When the cruel and hard-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge retires to his bed on Christmas Eve, he is visited by three spirits; the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet To Come. Faced with the lost opportunities of his own past, the cold loneliness of his present, and the terrible future that awaits him, Scrooge is transformed. Dickens’ main intention was, in his own words, to create a ‘kind of whimsical masque which the good-humour of the season justified, to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts’.