WMG / A Christmas Carol

The Ghost Of Christmas Present is Santa Claus

Possibly during his college years or some shit...what with all that drinking

• Safer to say that he's the traditional English personification of Christmas, known as Father Christmas or Old Christmas. He dates back to the Middle Ages at least and was a character in folk plays known as Mummers plays, in addition to which he appeared in print in mid-seventeenth century Royalist propaganda (the Puritans having banned Christmas in the mid-1640s due to it being perceived to have various Catholic overtones, in addition to which they had a downer on the partying and revelry; this ban ended with the Restoration in 1660). Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, Father Christmas (usually depicted as wearing a green robe and a crown of holly, which Dickens describes the Ghost of Christmas Present as wearing) was all about feasting and being merry at Christmastime. It was only during the mid-Victorian period (about a decade or so after the publication of A Christmas Carol) that he became associated with gift-giving — following which Father Christmas gradually became inextricably linked with (and, by the early twentieth century, more or less indistinguishable from) the American personification of Christmas (Santa Claus), who has his origins in the Dutch Sinterklaas.

Jacob Marley is alive.

There is absolutely no evidence that he is dead.

• Other than Word of God - the first sentence of the story, no less - and the appearance of his ghost. :D

The whole thing was for the benefit of Tiny Tim.

If you look at Marley and all the other ghosts, eternally damned for their greed and misanthropy, you have to wonder: what makes Scrooge so special? Why let the others sin their way into damnation, but give Scrooge a big spectral adventure through time and space to save him? Marley says that he arranged the spirits' visit, but why would they do what he says? There must be some larger purpose to making this random cranky bastard into a nice guy for the last few years of his life. Perhaps the universe has big plans for scrappy, kind-hearted little Tim Cratchit, and is making sure he survives his childhood. Would explain why Scrooge's future visions are, you'll die, your business associates won't care, your debtors will be relieved, your servants will sell your stuff, nobody will mourn, oh and TIM WILL DIE, REPEAT, THIS KID YOU NEVER HEARD OF UNTIL TODAY WILL DIE.

• Also, while the reader hadn't heard of Tim up until that point, there is no clear indication that Scrooge hadn't.
• There is no clear indication that he had, either. Scrooge wasn't the kind of guy whom you could pour your heart out to during business hours, nor the kind of guy most people would want to be around after them.
  • Actually, think about this, it is never stated that all those damned souls DIDN'T receive the chance that Scrooge did. For all we know, the spirits came to Jacob Marley as well, but he chose to ignore the lessons they taught him. What made Scrooge special was that seed of goodness that had been smothered by his lonely and hard life, while the other spirits may have had similar lessons, but simply didn't or couldn't change.
• There have GOT to be easier ways to get Tiny Tim an operation than a massive Time-Travel Gambit. Such as just taking Cratchit to the future, letting him copy down the Stock Reports or grab a Sports Almanac or something.
  • Tell that to the cast of A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

Scrooge and Marley were in a relationship.

Most of us seem to think Scrooge was straight as he had an ex-girlfriend named Belle who then became his fiancée before she broke up with him and he was a cold-hearted man because he hates Christmas and had a lonely childhood but while that is true Scrooge was actually homosexual or at least bisexual and he became more cold hearted after Marley died. To be honest Scrooge and Marley were not just partners in business but also in a relationship. Most people think Scrooge loved money more than Belle but in truth Scrooge just covered it up as he had an affair with Jacob Marley behind Belle's back. Scrooge who was in love with Marley hid his guilt but used his excuse about money in a successful attempt to get Belle out of his life because he would be afraid that Belle found out he was seeing another man. When Scrooge revisits his old job at Fezziwig's in the second chapter of the novel he meets his old colleague Dick Wilkins who Scrooge claimed was 'attached to him'. This implies Scrooge and Dick were more than friends they were lovers. But Scrooge being young back then was confused about his feelings which was why he dated and got engaged to Belle but as he got older he realised he was homosexual and fell in love with Jacob Marley. After Marley died Scrooge became more colder as not only did he also lose his close sister Fan but Marley who was the love of his life.

• Alternately, Marley was in love with Scrooge, who never reciprocated because he saw no profit in it. After Marley’s death he doubled down on his miserable views because he’d sacrificed his last chance at love for their sake.

Scrooge died.

