Some Dreams Come True
By: Esther Spurrill-Jones
Tags: Disney, Muppets, Movies, Tradition, Christmas

It was almost love

It was almost always

For as long as I can remember while I was growing up, my family would watch The Muppet Christmas Carol every year on Christmas Eve. I would sit with my siblings and sing along to “One More Sleep ’Til Christmas” and “It Feels Like Christmas” and it would feel like Christmas to me. I would shed tears of grief when Tiny Tim died, and tears of joy when Scrooge changed that future.

I don’t remember how old I was the first time I saw a filmed version of Charles Dicken’s novella A Christmas Carol, but I do remember how I felt when I realized along with Scrooge that Tiny Tim would die in the Christmas Future. There was an emptiness evoked by that tiny crutch by the fire that left me weeping. I was very young, and I had not yet lost anyone I knew to death, but I felt that grief so deeply.

There is something so powerful in that it is the Ghost of Christmas Present who reveals that death. From the moment we meet him, he is a jolly, Santa-like character who sings and dances and laughs his way through every scene. He brings out the first smiles we see in Michael Caine’s brilliant Scrooge. And then he delivers that gut punch.

The Ghost of Christmas Future is terrifying, but after Tiny Tim’s death everything is grey and bleak. I watch Scrooge discover his own future death but his desperation that he can change the future is because we want Tiny Tim back.

The ending is uplifting and joyous, the Cratchits’ home filled with people and food and song. The certain hope that Scrooge has changed that future, that Tiny Tim will survive, is clear and bright. I sing the songs for days after each time I watch the movie.

When I moved out, I lost track of the VHS copy we’d watched while I was growing up. My first Christmas with my now-husband Mark, I mentioned how I missed the tradition of watching it on Christmas Eve. Then, on Christmas morning, I opened a gift from him to find The Muppet Christmas Carol on DVD. Excited, I put it in to play while we had breakfast.

But something was missing. In the Christmas Past segment, when the love of Ebenezer’s life, Belle, finally has enough of his growing coldness and distance and leaves him, she does not sing the song “When Love is Gone.” The movie simply jumps over that scene completely. I stared at my TV, baffled. Where did the song go? Where did the scene go?

I know that song so well I could probably sing the whole thing without looking up the lyrics. I knew I hadn’t made it up. Mark suggested that maybe they had cut it out to make room for commercials when airing it on television, but why would that be the version they used for the DVD release?

It was almost love. It was almost always. It was like a fairytale we’d live out, you and I. And yes, some dreams come true, and yes, some dreams pull through…

“Oh please,” Ebenezer says, his voice breaking. “Don’t show me that Christmas.” But the Ghost of Christmas Past shows him anyway.

It is so sad and so beautiful in the pain and grief of what could have been. Michael Caine’s performance here when he stands behind the shadow of Belle and sings along with her until the emotions well and choke him up is some of the best acting in the movie.

And they cut it. The Disney studio chief at the time thought it was too “adult-emotional for little kids to stay connected.”(Jeffrey Katzenberg) So they cut the whole scene out of the movie. And then they lost it.

I was a kid when I first watched this movie, and I loved that scene and that song. I connected with the pain and the regret. It’s part of what made me a writer.

Kathy Nightingale : What’s good about sad?

Sally Sparrow : It’s happy for deep people.

Doctor Who, Blink

Isn’t it odd that the death of Tiny Tim was deemed appropriate for children but the break up of a romantic relationship was not?

For years, a team at Disney tried to find the original footage, but couldn’t. Until this year. Yes, the hell year of 2020 has given us a gift. The full original movie is going to be on Disney+ as soon as they can get it up there. It might not be in time for this Christmas, “but it is coming back, the full-length version is coming back.”(Brian Henson)