A CHRISTMAS CAROL

IN PROSE

A Ghost Story of Christmas

by Charles Dickens

PREFACE

In this little ghost story, I have tried to raise a spirit—the spirit of an idea—that will not leave my readers unhappy with themselves, with one another, with the holiday season, or with me. May this idea haunt their homes pleasantly, and may no one wish to banish it.

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

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STAVE I: MARLEY'S GHOST

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt about that whatsoever. The record of his burial was signed by the minister, the church clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it—and Scrooge's signature meant something on the stock exchange, for he could put his name to anything and people would trust it. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Now, understand—I'm not claiming to know, from personal experience, what exactly makes a doornail so especially dead. I myself might have guessed that a coffin nail was the deadest piece of hardware around. But this saying has been passed down by our ancestors, and I won't disturb their wisdom, or the whole country might fall apart. So allow me to repeat, with emphasis, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Did Scrooge know Marley was dead? Of course he did. How could he not? The two of them had been business partners for who knows how many years. Scrooge was the only executor of his will, the only administrator of his estate, his sole heir, his only friend, and his only mourner. And even Scrooge wasn't so overcome with grief that he failed to prove himself a shrewd businessman on the very day of the funeral, sealing the occasion with a solid deal.

Mentioning Marley's funeral brings me back to where I started. There's no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be completely clear, or nothing remarkable can come from the story I'm about to tell. If we weren't entirely convinced that Hamlet's father died before the play began, there would be nothing strange about his walking the castle walls at night in a chilly wind—no more than there would be in any other middle-aged man foolishly wandering around after dark in a windy place (Saint Paul's churchyard, say) just to give his son a good scare.

Scrooge never had Old Marley's name painted over. It remained above the warehouse door years later: Scrooge and Marley. The firm went by that name. Sometimes newcomers to the business called him Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both. It made no difference to him.

Oh, but he was a tight-fisted, hard-bargaining old man, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, greedy old sinner! He was hard and sharp as flint, but unlike flint, no fire of kindness had ever been struck from him. He kept to himself, secretive and solitary as an oyster. The cold inside him showed on his old face—it pinched his sharp nose, shriveled his cheeks, and stiffened his walk. It reddened his eyes and turned his thin lips blue, and it came through in his harsh, grating voice. A layer of frost seemed to sit on his head, his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own personal chill everywhere he went; he kept his office as cold as ice even in the hottest days of summer, and he didn't warm it up one degree at Christmastime.

No outside heat or cold could touch Scrooge. Nothing could warm him, and no winter weather could make him any colder than he already was. No wind that blew was harsher than he was; no falling snow was more single-minded in its purpose; no driving rain was less likely to listen to reason. Bad weather simply didn't know how to get the better of him. The worst rain, snow, hail, and sleet had only one advantage over Scrooge: they often "came down" generously, while Scrooge never did.

No one ever stopped him on the street with a happy greeting like, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you visit me?" No beggars asked him for spare change, no children asked him the time, and no man or woman ever asked Scrooge for directions in his entire life. Even guide dogs for the blind seemed to recognize him, and when they saw him coming, they would pull their owners into doorways or side streets—then wag their tails as if to say, "No eyesight at all is better than a look from that man!"

But Scrooge didn't care in the least. In fact, that was exactly how he liked it. Making his way through the crowded streets of life while warning off any hint of human warmth or sympathy—that was, in the words of people who understood him, exactly his cup of tea.

Once, on Christmas Eve—of all days in the year—old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house (the office where he managed his money). The weather was cold, harsh, and biting, with thick fog on top of it all. He could hear people outside in the courtyard, wheezing as they walked, beating their hands against their chests and stamping their feet on the pavement to keep warm. The city clocks had only just struck three, but it was already fully dark—it hadn't been properly light all day—and candles burned in the windows of nearby offices, glowing like dull red smudges against the thick brown fog. The mist crept in through every crack and keyhole, so dense outside that even though the courtyard was quite narrow, the buildings across the way looked like ghostly shapes. Watching the dim, heavy cloud settle over everything, you might have thought that Nature herself lived close by and was brewing something on a massive scale.

