A tight-fisted old miser, alone with his money on Christmas Eve, is visited first by the chained ghost of his dead partner and then by three spirits who walk him through his own past, his present, and a grave with his name on it. Dickens wrote it in six weeks to clear his debts, and half-invented the modern Christmas doing it. It remains the most durable argument ever put on paper that a cold heart can be thawed in a single night.