Though it may be hard to believe but Scrooge actually died after he left work. The only period Scrooge was alive was the start of the novel where he refuses to dine with Fred and give a donation to the poor and homeless. Then Scrooge goes home for the night but dies in his sleep. Scrooge after seeing the ghost of Marley was punished for his mean deeds by witnessing his forgotten past and how he could had helped Bob Cratchit his clerk by offering him a better raise so Tiny Tim could had got the treatment to get well again. The future scenes actually happened while the ending where Scrooge supposedly repented was what Scrooge could have done but he must now suffer Marley's fate by wearing a chain and travel in the skies forever. Despite Marley claiming Scrooge had a chance to escape his fate he actually lied so that Scrooge would not be aware what lies in store. Technically Scrooge reunited with Marley in death but for the wrong reasons. It makes sense as Marley himself already suffers the same fate after he died seven years before the novel. And to make it more painful Tiny Tim sadly did die.

Scrooge was given the chance of reformation because his death in a year is inevitable.

• The story starts with Marley's death to foreshadow Scrooge's mortality. Scrooge is brought to his senses when he sees his own death in a year. While Scrooge can prevent Tiny Tim's death by paying the Cratchits more money, he has no way of preventing his own death. Marley came to Scrooge so that in a year, Scrooge could go to Heaven, and not float forever as a chained spirit.

Scrooge's reformation will save his life.

• An alternative to the above. The reformed Scrooge will take better care of his health because he's not stingy anymore, will get his house cleaned up and pay for coal for the fire (at home and at work), will stop overworking himself, will be constantly surrounded by friends and family who can send for a doctor when he needs one, and will have more will to live because he's finally happy. The illness that would have killed him in the Bad Future will either never happen or not be fatal in the new timeline and he'll have many more years to live.

The whole thing was for the benefit of the Cratchit family in general.

Maybe the powers that be had decided they'd all suffered enough and didn't want Bob and the others to go through the pain of losing Tim.

The whole thing was to change the moral climate forever.

In The Screwtape Letters, or perhaps "Screwtape Proposes a Toast," Screwtape says that demons are intimidated by the pressure of working with particularly nasty people because they know how much they have to lose if the stupendous sinner repents and sets an example. "The great sinners," he says, "are made out of the same material as the great saints."

It's not hard to imagine why turning a classic sinner like Scrooge would be more important than a less extreme and caricaturish likeminded person.

• It was all for the purpose of moral progression. Scrooge is rich, and if the ghosts could reform him and convince him to act out of generosity, it would give the people of London further inspiration to look out for one another.

Marley is not in Hell.

All right, this one has some Catholic theology behind it. Thanks to this site, most people who end up on this page are familiar with the concept of Purgatory in some shape or form. Now, in Catholic parlance, Purgatory is the place where you go when you die when you're not quite ready for Heaven but not deserving of Hell. In Catholicism, you can be forgiven of your sins since God is all merciful, but there are also consequences to be paid, since God is also all just. You can pay those consequences on this side of life through acts of penance or if you aren't finished when you die, in Purgatory. A somewhat good analogy would be a teen who sneaks out of the house to go to a forbidden party, realizes their mistake and calls mom or dad to pick them up. Do mom and dad forgive the kid? Yeah, because they love him or her. But does that mean the kid will not be grounded forever?

There are two pieces of evidence to suggest Marley is in Purgatory instead of Hell.

1) He visits Scrooge out of concern for his well-being to help Scrooge avoid Marley's fate.Funny thing about Hell, people who go there tend not to give the rump of a rat about anyone else. It is a place of suffering, gnashing of teeth, cursing, and etc and etc... Basically there is no kinship in Hell. If Marley was in Hell, he wouldn't care if Scrooge suffered the same fate, might even have wanted Scrooge to suffer the same fate since misery loves company and all.

• According to Jesus, even the damned care about their friends and family. The Rich Man wanted his brothers to avoid going to Hell, even though he knew it was too late for him. He was greatly saddened when Abraham told him that sending Lazarus as a Jacob Marley Warning would be pointless because those who don't listen to Moses and the Prophets won't listen to a man who came back from the dead, either.