The door to Scrooge's counting-house stood open so he could keep an eye on his clerk, who sat copying letters in a dreary little side room—more like a tank than an office. Scrooge kept only a small fire going, but the clerk's fire was so much smaller that it looked like a single burning coal. The clerk couldn't add more fuel, though, because Scrooge kept the coal supply locked in his own room. Every time the clerk came in carrying the shovel, hoping for more coal, Scrooge would warn him that they'd have to part ways if he kept asking. So the clerk wrapped his white scarf tighter and tried to warm himself at his candle flame instead—an effort that, since he wasn't a man with much imagination, didn't work.

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

"Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!"

The nephew had walked briskly through the fog and cold, and it showed—his face glowed red and handsome, his eyes sparkled, and his breath steamed in the air.

"Christmas, a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's 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 to be cheerful? You're poor enough as it is."

"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 comeback ready, simply said "Bah!" again, followed by "Humbug."

"Don't be so grumpy, uncle," said the nephew.

"How else should I be," the uncle shot back, "living in a world full of fools like this? Merry Christmas! To blazes with merry Christmas! What is Christmas to you but a time for paying bills you can't afford; a time when you find yourself a year older but not a penny richer; a time for going over your account books and seeing every debt from the past twelve months staring back at you? If I had my way," Scrooge said angrily, "every idiot who goes around wishing people 'Merry Christmas' should be boiled alive with his own Christmas pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should be!"

"Uncle!" the nephew protested.

"Nephew!" the uncle replied 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," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"

"There are plenty of things I might have benefited from but haven't, I'm sure," the nephew replied. "Christmas included. But I've always thought of the Christmas season—setting aside the respect owed to its sacred origins, if anything about it can be separated from that—as a good time. A kind, forgiving, generous, pleasant time. The only time in the whole year when people seem to agree, without being asked, to open up their guarded hearts and think of those less fortunate as fellow travelers heading toward the same destination, rather than as some separate breed of creature on a completely different path. And so, uncle, even though it's never put a single coin in my pocket, I believe it has done me good, and will keep doing me good. So I say, God bless it!"

The clerk in the side room couldn't help clapping. Realizing immediately how improper this was, he poked at the fire and snuffed out its one last weak spark for good.

"Let me hear one more sound out of you," Scrooge said, "and you'll spend your Christmas looking for a new job! You're quite the talented speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I'm surprised you haven't gone into politics."

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

Scrooge said that he would see him—yes, he really did say that. He finished the thought completely, declaring that he'd see his nephew somewhere unpleasant first.

"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 growled, as though that were the single most ridiculous thing in the world—worse even than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"

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

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I don't want anything from you, and 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. But I made this attempt out of respect for Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas spirit right to the end. So, a Merry Christmas, uncle!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

"And a Happy New Year!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

Even so, his nephew left the room without a single angry word. He paused at the outer door to wish the clerk a happy holiday, and the clerk—cold as he was—returned the greeting warmly, showing more warmth than Scrooge himself ever did.

"There's another one," Scrooge muttered, having overheard him. "My own clerk, earning fifteen shillings a week, with a wife and children to support, going on about a merry Christmas. I ought to just move into an asylum."

This "madman," in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in. They were heavyset, pleasant-looking gentlemen who now stood in Scrooge's office with their hats removed. They carried books and papers, and bowed politely to him.

"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, checking his list. "Do I have the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"

"Mr. Marley has been dead for seven years," Scrooge answered. "He died seven years ago this very night."

"We have no doubt that his generosity lives on through his surviving partner," said the gentleman, holding out his papers.

That was certainly true, in a way—the two men had been perfectly matched in spirit. At the troubling word "generosity," Scrooge frowned, shook his head, and handed the papers back.

"