Trust me on this: Scrooge!

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:00:00 +0000

When our daughters were little, I liked to have us watch the Dickens story "A Christmas Carol." It’s about discovering empathy and achieving redemption. We'd watch it around the holidays, but I think those are important themes all the time. The girls don’t seem to like the movie as much as I did; it never resonated in quite the same way as it did with me. But something still registered. I think that they do have a sense of empathy, of connectedness, an obligation to society and to others.

Watching it is sort of an occasional thing, but I guess that makes it more special. It’s something we watch because we want to. We started showing it when they were very young -- the Disney version -- but by the time they were in early grade school, they could kind of get it. To reinforce the themes of the movie, my wife would always have the girls divide their allowance into thirds: A third for saving, a third for spending and a third for giving. After a period of time, sometimes at the end of the year, they would take their little bit of money and choose where to give it. That’s how we became associated with organizations like Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and Guide Dogs for the Blind. We’ve tried to encourage them to have that in their lives.

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Trust me on this: Scrooge!