Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas with a passion. To him, it’s all a waste of time and money. But when he’s visited by the ghost of his dead business partner, the equally greedy Jacob Marley, Scrooge begins to understand the error of his ways.
Full Episode
He may just be the meanest Christmas villain of all time. A man who counts his money while children starve. Who mocks the sick and begrudges his most loyal friends even the tiniest bit of happiness. Oh, yes, he's the OG of bad guys. All right. Darth Vader, the Grinch Voldemort, all rolled into one evil lump of a man. But just you wait.
This nasty piece of work will get his comeuppance in the most unexpected and satisfying way. I'm speaking, of course, of Ebenezer Scrooge. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Season 2 of Morrison Mysteries. Our story is set in the 1840s, London, England. It's winter, cold and bleak, but it's Christmas Eve.
The warmth and joy of the season of giving permeate the gray fog of the city in all places, but one, the tiny shriveled heart of Ebenezer Scrooge. As we begin, Scrooge is sitting in his office, barking orders at his kind-hearted clerk, Bob Cratchit, who's only hoping to have Christmas Day off to spend time with his family, especially his desperately ill son, Tiny Tim.
But loathsome Scrooge doesn't give a thought to any of that, no. Cratchit's family means nothing to Scrooge, and Christmas... a passing annoyance, a waste of valuable time. Yes, in meanness, Scrooge was second to none, except just possibly to his old business partner, the greedy Jacob Marley, who'd pinched his last penny and died seven years before the Christmas Eve of our story.
In fact, it's thoughts of Marley that begin Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Marley was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.
Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole friend, and his sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event. Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door, Scrooge and Marley,
Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley. But he answered to both names. It was all the same to him. Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand to the grindstone, Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint. Secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster.
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say with gladsome looks, My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me? No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle.
No children asked him what it was o'clock. No man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place of Scrooge. But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked, to edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance.
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