2) Marley notes that he is doomed to endure his punishment until the end of time.Fun fact about Purgatory: it's not going to last forever. Once the End of Time is hit, Purgatory goes with it leaving only Heaven and Hell behind. Since Marley notes that he is doomed to walk the Earth until the End of Time and not for eternity, this indicates his punishment will indeed one day end. Just as Purgatory will one day end. And Marley's punishment seems very Purgatoryish, having to learn to come to terms with what a sad, sorry, excuse of a human being he was and how much hurt he caused.

• Scrooge gets another chance. Why should the guy who's helping a friend and is sorry for how he lived his life be screwed?

There is a play, "Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol," by Tom Mula that is essentially that: The only way Marley can escape damnation is to reform Scrooge. In that version, Marley is also the ghosts of Christmases Past and Present. Future, on the other hand ...

Scrooge should not have reformed.

• He would be doing more good, so to speak, continuing to be miserly — um, fiscally responsible...
  • There is actually an article called "In Defense of Scrooge", by Michael Levin at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which takes this attitude. Though it may be satire.
  • There's nothing in the book that says he has to change the way he does business, though, just that he needs to stop being such a pissed-off dick to everyone. And is he really doing that much economic good by putting absolutely the smallest amount of money back into the economy as he possibly can? He pays taxes only very grudgingly, lives on cheap gruel and doesn't want to even buy coal when it's cold.
    • It's kind of a misconception (here, below, and on other pages) that Scrooge eats only gruel. On the way home from work, he "takes his usual melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern." As well, he announces to Marley that he doesn't believe his eyes, and that Marley might be an undigested bit of beef, or potato, or cheese. In other words, Scrooge eats a perfectly normal dinner. The gruel is for his head cold.
  • If economic experts have it right, then misers hurt the overall economy. Money only has value when it's spent, and by taking a large chunk of money out of them system and sitting on it you're reducing the total wealth of society.

Scrooge cannot stay reformed.

He's not the only person in his line of work, and the others aren't that much better. And it is hard to maintain the Christmas spirit year-round when you are living in a business & warehouse district.

Inspired/stolen from a short story, "Who Killed Ebenezer Scrooge?" (also from the early 1990s).

• Having the threat of dying within the next few years and being damned to Marley's fate if you don't stay reformed is a good choke chain for a naughty dog.
  • Fezziwig seemed to do well enough despite (possibly because of) his generosity.
    • Having read Dickens' full text via The Annotated Christmas Carol, I've concluded that Scrooge's primary failing was not his greed as such, but his utilitarian philosophy of reducing literally everything to simple, bottom-line numbers. His stinginess is his secondary failing, but its impact is doubled in tandem with the first: he reduces things to numbers, yet forgets that workers and customers are people. Ironically, that even applies to himself—his apartment is dark and mostly bare of personal effects, and his favorite food is gruel, which was served in workhouses.

Bob Cratchit isn't that good a person.

He may be The Woobie, but he does work for Scrooge!

• He seems to act like a man who has, or thinks he has, no choice. A man in such dire financial straits doesn't want to take any chances. Remember the economic circumstances of the times. It was the Poor Law days. You might say he could have done better than Scrooge, but that's assuming he could get another job at all, and his family might not have survived the transitional period, especially with a sick child in tow.
  • We're not shown nearly as much of his home life as we think (the film adaptations bleed into the memory). It seems his oldest daughter and son also work to help support his family. His wife may work too; it wasn't uncommon back then. The younger ones may be in school in order for them to have a better chance than Bob or his wife. But we're not told any of this, so it's all WMG. The fact is, conditions back then were awful, and the Cratchits were fortunate simply because they owned their home as opposed to renting it or being on a mortgage.

I know a lot of history but could you please remember A Christmas Carol serial came out in 1843 and it wasn't required by law until 1870 for children to go to school.

