No do-overs for Scrooge

Besides the message I discussed here, there’s another reason A Christmas Carol still works.
In a way, the story is the forerunner of the “do over” stories where someone gets a chance to put right what once went wrong: Peggy Sue Got Married, Groundhog Day, a number of Twilight Zone episodes. Scrooge looks back at his life, realizes that he’s totally screwed it up … but unlike the do-overs, he doesn’t get to change anything. He can start fresh Christmas Day but he can’t undo his past. The years he spent as a cruel, cold, covetous, grasping miser, allowing the woman he loved to walk away, shutting out his family—Scrooge has to watch it all over again and can’t change it even a little.
And that’s why I feel for Scrooge in any halfway-decent adaptation of the story. I’ve made mistakes I’d like to take back; I’ve zigged when I should have zagged. At times I’ve screwed up by neither zigging or zagging, just standing still.
Who hasn’t made a mistake? Blown a relationship, missed an opportunity, taken a step that turned into a pitfall. And who among us would want to spend Christmas Eve watching ourselves do it all over again?
Which is why Christmas Carol can work in so many different variants. On Halloween in an episode of Roseanne. A Valentine Carol transfers it to Valentine’s Day. American Carol tackles American history and Independence Day (apparently tying it to some sort of Day is an unwritten rule). If there’s a lesson to be learned from the past and something to regret, Dickens is there.