Transcript
Narrator (0:00)
Twas the nights before Christmas. Despite last minute stress, few were delivering except Walmart Express stockings were hung by.
Ryan Reynolds (0:06)
The fireplace of care, Knowing in about.
Narrator (0:08)
An hour stuffers would soon be there onto the road. Walmart Express Delivery went chock full of wondrous things in the Saint Nick of time Scent.
Walmart Representative (0:16)
Let's go get Express Delivery in as fast as an hour. Even on Christmas Eve. Orders must be placed by 4pm local time on 1224, subject to availability. Fees and restrictions apply.
Narrator (0:25)
Express Delivery to y'all and to all a good night. Welcome to your Walmart.
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Keith Morrison (1:04)
I'm Keith Morrison, and this is episode two of A Christmas Carol. Old Ebenezer Scrooge has just had the fright of his life. He's been visited by the ghost of his old business partner, Jacob Marley. Marley tells Scrooge he's been roaming the earth since the very day of his death, haunted by his own story of stinginess and greedy. He'd like to change it all, but it's too late now, and he warns Scrooge that he too is destined for a tortured afterlife if he doesn't mend his ways. As if all that isn't enough, the ghost of Marley announces that Scrooge will be visited again by three more ghosts, beginning when the clock strikes one. We pick up our story as Ebenezer wakes from a fitful sleep, confused, and as Dickens writes, with one eye on the clock. 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 endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes when chimes of a neighboring church struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour. To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from 6 to 7 and from 7 to 8, and regularly up to 12, and then stopped. 12 it was past 2 when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have gotten into the works. 12 why, it isn't possible, said Scrooge, that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun and this is 12 at noon. The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing gown before he could see anything, and he could see very little then. All he could make out was that it was still foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day and taken possession of the world. Scrooge went to bed again and thought and thought and thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was, and the more he endeavored not to think, the more he thought. Marley's ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released to its first position and presented the same problem to be worked all through. Was it a dream or not? Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more when he remembered on a sudden that the ghost had warned him of a visitation. When the bell tolled one, he resolved to lie awake until the hour was past. He was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously and missed the clock. But at length it broke upon his listening ear. The hour itself, said Scrooge triumphantly, and nothing else. He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which now it 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 aside. I tell you by a hand, not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, and Scrooge found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them. It was a strange figure, like a child, yet not so like a child as like an old man viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view and being diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white, as if with age, and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular, the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. It wore a tunic of the purest white, and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand, and had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright, clear jet of light. Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant and at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness, being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with 20 legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body, of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away, and in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again, distinct and clear as ever. Are you the spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me? Asked Scrooge. I am. The voice was soft and gentle, singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance. Who and what are you? Scrooge demanded. I am the Ghost of Christmas Past. Long past? Inquired Scrooge. No. Your past. It put out its strong hand as it spoke and clasped him gently by the arm. Rise, and walk with me. It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather, the hour, were not adapted to pedestrian purposes, that bed was warm and the thermometer a long way below freezing, that he was clad but lightly in his slippers and dressing gown and nightcap, and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand, was not to be resisted. He rose, but finding that the spirit made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication. I am a mortal, scrooge remonstrated, and liable to fall. Bear but a touch of my hand there, said the spirit, laying it upon his heart, and you shall be upheld in more than this. As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall and stood upon an open country road with fields on either hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold winter day with snow upon the ground. Good heaven, said Scrooge, clasping his hands together as he looked about him. I was bred in this place. I was a boy here. The spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts and hopes and joys and cares long, long forgotten. Your lip is trembling, said the ghost. And what is that upon your cheek? Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice that it was a pimple, and begged the ghost to lead him where he Would you recollect the way? Inquired the spirit. Remember it. Cries Scrooge with fervor. I could walk it blindfolded. Could it be that Ebenezer actually possesses feelings after all, and a visit to his boyhood home would suddenly warm the coldest of hearts? Oh, if only it were that simple. When work gets crazy, I like to stop by the bar after have a few cold ones. I don't drink at all until 4:00. We limit ourselves to one bottle of wine a night.