• He also knows his financial situation better than anyone, yet continues to have kids like there's no tomorrow. Somehow, we're supposed to overlook this pattern of irresponsibility while blaming the resulting chaos on his employer (who has absolutely no control over how often Cratchit ejaculates into his wife's cervix).
  • This was time before proper condoms and way before the Pill. It's a bit much to assume that a couple has to stay totally celibate if they're poor.
    • It may also be that he could support his family if not for the expense of Tiny Tim's illness. Even today some people who could otherwise support their families are bankrupted paying for a child's medical treatment.
    • Healthcare, at the time, was "pray you die quickly," especially in a place as unhygienic as 1840s London. Families had to have a lot of children, because many of them died very early.
  • If you think 6 kids is a lot (as going by the book), then you should meet a couple of families who have 10 or 12 kids. As was extremely common back before the whole modern medicine thing when you could have eight or nine pregnanies/birth and two live children. Or none. Also while I realize Wikipedia is a terrible reference, it's 4am and I'm not reading A Christmas Carol when I have to wake up in a few hours, and it says that the oldest daughter and son were both working, meaning there are 3, maybe even 4 incomes in the house instead of 2. And you have a range of ages from young adults to a young child, suggesting that there was probably a good two years between each child, possibly more. It's likely that they used breast-feeding as their form of birth control and that doesn't last forever. They shouldn't have to not have however many kids they want (or, you know, the kind and amount of sex they want) because Scrooge is stingy.

We also have no reason to believe that Scrooge's business was in any way immoral. He may have been a rotten person, but nothing we see suggests he was dishonest or peddling anything destructive. It is no sin to work for a greedy man as long as the business itself is upright.

• Well there is a reason we call this section Wild Mass Guessing.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was Fan.

What could be more appropriate than the most important person in Scrooge's past showing him the way to the future? It makes since in that the GOCYTC was arguably the ghost that Scrooge most needed to hear from, and Fan cared more for Scrooge than anyone else ever had.

• This could aslo explain why Yet To Come is the only ghost who never actually speaks to Scrooge. It's unclear whether he would have been able to recognize her voice as a spirit (he didn't recognize Marley at first, after all), but even if he couldn't have, she might have avoided speaking lest she accidentally say something to tip him off.

Or, the GOCYTC was Fezziwig.

The ghosts all seem to be male. Fezziwig wanted to make sure his old apprentice learned what he may have learned.

The three Christmas ghosts were three of the Endless

The Ghost of Christmas Past could be death, as she is the most close to the humans. Destruction could represent Christmas Present. The Ghost of Christmas Future could be Destiny as he fills the character, he never gives a real answer (or any word at all, in the Ghost's case) he only say what's written to be said from him. The reason they do all this, is because Destiny asked them

Scrooge had been traumatized by the hard times of the early 1800s.

Regency Romances aside, England was not a good place to be during, and for some decades after, The Napoleonic Wars. The economy had been dreadfully strained by the long wars, and had only just recovered by the late 1840s. Since A Christmas Carol is set, sometime in the 1840s (when it came out), it's quite likely that Scrooge was the equivalent of a Great Depression survivor who can't let go of things that made sense then.

• The education system was no better. Dickens' biggest complaints about his schoolmasters was that they did their damnedest to squash any traces of imagination out of him. Thankfully, he held on.

Jacob Marley was a victim of premature burial.

His ghost is depicted as wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing when he was still alive, yet his jaw is bound up with cloth like would be done by the undertaker. He must've fallen into a cataleptic state while wearing those clothes, and been buried alive in the belief he was dead. Miserly to the end, he'd left instructions that he be buried in whatever death-soiled outfit he died in — why waste a good suit? — so the mortician just tied up his jaw before consigning him to the grave, where he suffocated.

It was, in fact, All Just a Dream

It doesn't seem like that radical of an idea to this troper, but it seems like most people take it for granted that Scrooge really was visited by ghosts, when there's really no clear indication that it wasn't just a dream. All the inconsistencies and unanswered questions (i.e., why was Scrooge singled out for redemption, what made Tiny Tim so important, etc.) could easily be because it was all a product of Scrooge's subconscious. He could well have been right from the begining—it was all just a bit of undigested cheese.

• This assumes that he's met Cratchit's family and knows what they look like. He would also likely realize it was a dream if Fred's guests aren't the same people wearing the same clothes that he remembers or if the food is different. If it was a dream, he would quickly figure this out and he appears not to at the end of the story.
  • Believe it or not, a few hints do give credence to the "subconscious" idea. Scrooge has an old fireplace decorated on its inside (that is, where the fire would be) with reliefs of Bible stories; he is mentioned to see Marley's face in every single one of them. Also, an intense-enough dream probably can shock one out of a particular mindset.

  • Actually, no. "If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley’s head on every one." So, not saying Marley's face was on them, just a roundabout way of saying Marley was definitely on Scrooge's mind.

