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12/20/2009

A Christmas Carol By Edward de Bono

Act 1.
Scene 1. Antechamber to Scrooge's Office. Bob Cratchet hunched over desk left.
Enter Scrooge's nephew leaving Scrooge's Office right.

Scrooge (concealed inside office)
Bah! Humbug!

Scrooge nephew. (closing door)
Well a merry Christmas anyway Uncle - and a happy New Year!
(turning to Bob)
And how are you Bob? And all the family. How is Tiny Tim?

Bob.
We're hoping he'll see out the winter perhaps God willing but it is so dreadful cold and we are so poor sir.

Scrooge nephew.
Then tell you what Bob, why not bring them all round to our place for Xmas? We're determined to enjoy ourselves with all our nice friends, and we've all got got plenty of money, and you're a nice man, and Tim is very ill, perhaps it would do him good even. What do you say? You and your family can pretend to be nice people for a day.

Bob.
Fine. Sorted.

EXEUNT ARM IN ARM.
CURTAIN.
END.



And Scrooge's nephew was as good as his word. And when it was eventually explained to Old Scrooge that Christmas was, in its pagan origins, naught but a celebration of a positive fourth-quarter projection which augered well for the next fiscal year, his post-Darwinian doubt was justified, and furthermore his Utilitarian pecuniary instincts were reconciled with the prevalent mood of merriment, and his misgivings were mollified. 
So much was he intrigued by his revelations that he was among the first to envision the possibilities of the midwinter festival in an age of mass-production, to provide adequate Good Cheer for a growing middle class market. And before long was importing and dispensing all the latest seasonal fashions from Germany and Norway and America, to the delight and joy of all. There was not a glass bauble or recipe book for the turkey fowl which Scrooge & Marley were not interested in. Scrooge himself became particularly partial to turkey breast, cooked with sausage meat and sage stuffing, and the potatoes roasted with a whole onion, which he reserved until his last mouthful.
He did it all, and infinitely more; his efforts were so profound that the entire nature of the celebration became inverted, so that the primitive act of stock-taking became a source of profit in itself. The measure of the midwinter granary floor became a new harvest, almost as large as the real one, and no less essential to the maintenance of the economy. In making us all dependent upon the profligacy and ceremony of the time, Scrooge and his peers can truly be said to have indeed made our time, and all its bounty, charity and peace to all men.
Some people doubted this reversal of cause and effect, but Scrooge let them doubt, and little heeded them; for he was cunning enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for profit, at which some people did not have their fill of doubt in the outset. And took their warnings as a verification of his ways.