A CHRISTMAS CAROL

IN PROSE
A Ghost Story of Christmas

by Charles Dickens

PREFACE

In this little ghost story, I have tried to bring to life an idea—a kind of friendly spirit—that I hope will not put my readers in a bad mood with themselves, with each other, with the holiday season, or with me. I hope this idea will visit their homes in a pleasant way, and that no one will want to send it away.

Your faithful friend and servant,
C. D.
December, 1843.

CONTENTS

Stave I: Marley's Ghost
Stave II: The First of the Three Spirits
Stave III: The Second of the Three Spirits
Stave IV: The Last of the Spirits
Stave V: The End of It

STAVE I: MARLEY'S GHOST

Marley was dead. Let's start there, because there's no doubt about it at all. The record of his burial had been signed by the minister, the church clerk, the undertaker, and the person in charge of the funeral, who was chief mourner. Scrooge signed it too. And Scrooge's signature meant something on the stock exchange—people trusted his name on any paper he signed. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Now, mind you, I'm not saying I actually know what makes a doornail more "dead" than anything else. If you asked me, I might have guessed that a coffin-nail was the deadest piece of metal hardware around. But that old saying has been used for so long that I don't dare change it, or the whole country might fall apart! So I'll say it again, plainly: Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Did Scrooge know his old partner was dead? Of course he did—how could he not? The two men had been business partners for who knows how many years. Scrooge was the only person in charge of handling Marley's affairs after his death, his only friend, and his only mourner. And even so, Scrooge wasn't so heartbroken by the sad news that he forgot to be an excellent businessman on the very day of the funeral. In fact, he celebrated it by closing a very good deal.

Talking about Marley's funeral brings me back to my main point: Marley was definitely dead. You need to understand this clearly, or nothing strange that happens later in this story will make any sense. Think of it this way: if we weren't completely sure that Hamlet's father had died before the play began, there would be nothing unusual about his ghost walking the castle walls at night in a cold wind. It would be no stranger than any other older man deciding to take a nighttime stroll somewhere breezy—say, in a churchyard—just to give his son a good scare.

Scrooge never bothered to paint over old Marley's name. Years later, it still hung above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. That's how the business was known. Sometimes new people would call him "Scrooge," and sometimes "Marley," and he answered to both. It didn't matter to him one bit.

Oh, but he was a hard, stingy man, that Scrooge! Squeezing, grasping, greedy old sinner that he was! He was as hard and sharp as flint, but unlike flint, no amount of striking ever knocked a warm spark out of him. He kept to himself, closed off and alone, like an oyster in its shell. The coldness inside him showed on the outside too: it pinched his sharp nose, dried out his cheeks, made his walk stiff, reddened his eyes, and turned his thin lips blue. Frost seemed to cling to his hair, his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own chill with him everywhere—he kept his office as cold as ice even in the hottest days of summer, and he certainly didn't warm it up one bit for Christmas.

The weather outside had almost no effect on Scrooge. No warmth could warm him, and no winter cold could make him colder. No wind blew more bitterly than he did; no falling snow was more determined; no pouring rain was less likely to listen to reason. Bad weather simply didn't know how to get to him. In fact, the worst storms of rain, snow, hail, and sleet had only one advantage over Scrooge: they sometimes let loose generously. Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him on the street with a friendly smile to say, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you visit me?" No beggars asked him for spare change. No children asked him the time. No man or woman, in his whole life, ever once asked him for directions. Even blind men's guide dogs seemed to recognize him—when they saw him coming, they'd pull their owners into doorways or side streets, as if to say, "Better no eyesight at all than a look from that man!"

But Scrooge didn't care. In fact, that's exactly how he liked it. Pushing his way through life while keeping every hint of human warmth at a distance—that suited him perfectly.

Once, on Christmas Eve—of all days in the year—old Scrooge sat working busily in his counting-house (an office where he handled his business and money). The weather was bitterly cold, gray, and foggy. Outside in the courtyard, he could hear people coughing as they hurried by, slapping their hands against their chests and stomping their feet on the icy pavement to keep warm. The city clocks had only just struck three, but it was already dark—it had been gloomy all day—and candles glowed in the windows of nearby offices like reddish smudges against the thick, brownish fog. That fog crept in through every crack and keyhole. It was so thick outside that, even though the courtyard was narrow, the buildings across from it looked like ghostly shapes. Watching the dirty-colored cloud roll in and blot everything out, you might have thought that Nature herself lived nearby and was brewing something enormous.

