From songwriter Paul Williams in a Slate article about the Muppets Christmas Carol

[irisblue]

I would never have considered "The Muppets Christmas Carol" as a 12 Step guide. Mind blown.
SNIP.
"Once I was detoxed, once I had been chemically relieved of the substances, the cravings were gone,” he says. “I thought that was an absolute miracle, because I could not in fact imagine going a day without the drugs. The relief I felt was huge, in that I no longer woke up desperate to find what I needed—but the connectedness that I felt with the world around me was remarkable. All of a sudden you have that feeling of being cared for, you have that feeling of belonging.”
SNIP
“I was longing to live life in a totally new way, one day at a time, trusting that what I needed was within me to get things done. And I’m sitting down to write these songs, and I’m writing about Scrooge: a man who’s learning to live life in a whole new way, who’s having a spiritual awakening [laughs]. It’s like, okay now, this is my inventory of dealing with where I am in my own life.”

“He resonated almost more powerfully than anybody with the redemption story of Scrooge,”
SNIP
But it was Williams’s overflowing gratitude and new lease on life that poured out in songs like “It Feels Like Christmas,” sung by the Ghost of Christmas Present, “Bless Us All,” a prayer offered by Tiny Tim, and Scrooge’s redemption anthem “Thankful Heart.”
SNIP
The essence of the emotion that I felt was in the lyrics of ‘Thankful Heart,’” he says. “‘With a thankful heart, with an endless joy, with a growing family every girl and boy will be nephew and niece to me.’ There was a connectedness to the world around me, and a level of gratitude that, to this day, is probably one of the most powerful emotions I’ve ever experienced.”

[Stuart G]

1. k and r...no text.