A Christmas Carol is probably best known now as a story exploited by Hollywood repeatedly in straight adaptations (Disney’s included) and altered versions such as the Bill Murray comedy Scrooged. Regardless of how it is now known it is certainly well known, and its anti-hero Scrooge represents curmudgeonly and stingy attitudes outside the context of the book. It was published a Christmas book in 1843 and is quite a simple tale but successful for that reason. Scrooge is avaricious, misanthropic and heartless, showing no feeling for the Christmas spirit After he is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Marley, he sees visions of his past, present and future that inspire him to become a zealously kind and amiable individual who sends a turkey to his clerk Bob Cratchit and gives to Christmas charities generously. It is a somewhat saccharine tale and is not one of Dickens’ finer works but the story itself is heartening and is a proposed alternative to the grim and stern Puritan values of the Victorian age.