A Christmas Carol

This is the ghost story that taught the world how to celebrate Christmas—and how to imagine a person capable of change at any age. Dickens fuses supernatural terror with social conscience: every chain Marley wears was forged by indifference to the poor. Read it if you love Gothic atmosphere, if you're skeptical that anyone can truly reform, or if you want to see where 'Bah! Humbug!' and 'God bless us every one!' came from. It's short, it's fierce, and it still works.

1. 1

   Act 1

   The Chain He Forged in Life

   On a bleak, cold Christmas Eve in London, Scrooge's nephew Fred arrives with a dinner invitation, and Scrooge's answer is the famous 'Bah! Humbug!' Two gentlemen come collecting for the poor, and Scrooge sends them off with a question: 'Are there no prisons?' And the Union workhouses? The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then? He grudgingly lets Bob Cratchit take Christmas Day off with pay, snarling that it's 'a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!' That night, the ghost of Jacob Marley appears, fettered with heavy chains and money boxes. 'I wear the chain I forged in life,' Marley tells him, and warns that Scrooge's own chain, seven Christmases in the making, has grown far heavier. Marley offers one escape: three spirits will haunt Scrooge, and he must listen to them or be cursed to carry even heavier chains than Marley's own.

2. 2

   Act 2

   The Boy He Used to Be

   The Ghost of Christmas Past appears—a strange figure like a child yet also like an old man, with a bright jet of light springing from its head. The spirit takes Scrooge to his lonely boyhood boarding school, where he sees his younger self abandoned during the holidays while other boys have gone home. Scrooge's beloved sister Fan, Fred's long-dead mother, arrives at the school to bring him home, crying that 'Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home's like Heaven!' Next the spirit shows him a lively Christmas party thrown by his first employer, Mr. Fezziwig, who treated the young apprentice like a son. Watching the dancing and the warmth, Scrooge thinks of Bob Cratchit and how differently he treats his own clerk. Scrooge's neglected fiancée Belle ends their engagement. 'Another idol has displaced me... a golden one,' she tells him—he loves money more than her. Years later, on the very Christmas Eve that Marley died, the spirit shows Belle happily married with a large family, while her husband remarks that Scrooge is 'quite alone in the world.'

3. 3

   Act 3

   The Feast and the Two Children

   The Ghost of Christmas Present, a jolly giant in a green robe trimmed with white fur, appears in Scrooge's room surrounded by a feast of Christmas foods. The spirit takes Scrooge through London's streets on Christmas morning, showing people preparing feasts and sharing goodwill, and shows Christmas in a miner's cottage, a lighthouse, and a ship at sea, where isolated people still keep the holiday. The spirit shows Scrooge the Cratchit family's humble Christmas dinner, where Bob raises his glass to 'Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!' and his wife reluctantly joins in. Scrooge sees Bob Cratchit's youngest son, Tiny Tim, a happy but seriously ill boy who carries a little crutch and has an iron frame supporting his limbs. 'God bless us every one!' says Tiny Tim. The Ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge that if the shadows remain unaltered, Tiny Tim will die—and throws Scrooge's own cold words back at him: 'If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.' The spirit takes Scrooge to Fred's Christmas party, where Fred defends his uncle: 'I am sorry for him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always.' Before vanishing, the spirit reveals two hideous, emaciated children named Ignorance and Want sheltering beneath his robes. 'Beware them both,' the ghost warns, 'but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom.'

4. 4

   Act 4

   The Grave with His Name

   The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a silent, shrouded phantom, communicates only by pointing; Scrooge fears it more than any of the others. The ghost shows Scrooge a group of businessmen casually discussing the death of a disliked man, one saying he will attend the funeral only if lunch is provided. Scrooge sees a charwoman, a laundress, and an undertaker's man stealing the dead man's possessions—bed curtains, blankets, and a shirt—and selling them to a fence named Old Joe. A couple who owed the dead man money rejoice at the news, glad of the time to put their affairs in order. The spirit shows Scrooge the Cratchit family mourning the death of Tiny Tim. Bob returns from the churchyard and tells his wife how green a place it is, then breaks down: 'My little, little child! cried Bob. My little child!' The ghost points to a neglected grave in a churchyard. Scrooge reads the tombstone and finds his own name. Sobbing, he clutches the spirit's hand and pledges: 'I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.' Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning a changed man, laughing—'I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy!' Scrooge anonymously sends a prize turkey to the Cratchit home, makes a large donation to the charity he had earlier rejected, and goes to Fred's Christmas dinner, where he is warmly welcomed. The next day Scrooge raises Bob Cratchit's salary and promises to help his family, becoming 'a second father' to Tiny Tim. Tiny Tim does not die. Scrooge becomes as good a friend, employer and man as the city knew.

Anyone who has ever caught themselves counting kindness like a cost. It's also the perfect short read for December, when a story about second chances lands hardest.

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