Ghost of Christmas Past

The Ghost of Christmas Past is the first of the three spirits dispatched to Ebenezer Scrooge through the intervention of Jacob Marley, and it serves as the agent of memory and self-confrontation. Its appearance is paradoxical: a figure like a child yet like an old man, with white hair and a face without a wrinkle, long muscular arms, bare legs and feet, a tunic of purest white, a lustrous belt, a branch of fresh green holly, and summer flowers trimming its dress. From the crown of its head springs a bright clear jet of light, and it carries a great extinguisher for a cap. The figure fluctuates in distinctness, dissolving and reforming, now with one arm, now with twenty legs, now a head without a body. Its voice is soft and gentle, singularly low, as if at a distance. When Scrooge asks if it is the Spirit whose coming was foretold, it answers, "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past." When Scrooge inquires, "Long Past?" it replies, "No. Your past." Scrooge, disturbed by the light, begs the Spirit to be covered with its cap, but the Ghost rebukes him: "Would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give?" Scrooge disclaims any intention to offend, and the Spirit declares its business is Scrooge's welfare—his reclamation. It clasps him gently by the arm, and though the grasp is gentle as a woman's hand, it is not to be resisted. When Scrooge protests that he is mortal and liable to fall, the Spirit lays its hand upon his heart and says, "Bear but a touch of my hand there, and you shall be upheld in more than this!" They pass through the wall and stand upon an open country road, the city vanished, the darkness and mist gone, replaced by a clear, cold winter day with snow on the ground. Scrooge recognizes the place where he was bred as a boy, and the Spirit observes his trembling lip and the tear upon his cheek—which Scrooge mutters is a pimple. The Ghost leads him to his old school, a mansion of dull red brick with broken fortunes, where a solitary child, neglected by his friends, sits reading near a feeble fire. Scrooge weeps to see his poor forgotten self. The Spirit points to his younger self, and suddenly a man in foreign garments appears at the window—Ali Baba—and Scrooge exclaims in ecstasy, recalling the stories that comforted him when he was left alone at Christmas. He cries, "Poor boy!" and weeps again. He mutters that he wishes he had given something to the boy singing a Christmas Carol at his door the night before. The Ghost smiles thoughtfully and waves its hand, saying, "Let us see another Christmas!" The scene shifts to a darker, more dilapidated room, where Scrooge's former self walks up and down despairingly. The door opens and a little girl, much younger, darts in and embraces him as her "dear, dear brother." She is Fan, who has come to bring him home for good, because their father has become kinder. The Spirit observes, "Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered. But she had a large heart!" Scrooge agrees, and the Ghost reveals that she died a woman and had one child—Scrooge's nephew. Scrooge seems uneasy. The Spirit then takes Scrooge to the warehouse of old Fezziwig, where a young Scrooge and his fellow apprentice Dick Wilkins are joyfully preparing for a Christmas party. Scrooge's heart and soul are in the scene; he corroborates everything, remembers everything, enjoys everything, and undergoes the strangest agitation. The Ghost remarks that it was a small matter to make these silly folks so full of gratitude—a few pounds spent. Scrooge, heated, replies that Fezziwig's power lies in words and looks, in things so slight they cannot be counted, and the happiness he gives is as great as if it cost a fortune. He then admits he should like to say a word or two to his clerk. The Spirit then shows Scrooge an older version of himself, a man in the prime of life whose face has begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. He sits beside a fair young girl in mourning dress—Belle—who releases him from their engagement because a golden idol has displaced her. Scrooge protests, but she insists he is changed, that his nobler aspirations have fallen off one by one until the master passion, Gain, engrosses him. She leaves him, and they part. Scrooge cries out, "Spirit! show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?" The Ghost insists on one more shadow, and despite Scrooge's pleas, forces him to observe a later scene: Belle, now a comely matron, surrounded by her children and her husband, who mentions passing Scrooge's office and seeing him alone, his partner dying. Scrooge, in a broken voice, begs to be removed. The Ghost tells him these are shadows of things that have been, and not to blame it. Scrooge wrestles with the Spirit, seizes the extinguisher cap, and presses it down upon its head. The Spirit drops beneath it, but the light streams from under it in an unbroken flood. Scrooge, exhausted, reels to bed and sinks into a heavy sleep. The Ghost of Christmas Past thus completes its work: it has forced Scrooge to witness the origins of his isolation—the neglected child, the beloved lost sister, the joyful apprenticeship, the broken engagement—and has planted the seeds of remorse and the desire for change. Its light, though temporarily suppressed, cannot be extinguished, and its lessons remain with Scrooge as he prepares for the next visitation.