It’s hard to believe that Christmas is only a few days away.

I have had a problem getting in the spirit this year for several reasons I’ve mentioned in previous columns, but I’m hoping that will change. This weekend I plan to sit down and watch my favorite Christmas movie.

I should say movies, because while both are adaptations of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” they are very different productions. The oldest is “Scrooge,” a 1951 black-and-white British version of the story with Alastair Sims in the lead role. The other is “A Christmas Carol,” which was a television production in the 1980s, and a marvelous film.

Others have their favorite films; my wife’s is “A Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. My daughter has several. But Dickens’ story is a classic, and I have always liked the message that Christmas is not about the material, but about love for your fellow man and the importance of keeping that love all year long.

As we remember the story, Ebenezer Scrooge is an angry man who shows no compassion for anything but making money. He treats his clerk, Bob Cratchit with contempt and disdain, and chooses to shut himself away from his nephew, whom he blames for his sister’s death.

His salvation comes from the ghost of his late business partner Jacob Marley who carries a chain of moneyboxes as part of his punishment for ignoring those in need while he was alive. It is through a visit of three spirits that Scrooge learns the error of his ways, but it is the Ghost of Christmas Future (my favorite ghost) that makes the lesson sink in as Scrooge finds he dies alone with no friends, and the subject of ridicule.

He returns to the land of the living a changed man ready to atone for all his previous failures.

To me, sometimes I think we all need a visit with our past; maybe not through visits from the spirit world, but just by sitting back and reflecting. Many of us are charitable and loving this time of year, because of the season and what it represents. But after the season, we put that holiday personality back in the closet and we tend to forget the lessons of Christmas, and I guess I’m as guilty as anyone.

We tend to forget that the Christmas spirit isn’t just for a month, or four weeks. It’s something the Ghost of Christmas Present says that his fellow spirits don’t live in men’s hearts one day a year, but all 365, just like the child born in the manger.

I think we need to remember that. That the spirit of Christmas we celebrate on Dec. 25 is something that should remain with us throughout the year and help guide us as we go through it.

Maybe, in the midst of the confusion and rush of the season, that’s something we need to remember.

May you and your families have a Merry Christmas.

John Surratt is a staff writer at The Vicksburg Post. You may reach him at john.surratt@vicksburgpost.com.