As a kid, “Christmas Present” was my favorite of all the Scrooge ghosts, because I thought – of course – that he was “the ghost of Christmas Presents“. And a ghost of Christmas Presents had to be the best of all possible ghosts. Dickens describes him thusly:
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that.
But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls
and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a
perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming
berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and
ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had
been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring
up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had
never known in Scrooge’s time, or Marley’s, or for many and
many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form
a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn,
great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages,
mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,
cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears,
immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that
made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy
state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to
see:, who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s
horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge,
as he came peeping round the door.
‘Come in.’ exclaimed the Ghost. ‘Come in. and know
me better, man.'”
– A Christmas Carol, Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
In the movie version I’d seen, Christmas Presents wore those velvet, ermine-trimmed king’s robes, hanging loosely to expose a capacious breast “as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice” – and a Christmas wreath on his head of cherubic curls. He lorded pompously over piles of jewels and food and candelabras. After scene after scene of grey, miserly, scrawny, Scrooge austerity, the camera unfurls a resplendent and monarchical banquet room, literally ablaze with candles and glittering with gold and silver and tinsels. Atop the gaudy pile sits the roaring, boastful, shirtless, red-bearded glutton. Christmas Presents loudly pontificates amongst legs o’mutton, suckling pigs, baskets of chestnuts, fruits clustered high in blooming pyramids, Bûche de Noël and holiday stollen, guzzling “the milk of human kindness” from an oversized goblet clenched in fat, bejeweled fingers. You know, THIS:
