Description
The Ghost of Christmas Past was the first of the three spirits (after the visitation by Jacob Marley) that haunted the miser, Ebenezer Scrooge in order to prompt him to repent. It showed him scenes from his past that occurred on or around Christmas, in order to demonstrate to him the necessity of changing his ways, as well as to show the reader how Scrooge came to be the person he was and his particular dislike for Christmas β most of the events which negatively affected Scrooge occurred around the Christmas holiday season.
According to Dickens' novel, the Ghost of Christmas Past appears to Scrooge as a white-robed, androgynous figure of indeterminate age. It had on its head a blazing light, reminiscent of a candle flame, and carried a metal cap, made in the shape of a candle extinguisher. While the ghost is often portrayed as a woman in most dramatic adaptations, Dickens describes the Ghost of Christmas Past only as βitβ, and gives a curious description of it "being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty 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."
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