Ebenezer Scrooge is, at the beginning of the novel, a selfish, egotistic, miserly, stingy, voracious, greedy, tight fisted, cold hearted, reclusive, bitter, callous, harsh, heartless, unfeeling, cruel man who cares only about making money. "A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" He thinks of Christmas as a "humbug", "Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer", "if I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with merry Christmas on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart". He doesn't see how poor people with hardly any money can be happy, "What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough".

He was so set in those ways, that the spirits had a difficult challenge ahead of them. When the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley, who had been dead for seven years, appears to warn him of his fate, Scrooge argues with him, and refuses to believe in ghosts, or indeed, him.

The ghost talks to Scrooge as Scrooge would have foolishly talked himself, not so long ago. "A small matter, to make these silly folks so full of gratitude. He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?" Scrooge responds the way the spirit hopes, proving that he is on the verge of learning that the gesture is more important than the money behind it. "It isn't that, said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. "He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil.", "The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune." Once again, Scrooge contemplates the way he has treated people, and is remorseful. "I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now! That's all".

Marley's purpose was to convince Scrooge that ghosts do exist, and warn him of the chain he bore, and he half-succeeded, but, it took the first spirit's visit to clarify everything.

Scrooge is clearly very disturbed at the memory of how he came to lose his first, and only love. "Spirit! Show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?" But, the spirit had to show him one more shadow, before calling it a night; what he had missed out on by allowing Belle to walk away from him. She now had lots of children, "the noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there, than Scrooge, in his agitated state of mind, could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty. The concequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much.", and a cheerful husband, "a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and plundered dress was borne towards it, the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father." Her husband mentions Scrooge to her, and talks of how alone he is. Scrooge can't take anymore, "Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me from this place.", and the ghost escorts him back home, to ponder all that he has seen.

When he wakes up, Scrooge is very confused. For a start, when he hears what the time is, it completely baffles him. "To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works!" "Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!" He is also unsure whether Marley really did visit him, or whether it was just a dream. "Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to it's first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, "Was it a dream or not?" Marley's ghost had a huge effect on him. "Marley's ghost bothered him exceedingly."

Some topics in this essay:
Christmas Scrooge, Jacob Marley's, Christmas Walls, Jacob Marley, Baba Yes, Christmas People, Seeing Belle, That's Finally, Spirit Conduct, Finally Scrooge's, ghost christmas, ghost christmas past, tiny tim, spirit scrooge, merry christmas, spirit takes, christmas past, it's head, enjoy christmas, scrooge people, spirits visit, christmas past help, people friendly gatherings,