At Christmas Dickens thinks we should keep Christmas well. By keeping Christmas well he means that Christmas is a time when people forgive things to each other, when all the family gets together for celebration, even at Christmas, for only this day they forget about money problems and have a great day enjoying themselves. Christmas time is a time which is ‘Kind, forgiving, charitable, it is a pleasant time’.
Dickens makes us want to behave like this by making us want to join in with those who are enjoying Christmas and who are happy. Charles does this by seeing other people being happy at Christmas apart from Scrooge because he seems to not like Christmas at all and everything that has to do with this celebration. Scrooge is acting totally opposite of how we should be at Christmas time and because of this, the people who are keeping Christmas well get scared of him and many start to not like him of his attitude towards Christmas.
Charles Dickens makes us dislike Scrooge at the beginning because of the way he treats people. Scrooge seems to be a selfish cold-hearted miser. Even though, Scrooge is a wealthy man but instead of sharing his coal with Bob when it is cold, bleak, biting weather, Scrooge rations the amount of coal he can use for his fire. In the way, he is such a saver that his own fire is small yet, bigger than Bob’s. Clerk ”tried to warm himself at the candle” and Scrooge did not even felt anything, like of sharing the coal with clerk.
It wasn’t a surprise how Scrooge has treated his Nephew because at this moment we started to see how Scrooge looks at the Christmas and how he treated Bob. Scrooge seems to be disgusted by Christmas when his response is ”Bah! Humbug!” to Fred. Fred greeted his uncle cheerfully and he was not expecting so impolite response. As we can notice, that Scrooge is not charitable, when charity collectors are accepting gifts on behalf of the poor and even before they’re able to ask him directly, Scrooge immediately rejects them, we can notice when it says ”At the ominous word ‘liberality’ Scrooge frowned!” Also, there is a Carol singer and Scrooge shows inappropriate actions to him when the Carol singer sings the first sound of ”God bless you merry gentlemen!
May nothing you dismay!” Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and also more congenial frost. Basically, the Carol singer got so scared of Scrooge’s action that he ran out of the building. Scrooge’s general opinion of Christmas is that a Christmas is a humbug. Scrooge seems to think that you’ve got the right to be a merry when you are rich and that money keeps Christmas well when he says to his nephew ”What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
In my opinion, the reader wouldn’t like to become like Scrooge, because Scrooge is cheap, everyone seems to be scared of him, most of the people dislike him and he seems so boring as well. These kinds of people like Scrooge don’t even have friends and even their family does not like them. Charles Dickens makes us frightened of becoming like Marley’s ghost. The ghost seems to look like very the same as Marley did before he died, seven years ago.
Marley’s ghost was in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots, the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. Obviously, like all ghosts it was transparent. ”Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind” this quote means that when the ghost is transparent, which all are, you can see-through. The ghost had a long chain, it was so long that it wound about him like a tail; Scrooge was observing it closely, it seemed that it was made of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and also heavy purses wrought in steel.
When the ghost says ”I made it link by link, and yard by yard” he means that the chain was made because of all the wrong things that he did, so the chain is very strong and heavy. Marley has been punished like this because he did not have spirit in his life-time, a Christmas spirit. If Scrooge would not change, his way upon the Christmas and if he won’t have Christmas spirit, Scrooge will have extremely longer and heavier chain than Marley’s, also; Scrooge will need to carry it with him everywhere. The ghost message that we apply to ourselves is not to be like Scrooge at the moment and like Marley in the post, which is because we will be punished like Marley was. The reason why Marley came to Scrooge is to give him a message that it is time to change and look at Christmas in other way. If Scrooge changes he will have a chance of escaping from the chains.
