Sillence, Rebecca (2015). Gloucester History Tour. Stroud, Glos: Amberley Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4456-4859-0. Let him in! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness! Still, an immortal Christmas classic that requires no introduction. Recommendable, for the right audience. Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:

The first is pale, shadowy (long forgotten?) and “ like a child; yet not so like a child as an old man” (the child is father of the man?).Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean, miserable, bitter old man with no friends. One cold Christmas Eve, three ghosts take him on a scary journey to show him the error of his nasty ways. By visiting his past, present and future, Scrooge learns to love Christmas and the people all around him. Early in A Christmas Carol, for example, when a charity collector tells Scrooge that many people would rather die than go to a workhouse, Scrooge replies: “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” The first emotion produced in Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Past is sadness at this own boyhood loneliness, but the second emotion is his joy in the books that consoled him and helped him empathize with others: The Arabian Nights, the old romances ( Valentine and Orson), and realistic fiction ( Robinson Crusoe). In Ebenezer’s coming transformation, the sadness and its memory are of course necessary, but no more necessary than this joy.

The full verse of I John 3:17 is "But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" [57] Le Père Martin" (1888) by Ruben Saillens and unwittingly plagiarized as " Papa Panov's Special Christmas" by Leo Tolstoy A Christmas Carol opens on a bleak, cold Christmas Eve in London, seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge, an ageing miser, dislikes Christmas and refuses a dinner invitation from his nephew Fred. He turns away two men seeking a donation to provide food and heating for the poor and only grudgingly allows his overworked, underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, Christmas Day off with pay to conform to the social custom. And taking this idea further was Reverend Thomas Malthus, who in 1798 wrote the controversial book An Essay on the Principle of Population. In it, he argued that population growth would eventually outstrip the food available and it was the natural way of things that the poorest people would starve to death, restoring the balance. Finally, I have taken it upon myself to read the source material! Did I like it? Two words: BAH, HUMBUG!

Scroggie was unlike Scrooge in nature, and was described as "a well-known hedonist who loved wine, women, and parties... a dandy and terrible philanderer who had several sexual liaisons which made him the talk of the town... a jovial and kindly man". [43]