Christmas Eve with the Creditors
December 24, 2003 - Greg Wasson

Today is Christmas Eve. All across the country families and friends are gathering or will gather tomorrow to celebrate the Christmas holiday. Although born into a Christian family, I don’t pretend to be one; in fact, I am still wrestling with whether a God of any kind, be it Christian, Jew, Hindu, or Muslim, has a place in my own personal cosmology. I did believe in Santa Clause for several years, though, and since he always gave me the benefit of the doubt about whether I had been a good boy during the time since his last visit, and brought me toys as a reward, if there is a god I hope he is like Santa. In that spirit, as it were, I continue to celebrate Christmas.

I don’t think I am alone. For many people, both in the USA and elsewhere, Christmas and Christmas Eve are cultural icons as well as occasions of religious observance. Christmas is celebrated in many Jewish and Muslim households in America. It has at least in part become a seasonal holiday that has its own special flavor. Perhaps that is because, like me, a lot of people continue to see Christmas with the eyes of children.

But at the financial services offices of any major credit card company there are no children employed, if only because child labor laws still prohibit it. For these companies, Christmas Eve is just another day at the office, and those employees whose job is to harass debtors who are delinquent in their accounts are seasoned pros. One of them decided today was a good day to call about the arrearages in one of my revolving credit accounts.

As I discussed for an hour or more an account which had fallen sufficiently behind and was big enough for the creditor’s employee to devote a substantial chunk of his time grilling me about my income and expenses in an attempt to work out a repayment schedule, the image of Lionel Barrymore, as the baleful bank owner Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life," came vividly to mind. But, truth be told, this Mr. Potter undoubtedly did not wear clothes reminiscent of the 19th-century, or have bushy eyebrows, or even look mean. In fact, I'm sure if I bumped into him at the supermarket and had a casual conversation, he would probably seem like a pretty nice guy.

But he isn’t. He has a nasty job that he took took voluntarily. That job is to get it as much money as humanly possible out of people like me, even if, or more likely because, it is Christmas Eve. As I write this, he is no doubt on his way home from some office in New Jersey to celebrate Christmas, or at least to be in the bosom of his family. Maybe he is thinking about the interesting conversation he had with the man who owed his bank money and happened to have Parkinson's disease. He may be thinking right now about medications and their costs, about losing jobs and the perils of living in tough economic times, but I have no doubt that this man will sleep well tonight.

In some ways it was funny, because within the bounds of a talk between debtor and creditor, the two of us understood one another. Each time he strayed into a phony concern for my health, I reminded him that his job was to get as much money from me as possible. Each time I suggested that my thinking might be little cloudy because of the five different medications I have taken for nine years for my Parkinson's, he quickly brought the conversation back to the question of cash and how much I could or would pay. Within those parameters, we did business. It was like a poker game in which both of us wore Santa Claus hats and were relatively polite to each other. It was serious poker, though, with their money up against my money, or rather the lack or it.

The fact remains that we did business on Christmas Eve. The fact remains that Christmas Eve is a great day for banks to call on their debtors. There may be no debtors prisons, as there were in the days of Ebenezer Scrooge. But there are phones, and there are harassing phone calls from creditors, hoping to get you at a weak moment, perhaps in front of your children or your wife or your husband or your in-laws. AJ sat by the phone and demanded that I give it to her, shivering with anger at the man on the other end. But I played the game out because I thought that there might be some advantage to me in making a deal with him. And he stayed on the phone with me past the time for him to go home because he thought there was a chance that he could get a bigger payment to him and his employer. In the end it was a draw. Neither of us got a big enough concession out of the other to make a deal. So I suppose I’ll see them in court, probably the bankruptcy court.

It's too bad. Parkinson's disease makes you hard in some ways. I will find my medications, and AJ and I will go find a Christmas tree and finish what shopping we can do. And perhaps I will use the credit card of the bank the man who called me works for. Because the one funny thing he asked me was "why are you still using this card"? My answer was "why are you still extending credit to me? I would've closed this account a year ago." Just another day on PD street. I wish it were not so.