A Carol for Another Christmas
IN-DEPTH VIDEOS, 22 Dec 2025
Leonard Eiger – TRANSCEND Media Service
“Peace on Earth, Good Will to People; All People, That Is”
21 Dec 2025 – If you are a fan of the television series The Twilight Zone, then you must watch Rod Serling’s 1964 TV movie a Carol for Another Christmas, a modernization (with a Cold War/Nuclear Age twist) of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
At a time of unprecedented darkness when fascism, and its associated racism and militarism is running amok – not only in the United States, but around the world – a Carol for Another Christmas is a brilliant (and all but forgotten) film that makes a creative and timeless plea for global dialogue, cooperation, and conflict resolution. It is a plea for us to recognize the importance of, and to support, the United Nations in its “mission of maintaining international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among states, to promote international cooperation, and to serve as a centre for harmonizing the actions of states in achieving those goals.”
The movie opens with its central character, US Navy veteran and wealthy industrialist Daniel Grudge (played by Sterling Hayden, who also starred in Dr. Strangelove) sitting in a dark room in his mansion listening to a song from World War II. In a twist right out of Twilight Zone, Grudge stops the record player and is about to leave the room when the music starts up again, even though the record is not turning. He goes downstairs to greet his nephew, Fred (a college history professor), who has come to speak to him about why he [Grudge] has intervened to cancel a cultural exchange between history professors in the U.S. and Poland.
Grudge accuses his nephew of being naive (as to the realities of Communism) and lectures him on how the U.S. needs to stay on its side of the fence and “they” (the Communists) need to stay on theirs. Fred replies that, “There are certain fences the world can no longer afford.”
This pushes Grudge over the edge, and he goes into an isolationist rant: “I’m in no mood for the brotherhood of man… Mind your own business, and let everyone else mind theirs. Your responsibility happens to be your own classroom, not classrooms in Krakow, Poland… You insist on helping the needy and oppressed. Is that some kind of itch you can’t help scratching? Then tell them to help themselves. Let them know the cash drawer is closed and make them believe it. You’ll be surprised how much less needy and oppressed the needy and oppressed turn out to be… No, I can’t change you and you can’t change me.”
Grudge then finishes setting the stage for the sequential entrances of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. “And I have a Christmas present for you Fred… if you have this overpowering concern for everyone everywhere in the world, here’s your answer. Just you put your effort and sweat and faith into developing the fastest bombers and the most powerful missiles on Earth. They’ll provide a lot more security for our young and all the rest of the world’s young than all your debating societies, arms treaties, pacts, and other forms of surrender and handout… just let them [the Soviets] know we have the biggest and the fastest. Just let em know we aren’t too chicken to use them.”
You probably have some idea of where this is going, and it goes in Rod Serling’s signature style. After his nephew leaves, Grudge finds himself on board a troopship shrouded in fog, carrying the dead of many nations from World War I. Then another ship, one of many ships carrying the dead of World War II, shows itself. The Ghost of Christmas Past – a World War I soldier – engages Grudge in a conversation about the futility of war saying, “We’re OK so long as we don’t stop talking. But as soon as we stop talking we come out swinging… It all boils down to, somebody stopped talking. So they fought. So they bled. So they died… With all the brains we got on this Earth, they way we build things, cure things, and invent things Tuesday it wasn’t possible on Monday, wouldn’t you think we could come up with something that could keep a kid from getting killed at the age of 18?”
The soldier then leads Grudge through a hatch where Grudge finds himself standing amidst the devastation of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing in World War II. See this for yourself!
As for the Ghost of Christmas Present, that was an eerie reminder of the horrific acts currently being perpetrated by the Fascist regime in Washington, D.C. The ghost gorging at a a sumptuous feast while just across a fence (reminiscent of a WWII Nazi extermination camp) are displaced people from different nations who are poor, cold, hungry, and afraid. The Ghost reminds Grudge of his earlier statement to Fred that refusing donations to those in need makes them less needy and more self-reliant.
Moving into the final chapter of the triad, Grudge finds himself in the ruins of his local town hall – a post apocalyptic, dystopian madhouse ruled by a demagogue called the Imperial Me, played by Peter Sellers. As Grudge contemplates the insane monologue the Imperial Me has just delivered to his loyal, unquestioning subjects, he asks the Ghost if this is the world “as it must be, or as it might be.” Of course, the Ghost leaves Grudge to answer that question for himself.
Although it might seem as if I’ve given you too much, there is so much more in this rich redo of this Christmas classic. Serling created something that is timeless by taking an age-old tale and making it relevant to an era that arguably (and officially) began with the ascendency of the United States (by way of World War II) and the creation of a new empire (the US National Security State), and its evolution to the present day and its inevitable decline that is rivaled only by that of Ancient Rome.
A Carol for Another Christmas was a controversial film when it was released (as one would expect) in the midst of a rapidly growing Cold War and the patriotic call to protect the National Security State at all cost. After its initial broadcast in 1964, it was not rebroadcast until December, 2012 when Turner Classic Movies telecast the film; it has featured it every Christmas since then.
A Carol for Another Christmas is a prophetic tale that might have had an impact in the bad old days of the Cold War had the so-called “Free Press” not chosen to side with the State. Perhaps Serling was attempting to show people something that even today we choose to ignore (AT OUR OWN AND HUMANITY’S PERIL).
As Grudge’s nephew Fred said in the film’s beginning:
“Peace on Earth, Good will to Men [People]; All Men [People] That Is.”
You can watch A Carol for Another Christmas free on YouTube:
and it is also available on limited streaming services.
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Leonard Eiger is an activist and coordinates communications and outreach for Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action (gzcenter.org). Ground Zero offers the opportunity to explore the meaning and practice of nonviolence, while witnessing to and resisting all nuclear weapons. The US Navy’s Trident ballistic missile submarine base, adjacent to Ground Zero, represents the largest deployed concentration of nuclear weapons in the United States.
Tags: Christmas
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