A Christmas Carol

Part One · Marley's Ghost

Ebenezer Scrooge was the stingiest, chilliest, most miserable old moneylender in the entire city of London. His heart was so frozen that his office stayed icy even in the middle of summer, and his voice was so sharp that strangers instinctively stepped aside when he approached. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to ask how he was, and even the beggars' dogs tugged their owners into doorways to avoid him. His business partner, Jacob Marley, had died exactly seven years earlier, on Christmas Eve, and Scrooge had never bothered to paint Marley's name off the sign above the door. Occasionally new customers called him Marley by mistake, and Scrooge answered to either name, because it made no difference to him whatsoever.

On this particular Christmas Eve, the fog was so dense that the houses across the narrow street looked like phantoms. In the dismal office, Scrooge's clerk, Bob Cratchit, copied letters beside a fire so miserably tiny that it resembled a single glowing coal, and he wrapped himself in a long white scarf to keep from shivering. Scrooge's cheerful nephew Fred burst in to wish his uncle a merry Christmas and invite him to dinner. "Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!" Two gentlemen arrived next, collecting donations for the hungry, and Scrooge dismissed them without a penny. When Bob nervously requested Christmas Day off, Scrooge complained that a holiday was simply an excuse for robbing an employer, and ordered him to arrive especially early the following morning.

That night, as Scrooge fitted his key into the lock of his gloomy house, the brass knocker on the door transformed into Marley's face, glowing with a horrible pale light. A moment later it was an ordinary knocker again, so Scrooge muttered "Humbug" and climbed the stairs, inspecting suspiciously underneath the bed and behind the door. He was sitting by the fire in his dressing gown and nightcap when every bell in the house began ringing simultaneously. A clanking sound echoed on the staircase, and then Marley's ghost walked straight through the locked door, wrapped in an enormous chain constructed of cashboxes, keys, padlocks and heavy steel purses. Scrooge could see right through his transparent body to the buttons on the back of his coat.

"I wear the chain I forged in life," moaned the ghost. "I made it link by link, with every selfish day, and your own chain was just as long as this seven years ago." When Scrooge protested that Marley had always been an excellent man of business, the ghost wrung his hands in despair. "Business!" he cried. "Mankind was my business! Kindness and charity were all my business!" There was only a single chance remaining for Scrooge, the ghost explained, because three spirits were coming to visit him, beginning the next night at one o'clock. Then Marley's ghost floated backward out of the window, and Scrooge saw that the darkness outside was crowded with wandering phantoms, all of them wailing and dragging their chains.

Part Two · The Ghost of Christmas Past

Scrooge awoke as the church clock chimed one, and the curtains of his bed were drawn aside by a peculiar figure who resembled a child and an elderly man simultaneously, with a brilliant light streaming from the top of its head. It was the Ghost of Christmas Past. It took Scrooge's hand, and together they floated through the wall and out into the countryside where he had grown up. There stood the cold, shabby schoolroom where a lonely little boy sat reading by himself, abandoned at Christmas while everyone else had gone home to their families. Scrooge sank down beside the boy and wept, because the boy was himself. Suddenly he regretted chasing away the young carol singer who had knocked at his door that evening.

Next, the Ghost showed him a warehouse at Christmastime, where young Scrooge had been the apprentice of a generous old merchant called Mr. Fezziwig. Every Christmas Eve, Fezziwig cleared away the desks, built up the fire, and threw a magnificent party for his employees and neighbors, with a fiddler, energetic dancing, roast beef and cake, and his apprentices adored him for it. Then the scene changed, and Scrooge saw himself as a young man beside a gentle young woman who had loved him once. She was releasing him from their promise to marry, because his love of money had gradually replaced his love for her. "Spirit," begged Scrooge, "show me nothing more!" He seized the Ghost's cap and pressed it down over the light until everything went dark.

Part Three · The Ghost of Christmas Present

The second spirit was waiting in Scrooge's own sitting room, which had been transformed into a forest of holly and ivy, with a roaring fire and towering heaps of turkeys, puddings, oranges and chestnuts. On top of the pile sat a jolly giant in a green robe, holding a glowing torch shaped like a horn of plenty. He was the Ghost of Christmas Present, and he carried Scrooge invisibly through the streets of London on Christmas morning, sprinkling a little light from his torch on dinners and arguments alike, and wherever the light fell, people became kinder. Eventually they arrived at the tiny house of Bob Cratchit, who earned only fifteen shillings a week to feed six children, and who was nevertheless the happiest man in his street.

