For many people who have never read the actual text of A Christmas Carol, and whose exposure to the story is via Hollywood or the BBC, the question of time never really comes up.

That somewhat depends upon which version or versions of the story they have seen.

 But the timing of the three ghosts—Christmas Past, Present, and Future—is of extreme importance to not only the plot, but to the overall message of the book.

And when, for some mysterious reason, the films get it wrong, the message is somewhat diminished.

I would not argue that it is destroyed; the book contains more than one message. The overall message of charity and compassion over greed and avarice, remains strong no matter what time the ghosts appear. But Dickens was particular about the timing of the apparitions and, I think, for a very good reason.

What Time Was it, Really?

In order to draw attention to this issue, I will refer to three of my favorite film versions of the story: the musical version, Scrooge, starring Albert Finney (1970), the 1984 film starring George C. Scott, and the 1999 version with Patrick Stewart.

In the Finney version, when Marley comes to visit the old miser, he warns him that the three spirits will come all on the same night (Christmas Eve) when the clock strikes One, Two, and Three (a.m. is assumed).

In the Scott version, the times are One, Two, and “in his own good time,” in reference to the tall dark stranger, Christmas Yet to Come. All three, again, are to visit on Christmas Eve.

Both of these versions are absolutely incorrect. I love both versions for many other reasons, but the timing of the ghosts matters, and they get it all wrong.

Only the Patrick Stewart version gets is right, and so it gets the Golden Scrooge Clock Award (if such a thing exists, and if it doesn’t, it should.)

In this version, Marley tells Scrooge to expect the first ghost at one, the second the ‘following night’ at the same hour. The third on the next night (the third night in other words) at twelve.

According to Marley (in the book), the visitations are to begin either at 1 am on the morning of December 25th (Christmas Day) or the following morning, December 26th.

 There is some confusion in the book on this which Dickens, I am sure, intended.

In the book, when Scrooge wakes up and hears the clock begin its chime sequence, he can’t believe he’s slept through an entire day. It is such an important section, that I think it’s worth including a great portion of it, here:

WHEN Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighbouring church struck the four quarters. 

So he listened for the hour.To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve! [bold is mine]

He is so worried that he has slept through the night and that it might be noon, that he leapt from bed to check.

Outside? Dark and foggy, but no one stirring, as they most certainly would be on Christmas, at noon.

He returned to bed, but was so concerned that he could not keep from thinking on the problem and so lay there until he heard the clock chime again, this time three quarters of an hour. He decided to stay awake to hear the hour ring so that he might orient himself:

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.

"Ding, dong!""A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.

"Ding, dong!""Half-past!" said Scrooge.

"Ding, dong!""A quarter to it," said Scrooge.

"Ding, dong!""The hour itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly, "and nothing else!"

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.

When Marley left him and he finally went to sleep, it was after 2 a.m., apparently on Christmas morning, the 25th. 

But the next time he heard the clock chime, it was 12 a.m. (date unknown). Then one hour later, the clock chimes again: 1 a.m., when the first ghost appears.

So, is it 1 a.m., Christmas Day?

Or is it the 26th?

Scrooge isn’t sure and neither is the reader. But I’m sure Dickens had some idea as to what was going on, though I don’t think he ever revealed it. More on why in a bit…

Why do so many film versions screw this up? I think there are two main reasons:

1. They are confused by what Marley predicts and what actually happens. (The spirits actually ‘do it all in one night’, (Christmas Eve), and not over the course of three nights (or four, depending on which night the first spirit was supposed to have arrived.) The film makers are attempting to reconcile the ‘prophecy’ with the ‘reality,’ because it causes a cognitive dissonance.
2. They don’t personally believe in spirits. so if it all happened in one night, it can easily be written off as a dream.

If Scrooge had awakened, three days in a row, went about his business—which he most certainly would have done—and then went to sleep again to dream about another ghost, surely Dickens would have included those intervals.

Since he did not, (my imagination of the film-makers’) reasoning states that he must have went to sleep on Christmas Eve and either the spirits all came to him that night, or he dreamt it all in one night.

The biggest and most glaring problem with these ridiculous and unnecessary changes to the text, is that they don’t reconcile Scrooge’s reaction to the fact that it happened all in one night.

In the book, in all three versions mentioned here, and in every other version I can remember watching, Scrooge wakes up to discover he is not dead, that it is indeed only Christmas Day, and that he has not missed it after all.

The “spirits have done it all in one night!”

Why would he be surprised if Marley had informed him it would occur all in one night?

Answer: He would not!

If what one is told will happen, actually happens, there is no surprise and no need to draw attention to it.