• Dreams and memory interact in funny ways — maybe Scrooge's subconscious made up what Cratchit's children and Fred's party guests looked like, and when he woke up, he forgot. Those are tiny details compared to the overwhelming sense, feeling, and conviction the dream would have given him.
  • Morally, Scrooge reforming because he is pricked by subconscious guilt makes him a better man than if he reformed because a ghost scared him into it.
• Stilton cheese is known for producing vivid dreams.

Scrooge will bequeath his business to Cratchit and his personal assets to build a hospital.

We know Scrooge has no children of his own and very little time to live—certainly not enough to spend or give away all of his money. Furthermore, his nephew has never shown much interest in material goods anyway. Therefore, it stands to reason that Scrooge will bequeath to his nephew enough money to pay his debts and a little extra as a personal gift. As to the rest of his property, he will turn the business over to his new partner and longtime employee, Bob Cratchit, figuring he earned it with all those years of faithful service. He will order his personal assets to be liquidated with the proceeds used to build a hospital dedicated to treating the indigent, especially children.

Dickens made such a big deal about Marley being dead to prevent Wild Mass Guessing about his being alive.

• Alternately, Marley is both alive and a Magnificent Bastard, having elaborately faked his death years before and hired people to pretend to be ghosts as part of a long-term Xanatos Gambit to redeem his friend, a scheme the whole community was in on, so they pretended to be their past or future selves. Not sure how they pulled off the apparent flying part.

Scrooge's father was also visited by spirits.

• This explains why he did a complete 180 personality-wise and sent Fan to bring Scrooge home for Christmas instead of keeping him at that boarding school.
  • Some adaptations have suggested that Scrooge's father actually took him out of school because he ran into financial troubles of his own and could no longer afford the fees.

Bob Cratchit was late for work the day after Christmas because of a tryptophan coma.

Well, he did eat a rather large turkey on Christmas day, thanks to Scrooge.

• It was actually a goose.
  • Nope. The Cratchits' dinner was normally goose, and no doubt they had one already, but Scrooge sent them a turkey. The odds are good they ate the goose anyway because you did not. waste. good. food at that time and place and anyway a monster like that would have taken all day to cook by the time they'd got it dressed and the baker's oven was already cooling down — but they probably threw a monster supper for all the families in their alley, passing the word to bring any leftover eatables and drinkables in exchange for their piece of a 30lb turkey. That's why Bob turns up late the next day — he's nursing the biggest hangover and bilious attack of his entire life, and when Scrooge knocks off for a Boxing Day half-holiday and a bowl of hot wine, it's the hair of the dog that Bob desperately needs.

Ebenezer Scrooge suffered from Lewy body dementia.

• As described here:

Ebenezer Scrooge's miserly ways were a defense mechanism to all the trauma he experienced from loved ones dying, intended to shield him from any more pain.

Scrooge's redemption saved Jacob Marley's soul as well

• Marley went out of his way, possibly against the rules of the afterlife (it's stated that wandering, tortured spirits are unable to or not allowed to try and help the living, as being unable to is part of their punishment), to warn his former partner that he would suffer the same fate he did if he doesn't change his ways. Since this is perhaps the first truly selfless act that Marley had ever done, and in the process saved the soul of a living individual, it was likely enough to redeem Marley himself as well, permitting him to shed his chains and finally lay his soul to eternal rest.

Scrooge is Jewish and the whole book is a metaphor for conversion to Christianity.

• Scrooge is a greedy moneylender, and a stereotype of Jews is that they're greedy. Also, Christians weren't supposed to handle money but Scrooge DOES. His miserliness is really his Jewishness and his new love of Christmas is conversion. Charles Dickens is basically saying that all Jews should convert, because then they will be good and people will like them.
  • For the age this was written in, this wouldn't be such a stretch.
  • Actually, it would be a stretch that Dickens wouldn't just outright say the character was Jewish, as he did with Fagin. If he wanted Scrooge to be Jewish he most likely would have said so. Subtlety in that area was not Dickens' forte.

Scrooge is Scottish, or at least partly Scottish.

• "Ebenezer" was a fairly commonly found name in the Scottish Lowlands at the time Scrooge would have been born. And Scots traditionally don't make much of a much of Christmas; their big annual celebration, Hogmanay, is at New Year's Eve (as shown in the McAuslan stories by George Macdonald Fraser.) This leads to visions of Scrooge dragging himself in to work the day after New Year's, looking like death warmed over, and moaning "My head! My head!" (He'd been at the London Scottish Society the night before, and there was a case of Glenfiddich there...)

