Ebenezer Scrooge is a penny-pinching miser in the first degree. He cares nothing for the people around him and mankind exists only for the money that can be made through exploitation and intimidation. He particularly detests Christmas which he views as 'a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer'. .
Scrooge is visited, on Christmas Eve, by the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley who died seven Christmas Eves ago.
Marley, a miser from the same mold as Scrooge, is suffering the consequences in the afterlife and hopes to help Scrooge avoid his fate. He tells Scrooge that he will be haunted by three spirits. These three spirits, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, succeed in showing Scrooge the error of his ways. His glorious reformation complete, Christmas morning finds Scrooge sending a Christmas turkey to his long-suffering clerk, Bob Cratchit, and spending Christmas day in the company of his nephew, Fred, whom he had earlier spurned. .
Scrooge's new-found benevolence continues as he raises Cratchit's salary and vows to assist his family, which includes Bob's crippled son, Tiny Tim. In the end Dickens reports that Scrooge became ' as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew'. .
A Christmas Carol was written in the 1830's. This story is Charles Dickens' most well known tale, and has become the classic Christmas story. Even the name used in the book has become part of everyday speech (Scrooge for a miserly person). The book is set in London. The main characters are Scrooge and his worker Bob Cratchit. In the beginning Scrooge is portrayed as being a mean and miserly accountant: "No children asked him what it was O'clock," "Not a soul asked him the way to this place or that." Then came the supernatural visitors, the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future. They showed him his childhood, his life, his future. He saw scenes that made him change.
