Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly London moneylender who despises Christmas and everything associated with it: generosity, festivity, and human warmth. He underpays his long-suffering clerk Bob Cratchit, rebuffs his cheerful nephew's dinner invitation, and dismisses charity collectors with cold contempt.
On Christmas Eve, Scrooge receives a visitation from beyond the grave: the ghost of Jacob Marley, his business partner who died seven years earlier. Marley bears a terrible warning about the fate awaiting men who live as they did, and tells Scrooge he will be visited by three spirits.
Over the course of the night, each spirit takes Scrooge on a journey. One shows him scenes from his own past, another the Christmas being celebrated around him in the present, and the last offers a glimpse of what is yet to come. What Scrooge sees forces him to confront the man he has become, the people his coldness has touched, and the consequences of a life spent hoarding wealth at the expense of everything else.
Part ghost story and part social fable, the novella is a sharp portrait of Victorian poverty and indifference, and it remains the defining story of what Christmas spirit means.
