Scrooge's Christmas

Charles Dickens describes Ebenezer Scrooge with these words: “Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!”

Scrooge, however, thought of himself as a free man. After all he had freed himself from “love that only breaks your heart.”  Throughout the play, when confronted with the reality of his true condition of bondage, Scrooge constantly repeats, “There are no chains on me.”  Scrooge’s hatred for Christmas only grew because it was a yearly reminder of those chains he could not escape.

His Nephew, Fred, was a constant irritation to him because Fred saw through him. “What right have you to be cranky? You’re rich enough!” Fred’s joy and understanding of the true meaning of Christmas exposed Scrooge’s hard and calloused heart.