Ebenezer Scrooge awakens in his home on Christmas morning to find he has a second chance. He joyfully makes amends with all those around him and even becomes a father figure to Tiny Tim.
Full Episode
I'm Keith Morrison, and this is the final episode of A Christmas Carol. It's a wonder Ebenezer Scrooge has made it this far in our story. The last ghost he met, the spirit of Christmas future, showed him terrible things. Tiny Tim was dead, and so was Scrooge, though not one single soul mourned him. All of it, Scrooge sees, could have been prevented if only he had been a better person.
He is tortured now, and as the last ghost disappears, Scrooge is desperate to atone for his sins. As we pick up the story, Scrooge is suddenly back in his own bedroom, everything just as it always was. It's Christmas morning. And old Ebenezer, the most hated man in all of London, is about to get the most precious gift of all. A second chance. The bed was his own. The room was his own.
Best and happiest of all, the time before him was his own to make amends in. I will live in the past, the present, and the future, Scrooge repeated as he scrambled out of bed. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. Oh, Jacob, Marley, heaven, and the Christmas time be praised for this. I say it on my knees. Oh, Jacob, on my knees.
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the spirit, and his face was wet with tears. They're not torn down, cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed curtains in his arms. They're not torn down, rings and all. Here they are. I am here.
The shadows of the things that would have been may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will be. His hands were busy with his garments all this time, turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance. I don't know what to do, cried Scrooge, laughing and crying at the same breath. I am as light as a feather.
I'm as happy as an angel. I'm as merry as a schoolboy. I'm as giddy as a drunken man. A Merry Christmas to everybody. A Happy New Year to all the world. He had frisked into the sitting room and was now standing there perfectly winded. There's the saucepan the gruel was in, cried Scrooge, starting off again and going round the fireplace.
And there's the door by which the ghost of Jacob Marley entered. There's the corner where the ghost of Christmas present sat. There's the window where I saw the wandering spirits. It's all right. It's all true. It all happened. Woo! Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh. A most illustrious laugh.
The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs. "'I don't know what day of the month it is,' said Scrooge. "'I don't know how long I've been among the spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby.' He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard.
Running to the window, he opened it and put out his head. No fog, no mist. It was clear and bright and jovial and stirring and cold, cold. Piping for the blood to dance to. Golden sunlight, heavenly skies, sweet, fresh air. Merry bells, oh, glorious, glorious. What's today? cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes who perhaps had loitered in to look about him. Eh?
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