The last time I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was in the eighth grade and I fell asleep halfway through it. I was then visited by the ghost of procrastination, an ethereal spirit that haunts me to this day, and I never finished this classic Christmas tale. Since I’m quite egocentric, I assume this event happened to everybody. So, as a service to the general reader, I shall give a summary of the plot so the next time you think about falling asleep trying to read A Christmas Carol, you’ll just fall asleep and not have to worry about the test on staves one through three tomorrow.
The Summary
Ebenezer Scrooge is a lazy teenager who loves sleeping in and playing guitar on a ridiculously large amp. His friend, The Ghost of Christmas Past, is a disgraced nuclear physicist who comes to Scrooge with his newest invention: A horse drawn carriage that can travel back in time. So, on December 25, 1885, Scrooge and Christmas Past meet at the Twin Pines Mall to test out the ghost’s machine. Things go awry as Liberian rebels pursue The Ghost of Christmas Past, shooting the ghost to death. Scrooge then has to escape in the carriage and accidentally hits 88 miles per hour, thus sending him to December 25, 1855, thirty years in the past.
Now, stuck in the past Scrooge needs to travel back to the future (not the movie). But, trouble finds Ebenezer as he meets his teenage mother, Bob Cratchit, who has become infatuated with him. Now, Scrooge McDuck must not only find a way back to his time, he must also get his mother to fall back in love with his father Jacob Marley, or he will disappear from all of his family pictures. Scrooge then invents skateboarding, as he evades the gang of local bullies, led by meathead Tiny Tim.
The whole story culminates on the night of the school dance. See, Ebenezer’s plan to unite his parents involved coitus interruptus of the incestuous type. But, when Jacob Marley opens the door to pull Scrooge off his mother, he finds no other than Tiny Tim, drunkenly groping Bob Cratchit with his weird little wooden crutch he always has around for some reason. Marely, now filled with courage, tells Tim to “get your damn hands off her” and punches the tiny toucher right in the face. This now fixes the family dissolve problem for Scrooge, as he casually invents Rock’n’Roll, as if inventing skateboarding wasn’t enough.
With the family issue now solved and undissolved, Scrooge must meet The Ghost of Christmas Past at the clock tower. In order to time travel, the horse drawn carriage must get 1.21 gigawatts of power, something only conceivable in 1885. To achieve this, they must harness the power of lighting to give the carriage enough power to jump the time stream. Even though it’s close and, pun fully intended, gets down to the wire, Scrooge hits the electrical line on the clock tower right as the lighting strikes, sending him back to December 25, 1885. Now, due to Ebenezer’s interactions in the past, his life has vastly improved: His father and mother are happily married, Tiny Tim is now subservient to the family, and The Ghost of Christmas Past is no longer dead, as he read the letter that Scrooge had left, telling him to wear a bulletproof night gown on the night of December 25, 1885.
The End.
-James Wagner, Senior Staff Member