Scrooge blamed Fred for Fan's death and Belle leaving him.

• Since no mention is made of Fred's father, it can be safe to assume the man was a deadbeat who left Fan the moment he learned she was pregnant. Scrooge, having just entered his partnership with Marley, decided that he needed the money not only to provide for himself and Belle, but for his sister and her new child. Belle, unfortunately had no idea about this, and only felt Ebenezer was being greedy for the sake of being greedy. Scrooge was willing to let her go if it meant Fan would be able to provide for her child, but letting go of Belle ended up being a Senseless Sacrifice as Fan ended up dying giving birth to Fred. Scrooge, blaming his new nephew for the loss of the two most important people in his life, became cold-hearted towards Fred, leading to the relationship we see between them at the start of the story.

Marley is in Purgatory, not Hell.

• The genuinely damned have no good left in them, after all.

Someone in Belle's family had died just before the break up.

• She's described as wearing mourning dress. It would be odd to wear mourning just because you're sad about breaking up with a boyfriend. Someone in Belle's immediate family (parent or sibling) died and she was wearing the customary mourning. She wanted Ebenezer to come with her to the funeral, but he wouldn't take time off from work. It wasn't the first time he blew her off in pursuit of wealth, but it was the last straw for her.
  • Most likely it was her father, and his death dried up whatever money she could have brought to her marriage. This combined with Scrooge's increasing obsession with gain made Belle realize that if they married, Scrooge would only regret it afterwards.

Belle never really loved Scrooge.

• Credit for this goes to David John Marotta's editorial. Rather than leaving Scrooge because he was a cold-hearted money grubber, Belle dumped him because she was a Gold Digger. Because of Scrooge's miserly ways, Belle was upset that he didn't spend money on her. Proof of this theory? As mentioned above, she wore mourning dress when breaking up with Scrooge. Back in those days, mourning dress was expensive; it shows how easy it was for Belle to spend money on herself. Also, we see Belle married someone else and her husband comes home full of Christmas presents for their children; they promptly tear them open to get at the toys therein. Belle has clearly passed on her gold digger habits to her children.

The Christmas Ghosts played a role in Marley's repentance

• Why are three ghosts visiting after Marley leaves? Perhaps Marley asks the spirits to pay a visit to his old business partner.

Marley did spend some time in Hell

• In the novel, it was only after seven years that Marley visited Scrooge as a ghost. Why did it take so long for Marley's ghost to come back? Because Marley was damned for a long time. In Catholic theology, as stated above, Purgatory is a place you go if you aren't good enough for Heaven or bad enough for Hell. At the beginning of the novel, Scrooge was an unrepentant miser who did nothing to help people. If Marley was the same way, he likely would've gone to Hell. It was only after years of suffering did Marley truly repent his ways.

Scrooge fired his housekeeper shortly after the end of the story.

• Reformed or not, he just learned that he's placed a large amount of trust in someone who would literally pick his corpse clean the moment he's dead. Both she and Mrs. Dilber will shortly be informed that their services are no longer required.

Marley is the reason Scrooge became his miserly self

• When Scrooge initially began work, his past selves are initially portrayed as friendlier and more benevolent, but he becomes more financially ruthless later. While the timing of his partnership with Marley is not officially confirmed, it seems likely that this partnership ended up encouraging Scrooge's worst habits until he became the man we are more familiar with. As a result, since Marley was responsible for corrupting Scrooge, he was given "permission" to try and reform Scrooge after death because he was the reason Scrooge became a villain in the first place, giving the now-repentant Marley hope that he could bring Scrooge back to his better nature.

Scrooge's Father was also visited by Christmas Spirits

• From the Ghost of Christmas Past, we know that Scrooge was sent to a boarding school, and that his father was apparently mean and cruel. Then one Christmas, his little sister Fan comes to pick him up from the Boarding School so they could spend Christmas together; she notes how he's become much kinder and gentler to the point that Fan could ask to bring Scrooge back. It is entirely possible that, on the night before, Scrooge's father was also given a second chance, haunted by Christmas spirits, and changed for the better for Christmas day.

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