Ghost of Christmas Present
fictional character in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Ghost of Christmas Present is a fictional character in Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The Ghost is one of three spirits that appear to miser Ebenezer Scrooge to offer him a chance of redemption.
Following a visit from the ghost of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, Scrooge receives nocturnal visits from three Ghosts of Christmas, each representing a different period in Scrooge's life. The Ghost of Christmas Present is concerned with Scrooge's current life and the present Christmas Day.
The Ghost of Christmas Present is presented as a personification of the Christmas spirit, and in the novella's first edition hand-coloured drawing by John Leech resembles early-Victorian images of Father Christmas. The spirit first appears to Scrooge on a throne made of traditional Christmas foodstuffs that would have been familiar to Dickens's more prosperous readers.
The spirit becomes the mouthpiece for Dickens's view on social reform and Christian charity: generosity and goodwill to all men – especially to the poor – and celebration of Christmas Day.
Background
By early 1843 Dickens had been affected by the treatment of the poor and, in particular, the treatment of the children of the poor after witnessing children working in appalling conditions in a tin mine and following a visit to a ragged school. Indeed, Dickens experienced poverty as a boy when he was forced to work in a blacking factory after his father's imprisonment for debt. Originally intending to write a political pamphlet titled, An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child, he changed his mind and instead wrote A Christmas Carol which voiced his social concerns about poverty and injustice.
The public source identifies “Ghost of Christmas Present” as fictional character in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ghost, Christmas and Present.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ghost of Christmas Present” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.