Has anyone read 'A Christmas Carol'?

[Pickles89]

Clear something up for me... I'm just watching the animated Disney version now, and Marley tells Scrooge the 3 spirits will visit on 3 consecutive nights. Is this true to the book? How's that supposed to fit in with it being Christmas Eve when the first comes, but he wakes on Christmas day morning after the third has left? I can't remember how other film versions explain it.

Changing tack slightly, which is your favourite film version and why?

I always assumed that Tiny Tim had polio.

Albert Finney is the best Scrooge. Although in that version Tiny Tim died from being an irritating little git

The ghosts come back to back - the clock strikes one, then he meets the first ghost (Scrooge is in bed). Then he finds himself back in bed after the first ghost leaves him, it is still night, when he hears the second ghost laughing in the next room and goes in to find him. When the second ghost leaves him, he looks up to see the third ghost (the phantom) approaching him. Then, when the 3rd ghost has finished with him, he is sort of wrestling with /begging the ghost and the ghost disappears into his bed post. He wakes up and, this time, it is morning. He is disoriented and doesn't know what day it is, as he expected the ghosts to come on 3 separate nights. He is overjoyed to find it is Christmas day.

Does anyone else ever worry his new-found lease of life and guilt will wear off and he'll go back to being an evil, miserly git within a few weeks? I really must learn not to overthink things.

@KihoBebiluPute

Dickens didn't sit down intending to write a novel that would be still read and pondered over a hundred years later. He was a jobbing writer who mostly wrote for the "light relief" section of newspapers, and a lot of his work was published a chapter at a time as soon as it was written and he probably didn't know exactly what chapter 19 would say when chapter 3 was printed. So yes there are inconsistencies and irrational bits bit it never got the coherent editing that would have given the author a chance to iron out these wrinkles - assuming that he would have cared enough to make such edits if he'd had the chance.

Though in fact he wrote A Christmas Carol all at one go, and not for serial publication, undertook the publishing costs himself after his last novel (Martin Chuzzlewit) sold badly, but then insisted on fancy binding and got into a piracy dispute which ate his profits, despite its popularity.

The one other thing I remember is that the original MS doesn’t include the line about Tiny Tim not dying — Dickens only inserted that during printing as an afterthought.

Just saw it on stage; Marley said three nights but it seemed that Scrooge entered some kind of time warp (they had a clock going backwards) and the spirits all came on the same night and he woke up changed on Christmas morning. Not sure exactly what was written in the book.

Muppets is the best and puppets aside is the most loyal to the text. Huge chunks lifted from the novel come out of Gonzos and others' mouths. Also the ghosts are SPOT ON.