Friday, December 25, 2009

A Christmas Carol

"What's today?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
"Eh?" returned the boy with all his might of wonder.
"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.
"To-day!" replied the boy, "Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."

..."I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath, and making a perfect Laocoon of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy, I am as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world !"

"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"

And with that, old Scrooge set about to make up for all his years of miserliness and neglect of family and friends.

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, 1915.