The whole Cratchit family was bustling about preparing a small goose and a pudding no bigger than a cannonball, as proudly as though it were a banquet for royalty. Bob arrived home carrying his youngest son on his shoulder, and Tiny Tim was small and thin, with a little crutch, and his legs were supported by an iron frame, but his face was full of cheerfulness. When dinner was finished, Tiny Tim raised his cup along with everybody else. "God bless us, every one!" he said. Scrooge watched him with a tenderness he had never felt before. "Spirit," he asked anxiously, "tell me whether Tiny Tim will live." The Ghost replied that if nothing changed, he saw an empty seat beside the fire, and a little crutch with no owner.

Scrooge bowed his head in shame, and then the Ghost conducted him to Fred's house, where everybody was laughing and playing games, and Scrooge became so involved in a guessing game that he shouted answers that nobody could hear. Fred raised a glass to his grumpy old uncle, declaring that he felt sorry for him and would continue inviting him every single year. Afterward, the Ghost carried Scrooge to miners in their huts on a lonely moor, to sailors on a ship in the dark ocean, and to two lighthouse keepers on a rock in the crashing waves, every one of them wishing the others a merry Christmas. Then, as the distant clock struck midnight, the jolly giant grew suddenly ancient and gray, and disappeared.

Part Four · The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

The third spirit approached Scrooge slowly and silently, like a mist creeping along the ground. It wore a black hooded robe that concealed everything except one outstretched hand, and it never uttered a single word. It was the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and Scrooge feared it more than all the others put together. It led him through the city, where businessmen were joking carelessly about some wealthy old man who had died, and remarking that nobody would attend his funeral unless lunch was provided. In a filthy little shop, a group of thieves were selling the dead man's belongings, even the curtains from around his bed. Nobody in the entire city seemed the slightest bit sorry that the man was gone.

"Show me someone who feels anything at all about this death," pleaded Scrooge. The Ghost carried him to the Cratchit house, where the family was sitting in silence. Bob arrived home late, and when he described the peaceful green spot he had chosen in the churchyard, he cried out, "My little child!" and broke down in tears. Tiny Tim's seat beside the fire was empty. Finally, in silence, the Ghost led Scrooge to a neglected, overgrown churchyard and pointed at a forgotten gravestone. Trembling, Scrooge crept closer and read the name carved upon it: EBENEZER SCROOGE. "No, Spirit! Oh no, no!" he cried, clutching desperately at the robe. "I am not the man I was! Tell me that I can still change what you have shown me!"

Part Five · Christmas Morning

The Ghost's hand trembled, and then the hooded figure shrank and collapsed and became a bedpost. It was Scrooge's own bedpost, in his own bed, in his own room, and best of all, the future in front of him was still his own to repair. Scrooge laughed and cried simultaneously, and he danced around the room in his nightcap, tangled up in his stockings. "I have no idea what day it is!" he shouted joyfully. He flung open the window to a bright, frosty morning and called down to a boy in the street, who informed him that today was Christmas Day. "I haven't missed it!" cried Scrooge. He sent the astonished boy to purchase the prize turkey hanging in the shop window, a turkey nearly as large as the boy himself.

The turkey traveled by cab to Bob Cratchit's house, although nobody would ever discover who had sent it. Then Scrooge dressed in his finest clothes and strolled through the streets, smiling so delightfully at everybody that several people wished him a merry Christmas, which was the happiest sound he had ever heard. He located one of the gentlemen collecting for the hungry and whispered such an enormous donation in his ear that the man nearly fainted. In the afternoon, after pacing back and forth outside Fred's door a dozen times, he finally knocked. "Will you let me in, Fred?" he asked timidly. Fred nearly shook his arm off, and Scrooge stayed for dinner, and games, and more happiness than he had imagined possible.

The following morning Scrooge arrived at the office extremely early, and when Bob Cratchit hurried in eighteen minutes late, Scrooge growled at him in his old ferocious voice, so that poor Bob trembled. Then Scrooge poked him in the ribs and announced that he intended to double his salary. Scrooge kept that promise and every other one, and he became like a second father to Tiny Tim, who did not die, and he became the kindest employer and the most generous friend in the whole of London. Some people laughed at the transformation, and Scrooge let them laugh, because he was too busy laughing himself. It was said of him ever afterward that he knew how to keep Christmas well. And so, as Tiny Tim said, God bless us, every one!