Scrooge kept the door of his counting-house open so he could keep an eye on his clerk (an assistant who copied letters and did paperwork) in the small, dreary side room, which was more like a cramped tank than an office. Scrooge's own fire was small, but his clerk's fire was so much smaller that it looked like a single glowing coal. The clerk couldn't add more coal, because Scrooge kept the coal box locked in his own room. Whenever the clerk came in holding the shovel, hoping for more fuel, Scrooge would warn him that if this kept up, the clerk would have to find a new job. So the poor clerk wrapped his white scarf tightly around himself and tried to warm his hands at the candle flame instead—though, since he wasn't a man with much imagination, this didn't really work.

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God bless you!" called a cheerful voice. It belonged to Scrooge's nephew, who had come in so quickly that this greeting was the first warning Scrooge had of his arrival.

"Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!" (Meaning: nonsense, a fraud.)

Scrooge's nephew had walked so briskly through the fog and frost that he glowed with warmth. His cheeks were rosy, his face handsome, his eyes bright, and his breath puffed out in little clouds.

"Christmas, a humbug, uncle!" said the nephew. "Surely you don't mean that?"

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right do you have to be merry? What reason do you have? You're poor enough."

"Well then," the nephew answered cheerfully, "what right do you have to be gloomy? What reason do you have to be so sour? You're rich enough."

Scrooge, not having a better answer ready, simply said, "Bah!" again, followed by "Humbug!"

"Don't be cross, uncle," said the nephew.

"How can I help it," the uncle replied, "living in a world full of fools like this? Merry Christmas! Bah, merry Christmas indeed! What is Christmas to you but a time for paying bills you have no money for; a time to find yourself another year older, but not a penny richer; a time to look over your account books and see every debt still owed? If I had my way," Scrooge said angrily, "every idiot who goes around wishing people 'Merry Christmas' should be boiled in his own Christmas pudding and buried with a holly stake through his heart! He should be!"

"Uncle!" said the nephew.

"Nephew!" the uncle answered sharply. "Keep Christmas your way, and let me keep it mine."

"Keep it!" the nephew repeated. "But you don't keep it at all."

"Then let me leave it alone," Scrooge said. "Much good may it do you! Much good it's ever done you!"

"There are plenty of things I could have benefited from but haven't, I'm sure," the nephew replied. "Christmas included. But whenever Christmas time comes around, I always think of it—apart from the respect due to its sacred meaning and origin, if anything about it can be separated from that—as a good time: a kind, forgiving, generous, cheerful time. It's the only time in the whole year when people seem to open up their closed-off hearts and think of others—even those less fortunate—as fellow travelers heading toward the same destination, rather than as a completely different kind of creature. So, uncle, even though it's never put a single coin in my pocket, I believe Christmas has done me good, and will keep doing me good. And so I say, God bless it!"

The clerk in the small side room clapped without meaning to. Realizing at once how improper that was, he quickly poked at the fire and put out its last tiny spark completely.

"Let me hear one more sound from you," Scrooge told him, "and you'll be celebrating Christmas by losing your job!" Then, turning to his nephew, he added, "You're quite the public speaker, sir. I'm surprised you haven't gone into politics."

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come and have dinner with us tomorrow."

Scrooge said he would see him—yes, indeed—but he finished the sentence in a way that meant something much less polite than a simple "yes."

"But why?" cried the nephew. "Why won't you come?"

"Why did you get married?" Scrooge asked.

"Because I fell in love."

"Because you fell in love!" Scrooge grumbled, as though that were somehow even more ridiculous than wishing someone a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"

"But uncle, you never visited me even before I got married. Why use that as your excuse now?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I don't want anything from you. I'm not asking you for anything. Why can't we simply be friends?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I'm truly sorry to see you so stubborn. We've never actually quarreled, at least not because of anything I've done. I only tried, out of