Ghost of Christmas Present visits Scrooge
The Ghost of Christmas Present is the second of the three spirits sent to Ebenezer Scrooge through the intervention of Jacob Marley. This spirit embodies the very essence of Christmas abundance, generosity, and human connection, and its visit serves as the emotional and moral center of Scrooge's transformation. Unlike the retrospective Ghost of Christmas Past, this spirit immerses Scrooge in the living, breathing reality of the present Christmas, showing him both the warmth of family celebrations and the stark social ills that his own worldview perpetuates.
Appearance and Nature
The Ghost of Christmas Present appears as a "jolly Giant, glorious to see," seated upon a throne made of heaped-up Christmas provisions: turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch. The spirit is clothed in a simple deep green robe bordered with white fur, its capacious breast bare, its feet also bare, and on its head a holly wreath set with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls are long and free, and it carries a glowing torch shaped not unlike Plenty's horn. The spirit's voice is cheery and its demeanor unconstrained, and it wears an antique scabbard at its waist, but no sword—the sheath is eaten up with rust, symbolizing a peace that has replaced any martial purpose. The spirit tells Scrooge it has had more than eighteen hundred brothers, a tremendous family, and that its life upon this globe is very brief, ending at midnight on Christmas night.
The Journey Through Christmas Present
The spirit takes Scrooge on a sweeping tour of the present Christmas, beginning in the city streets on Christmas morning. They observe the bustling preparations: people shoveling snow from rooftops, poulterers' and grocers' shops radiant with abundance, and the poor carrying their dinners to the bakers' shops. The spirit sprinkles incense from its torch onto the dinners, a peculiar flavor that applies to any kindly given dinner, but most to a poor one because it needs it most. When angry words arise between some dinner-carriers who have jostled each other, the spirit sheds a few drops of water from its torch, and their good humor is restored directly. The spirit then leads Scrooge to the home of his clerk, Bob Cratchit, blessing the four-roomed house with the sprinklings of his torch. There, Scrooge witnesses the Cratchit family's Christmas dinner: the goose, the pudding, the hot mixture of gin and lemons, and the family's joy despite their poverty. It is here that Scrooge, with an interest he has never felt before, asks the spirit if Tiny Tim will live. The spirit replies, "I see a vacant seat in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die." When Scrooge pleads for the child to be spared, the spirit quotes Scrooge's own words back at him: "If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Scrooge hangs his head, overcome with penitence and grief.
The Vision of Ignorance and Want
As the night wears on, the spirit grows older, its hair turning grey. At the chimes of a quarter past eleven, Scrooge notices something strange protruding from the spirit's skirts—a foot or a claw. The spirit sorrowfully reveals two children from the foldings of its robe: a boy and a girl, yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish, yet prostrate in their humility. The spirit declares, "This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased." When Scrooge asks if they have no refuge or resource, the spirit turns on him for the last time with his own words: "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" The bell then strikes twelve, and the spirit vanishes, to be replaced by the solemn Phantom of Christmas Yet to Come.
The Spirit's Broader Revelations
Beyond the Cratchit home, the spirit shows Scrooge Christmas celebrated in diverse and remote places: a miners' hut on a bleak moor, where an old man sings a Christmas song with his family; a solitary lighthouse on a dismal reef, where two men share a can of grog and wish each other Merry Christmas; and a ship at sea, where every man hums a Christmas tune or has a Christmas thought. The spirit also takes Scrooge to his nephew Fred's house, where Scrooge hears Fred defend him and laugh heartily, and where the party plays games including blindman's buff and "Yes and No," during which the plump sister guesses that the animal Fred is thinking of is "your uncle Scrooge." Scrooge, forgetting that his voice makes no sound, joins in the guesses and is greatly pleased. The spirit is pleased to find Scrooge in this mood, and Scrooge begs like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests depart, but the spirit says this cannot be done.
Significance and Consequences
The Ghost of Christmas Present's visit is the pivotal moment in Scrooge's moral education. It is the spirit that most directly confronts Scrooge with the human consequences of his philosophy, both in the joyful resilience of the Cratchit family and in the horrifying specters of Ignorance and Want. The spirit's rebuke of Scrooge's Malthusian rhetoric—"Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?"—is the story's most direct moral indictment. The visit also provides Scrooge with a vision of the happiness he has been missing, both in the Cratchit home and in his nephew's house, planting the seeds of his eventual redemption. The spirit's torch, which blesses the dinners of the poor and restores good humor, symbolizes the transformative power of generosity and human connection that Scrooge will ultimately embrace.
