A Christmas Carol is a short novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in 1843. It tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean, miserable, bitter old man with no friends and an unhealthy obsession with money. Seven years after the death of his business partner, Jacob Marley, Scrooge is being mean to his employee Bob Cratchit, forever hounding marketplace sellers who took out loans with him, and being frugal to the extreme. Scrooge also dislikes Christmas - so much so he cannot understand why Bob wishes to leave early on Christmas Eve to spend time with his wife and children, including his disabled son, Tiny Tim. Nor will he accept a dinner invitation from his nephew Fred. However, on the night before Christmas, he is forewarned by the spirit of his former partner Marley, that three ghosts will arrive in succession and take him on journeys to show him his past, present, and future. Scrooge spends the night in anxious anticipation as each ghost arrives, fulfills it's task, and leaves. And with each one, he learns a lesson. When morning arrives, Scrooge has been transformed, and the people around him get to share in his newfound joy. A Christmas Carol has remained a favourite, and has given the English vernacular the saying 'Bah! Humbug!' as well as the name Scrooge being adopted as a term for a stingy person.
s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.
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The Grocers! oh the Grocers! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress: but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up
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28 hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.
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But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores of bye streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners to the bakers shops. The sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled with each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!
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