We all know the familiar tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, that hard-bitten, miserly old man who has a life-altering experience after being visited on Christmas Eve night by the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley, and subsequently by three ghosts who take him on a journey into his past, present and future. It’s a heart warming tale of redemption of even the hardest of hearts that never fails to bring a tear to my eye, whether I am reading the original tale by Charles Dickens or watching my favorite film version of the story, what is widely considered among film critics to be the “definitive” version, filmed in 1951 and starring that excellent British actor Alaistair Simm as Scrooge. There have been other film versions, but this one rates as my personal favorite and the one that in my humble estimation most closely catches the look and spirit of the original Dickens tale.

Well, it would seem that “Ebenezer Cheney” felt it necessary to rush back from an overseas trip to break a tie vote in the Senate in favor of cutting $39.7 billion from the federal budget that would have helped the poor and elderly to get health care and for college students to be able to get student loans. Now, it would seem, health care will be much more difficult for the poor and elderly to access and students will be paying much higher interest rates on student loans, making a higher education much more out of reach for the lower and middle classes of this country. Fairly soon, tax cuts for the super-rich will be made permanent and the rest of us will fall far further behind in the pursuit of the American Dream. So much for the Christmas spirit of certain Senators and our Vice President. Instead of handing us a lovely Christmas gift of a bit of financial help, he and the others who voted for these budget cuts have instead given us a lump of coal in our collective Christmas stockings. I can almost hear “Ebenezer Cheney” declaring from his undisclosed hiding place, “Bah, humbug!” with that famous sneer of his.

We of the lower and middle classes have become the Tiny Tims of this country. We are constantly sacrificed in the name of enriching the Scrooges out there, who could care less what becomes of us who they see as nothing more than a bunch of enabled cripples dependent on the government for a handout. They would rob their own grandmothers if they thought that it would make them richer, and they are doing just that by cutting health care benefits to poor and elderly. If only George Bush and Dick Cheney could be visited by some late night spirit and taken on a journey into their past, present and future, they would see just how bad things have been, are and will be if things do not alter course soon. There are plenty of Tiny Tims here and around the world whose lives are being sacrificed to their rampant greed and heartlessness, sacrificed to AIDS, to war, to poverty, to floods that should never have happened and more.

In short, we here in the US and the rest of the world are being Scrooged. If these shadows continue unchanged, it is hard to imagine how much worse things will get, as if they aren’t bad enough already. But there is hope out there. The Bob Cratchits of the world are beginning to stand up and say, “No more!” What has taken so long, I cannot imagine, but I am seeing small signs of hope as the old year wanes and the new year approaches. We are tired of being victims of the Scrooges in our government. We are tired of watching the rich get richer while we, like Cratchit, shiver in our chilly homes this winter for fear of turning up our thermostats and having to pay egregiously high gas bills. We are beginning to fight back, to stand witness to the wrongs we see happening in our government and we are doing something about it. It’s a small beginning, but it’s a beginning nonetheless. Faith communities are beginning to question the claims of Christian compassion that this administration claims informs its values. Wal-Mart workers in California won a massive class action lawsuit against their employer for denying them lunch breaks. Cindy Sheehan turned into a one-woman phenomenon, igniting the anti-war movement into a force to be reckoned with. And now anger over the rampant corruption that has infected this administration has actually begun to cause serious talk of the “I” word – impeachment – among our legislators in Congress.

And so to the Scrooges out there who would rob their own grandmothers and the Tiny Tims out there to enrich themselves and their friends, I say to you this: I hope that in this coming season of peace, that you are visited by the spirits of the dead who died for your greed this past year and that as a result, you will have a change of heart and remember the true spirit of Christmas and what it means to keep it the whole year through. And may you receive naught but a lump of coal in your Christmas stockings as a message of your failings this year and what they have cost all the Bob Cratchits and Tiny Tims out there who depended on you to do right by them.

To the rest of you, I wish you the very best and peace to you and yours in this most holy season of the year.

Sally Burnell is on the Steering Committee of the Social Justice Committee at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent, Ohio. She can be contacted at sburnell@raex.com.