If Marley had instead said, “Scrooge! All these ghosts are coming tonight, so that it when you wake up, it’ll still be Christmas Day, and you’ll have time to send a ginormous, overpriced fowl to the Crachit’s, go to church and sing carols that yesterday you ‘humbugged’ at, donate five gazillion guineas to those two, fat, solicitors to whom you remarked that poor people should just ‘die and decrease the surplus population’ before kicking their asses out of your counting house, then make it to Christmas dinner with your gregarious nephew Fred and his lovely wife, play a round of Blind Man’s Bluff with the lusty Topper and your nephew’s sister-in-law, and then get up and get to work the day after before Bob arrives eighteen and a half minutes late, so you can scare the ‘Dickens’ out of him by raising his salary (not double it, damn it. That would never have happened, and didn’t) and then make sure that the little crippled Cratchit doesn’t die of rickets, polio, or whatever he’s suffering from, and live to be very old and the best man in the old city, or any other old city…”

then Scrooge would sound absolutely mad and stupid to be surprised that that’s exactly what happened!

But what Marley predicted (three ghosts over three nights, or four) isn’t what actually happened in the book. Instead, Scrooge wakes up to find out it all happened in one night, which is why he was surprised to find out there was still time to order that turkey and find a cure for polio long before Jonas Salk was born.

Why does all this even matter?

It matters because there is a subtle message, or question, implied in the revelation that it happened in one night, instead of three or four, as predicted. And the question it raises, is simple:

Was it just a dream, Scrooge’s imagination, or did the three ghosts really do “it all in one night”?

Did three ghosts actually appear to Scrooge all on Christmas Eve?

Or was it all his imagination?

Was it real, or did something “affect” his senses?

Was it, indeed, just a bit of moldy cheese?

Was it all more “gravy than grave?”

Or did he just dream it all while sleeping in his frigid, musty old bedroom?

All this raises another extremely important question, and the reason why I think Dickens wrote this ’skewed time’ problem into the story.

Does it MATER if what we perceive to be true, isn’t actually true, if the message is received and acted upon?

I suppose Dickens would qualify that question with the stipulation ‘if the message is good and not evil, or at least, not negative’. He would not argue, and neither would I, that perceived truth—if actually false—is a good thing, if the message is destructive.

If, for example, I believed that the force of gravity was a myth (it is not), and then proceeded to build tenement housing for the poor based on my belief that they will stand no matter the materials or engineering employed, that would be a destructive false belief. People would probably die as a result.

If, however, I believed that a spirit came to me, say the dead spirit of an engineering friend, who told me that it was important to build sturdy, structurally sound tenements for the poor, and then upon waking up on Christmas Day, I proceeded to do just that, that would be a beneficial perception, even if the spirit did not actually come to visit me and it was all just a dream brought on by eating six tons of standing rib roast the night before (I’ve attempted it at least two or three times).

What Dickens implies in this little time-bending scenario, is that as long as the message and the change it brings is good, it matters not whether the messenger was real, imagined, or dreamt.

The message is what matters.

And old Daniel Defoe could not agree more. In his preface to “The Friendly Demon” he has this to say:

If by our Senses Spirits we perceive, Or from the strength of Fancy, so believe, No Fault do we commit that merits blame, If to the Publick we report the same; For whether by our Eyes we Spectres seeOr by a second Sight, we must agree, Things are to us as they appear to be.

“Things are to us as they appear to be.” Perception, my friends, is our reality. What we each, individually see, or perceive to see and experience is the only thing we can be sure is real.

 If you believe that your dead partner’s spirit came to see you the night before Christmas, that three other ghosts came to haunt you, and as a result of that visitation you decided to change the course of your life, (and by doing so raise your clerk’s raises and save the life of his super cute, crippled boy), it matters not whether those spectres were real, dreamt, or figments of your imagination.

And this is what Dickens is trying to say by screwing up the clock, the time, and the timing of the ghosts.

Dickens, like Defoe, knew that some of his readers might brush the message aside if they could not believe in the reality of the messenger. If you kill the messenger (even though he was already dead) by disallowing his very existence, then the message may die with him.

I do not believe Dickens cared whether the spirits walked the Earth. They had served their purpose in his story.

Because, if you are left wondering whether or not Marley and the Three Ghosts were real, then you are forced to decide whether they were, or not. And this creates a double-bind (an intractable puzzle) because it is not a question that can be answered definitively.

The author has not supplied the answer. Any attempt to find it will exhaust the mind. If then, you throw your hands into the air in surrender to the unknown the only question left to answer is whether the message matters.

Is the message of charity and compassion over greed and avarice a good one? Is it valid? Is it desirable? If so, then you may adopt it, no matter your belief in the afterlife, ghosts, or for that matter, God.

All this time-bending, reality versus imagination or dreaming was of great concern to Daniel Defoe, as well. In fact, he wrote an entire 130,000 word essay (basically a full length book) on the subject of ghosts and apparitions. And I’m pretty sure Mr. Dickens spent a few dark nights in his study, pouring over it.

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