A Christmas Carol

Scrooge wakes to a neighborhood church bell ringing midnight. He is confused because it was well after midnight when he went to bed. He lies awake, listening to the bell chime the quarter hours. The hour strikes one. The bedcurtains by Scrooge’s head are pulled aside, and a light streams in on him, revealing the Ghost of Christmas Past.

The ghost is a diminutive spirit, both old and young, sometimes solid, sometimes wavering, and a light burns from his head like the flame of the candle. In his hand, he carries a conical cap like a candle snuffer. He announces to Scrooge that he is the Ghost of Christmas Past and bids Scrooge to come with him. Scrooge realizes that resisting is pointless, though he does protest when the ghost leads him toward the window. However, the ghost places his hand over Scrooge’s heart and leads him directly through the wall.

Scrooge finds himself on a wintry road near the school where he spent much of his childhood. The sights, sounds, and (particularly) the smells of the scene overwhelm him. The other boys are all on the way home for the holidays. Scrooge recognizes them and calls out to them, but the ghost explains that the boys are only shadows and cannot see or hear him. The ghost reminds Scrooge that one child is still at the school alone.

They enter the dilapidated schoolhouse, where they see the young Scrooge reading by a small fire. The older Scrooge is struck by the memory of being this forgotten, unwanted boy and begins to weep. The spirit touches him and draws his attention to a parade of imaginary people passing by the window—all the characters of all the books young Scrooge read and loved. Scrooge laughs with delight to see them but then suddenly sobers, saying that he wishes he had given something to the boy who stopped to sing a Christmas carol outside his door.

The ghost shows Scrooge another Christmas—this one a few years later. Scrooge is older; the school is dingier, and instead of reading, young Scrooge is pacing back and forth. The door flies open and Scrooge’s younger sister, little Fan, darts in. She throws her arms around him and cries that she is bringing him home for Christmas, that he will never have to return to the school, and that he is to be a man. The ghost reminds Scrooge that Fred is his beloved sister’s son.

Next, the ghost brings Scrooge to the old warehouse where he was apprenticed. His employer, Fezziwig, is a cheerful old man wearing a Welsh wig (a knitted wool cap with a long back to keep the neck warm). At seven o’clock, Fezziwig orders Scrooge and Dick (Scrooge’s fellow apprentice) to put up the shutters and clear the floor. The neighbors begin to arrive, filling the warehouse with laughter and music and dancing. The ghost remarks on how cheap and easy it is to make such “silly” people grateful, and Scrooge passionately replies that Fezziwig’s kindness had a value surpassing money. He sobers, thinking of Bob Cratchit.

Leaving Fezziwig, the spirit shows Scrooge a somewhat older version of himself seated beside his fiancée, Belle. She breaks their engagement, telling him that money has taken the place she used to hold in his heart. The scene changes, and Belle is now a mother to a lively family. Her husband returns home and informs her that he has seen Scrooge sitting alone in his office while his partner Marley is at death’s door. Seeing the family—especially the daughter he might have had—Scrooge begs the spirit to take him home. He seizes the spirit’s cap and pushes it down on the spirit’s head, forcing it all the way to the floor, but the light continues to stream out from beneath. A moment later, he finds himself back in his own bedroom, terribly drowsy, and staggers back to bed.