The sixteenth day before Christmas

Before I ever read Dicken's A Christmas Carol, I knew the story backwards and forwards.  When I was growing up, my home town put on a progressive performance of the story every year.  Shops around the courthouse square would host a scene of the play, and the audience would go from place to place, seeing the show piece by piece. Other shops would host musicians or serve hot cider and cookies, and the owner of the photography studio would roast chestnuts on the corner in front of his storefront, with a fire inside a big metal drum.

Other community members would dress in Victorian fashion and wander about the square, adding to the Dickensian atmosphere.  I loved to see the rat-catcher, a man dressed in rags and fingerless gloves, who would sneak up on the unsuspecting and thrust a handful of giant rubber rats at their noses.

It wasn't great art, but it did bring everyone out together on crisp December nights.  And as a result, my mental image of the Ghost of Christmas Past is of a man in a raggedy brown beard, a green velveteen robe, and an advent wreath on his head, surrounded by plastic food and fake ivy and standing in the newspaper office between the glass-fronted conference room and the Toys for Tots Christmas tree.

Here's the real deal:

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 petrifaction 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."

Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon me."

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.