Ringing in the New Me
Originally published on Mockingbird
It’s the time of year when our New Year’s resolutions slowly begin to unravel. It doesn’t usually happen all at once, of course. A cheat day here, a provoked outburst there, compounded by the multiplication of days and weeks, and what once felt possible eventually becomes fanciful. Even my best intentions can’t always hold up to the temptation of a Chick-fil-A milkshake.
Every new year is filled with hopeless optimism that I can truly change. At the beginning of this year, I took time to look back and reflect on all the ways that my life is different than it was just 365 days ago. I moved to a new state, I got a new job, I got engaged. Life has changed in some sizable ways, and yet I find myself wondering: did I really change at all?
As I assess the year gone, I find myself returning to the recent Christmas movie Spirited. Most Christmas movies are fluffy, predictable Hallmark rom coms that elevate the romance and magic of Christmas, but neglect the reality of embodied, messy, real-life people that often make life complicated. Spirited is a blessed exception — in a surprising twist, Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds pair up to make a non-ironic musical comedy filled with genuine Christmas cheer, packaged up in pristinely choreographed original dance numbers and a shocking amount of relatable humor. At the heart of the film was one question: “Can people really change?”
A modern parody of the classic A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Spirited follows Will Ferrell playing the Ghost of Christmas Present, who is responsible for “haunting” a preselected mortal every Christmas Eve, with the hopes of producing lasting change — preferably someone who can cause a ripple effect of goodness around them.
For reasons that remain obscured for most of the film, Ferrell’s character becomes fixated on Clint Briggs, a hot-shot social media consultant whose business is to produce division and controversy. Ferrell sees Clint as the ultimate “perp” whose redemption could produce global ripple effects — except Clint is deemed “Unredeemable” by the other spirits selecting a mortal to haunt. Yet Ferrell is determined to haunt Clint, and later we find out why: Ferrell, in fact, was Ebenezer Scrooge in his former life, the only other “Unredeemable” who has successfully been transformed by the haunting.
Along the way, Ferrell bumbles along, attempting to muster true character transformation for Clint, and they develop a funny sort of friendship, even though Ferrell feels that he’s failed his responsibility to redeem the unredeemable. Near the end of the movie, Clint definitively declares that people don’t truly change — yet moments later we watch as he throws himself in front of a bus to save Will Ferrell, thus indicating that he has, indeed, changed on a deeper level to become less self-centered and more sacrificial.
In the moment before the bus hits Clint, the scene is frozen, and Ferrell and Reynolds surprise us with one more finale number, serenading us that change doesn’t happen because of a one-night supernatural encounter, but rather if we “do a little good/Maybe give a little more/Work a little harder than we did the day before,” people can change.
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Countless moments throughout last year I found myself saying, I just want to be better. Why can’t I be less selfish? Why can’t I be more disciplined? Why can’t I get my act together? Why do I keep doing things that hurt other people? Why can’t I do the things that I know are good for me? For all my attempts this year to become better, have I really changed?
What I found at the end of Spirited is a comforting image: we only really change when we die.
The final number in Spirited is sincere and genuine — just like each of us who attempt to work a little harder to be a little better than the day before. But the peppy choreography brings the movie to its climax just before it nosedives abruptly: immediately after the number, Clint is hit by a bus and thrown across the road, tragically ending his life.
As much as I’d like to buy into the song-and-dance that we can become a little bit better every day, it’s just an exhausting bunch of choreography to keep up with. What a relief to die to ourselves, die to the belief that we can really change if we just try a little harder, and instead, let the Holy Ghost do His haunting.
I’d like to propose that the Christmas-Carol-style haunting is not out-of-style. Though our culture would say that we should become one percent better every day, the only lasting transformation I’ve ever experienced in my life happened because of a one-time supernatural encounter, not with the Ghost of Christmas Past, but with the Incarnate Emmanuel God, who became flesh, and now dwells within me. Only through this daily holy haunting, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, does my heart truly turn from self-absorbed to self-giving, from hurting others to loving others, from enslaved to the law to freed by grace.
As I look at the coming year with all of its opportunities to change myself, optimize my life, and be better, I also see the many, many opportunities to fail to do so as well — so far, my life has been evidence of that. But in my failing, I won’t be haunted by the Ghost of Christmas Future. Our eternal God, our Everlasting Father, has drawn near to us, and promises us a better future, one where we have been glorified through our faith — and through our failings — and we’ve been made new.