooge wakes up and discovers he has not missed Christmas Day, exclaiming “They did it all in one night.”
For information about other films being featured in future lunch-and-a-movie programs at the library, go to monroetpl.org.
