What if you could see your life as others see it, and see what you might become? Ebenezer Scrooge is a man who has made a religion of money. He works his clerk for starvation wages, turns away the poor with contempt, and has forgotten that he was ever young or poor himself. Christmas is "humbug" to him, a sentiment he wears like armor. Then one Christmas Eve, the ghost of his dead partner Jacob Marley appears in chains, doomed to wander the earth weighed down by the Register of Charitable Debt. Marley warns Scrooge that three spirits will visit him, each bearing the gift of vision. The Ghost of Christmas Past shows him what he's lost, his childhood, his love, his chance at a different life. The Ghost of Christmas Present reveals the poverty and suffering he ignores, and the small joys he might have brought to others. And the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows him what comes next: a death unlamented, a grave unpityed, the world continuing without him. Dickens wrote this novella in six weeks after visiting a ragged school for London's street children. He wasn't interested in sentiment. He was interested in accountability.
