In 1843, Ebenezer Scrooge, a bitter and miserly old moneylender at a London counting house holds everything that embodies the joys and spirit of Christmas in contempt. He refuses to visit his cheerful nephew, Fred, at his Christmas dinner party with his family, and he forces his underpaid employee Bob Cratchit to beg to take the day off for his own family. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley, who had died seven years prior and is now forced to spend his afterlife carrying heavy chains forged from his own greedy ways. Marley warns Scrooge that he will suffer an even worse fate if he does not repent. He then tells Scrooge he will be visited by three more spirits that will help guide him.
The first spirit is the Ghost of Christmas Past, which shows Scrooge visions of his own past that takes him to when he was a child. This takes place around the Christmas season, reminding Scrooge of how he ended up the avaricious man he is now. In the visions, Scrooge spends much of his childhood neglected by his father over the holidays at a boarding school until he’s finally brought home by his loving sister, Fan, who dies after giving birth to her son, Fred. Scrooge later begins a successful career in business and money lending, and he becomes engaged to a woman named Belle, though she later breaks off the engagement when his obsession with wealth drives her away. The elderly Scrooge is unable to bear witnessing these events again and extinguishes the spirit with its candle snuffer cap. This causes Scrooge to be rocketed thousands of feet into the air while clinging onto the snuffer, only to have it disappear, resulting in Scrooge falling down to earth, back into his bedroom for the next visitation…
