Heed the message.

Several versions of "A Christmas Carol" on over the holidays. although unless I missed it, nobody put on the classic 1951 Alistair Sim one.  I think that you can look on Dickens' story in two ways.  The obvious one is a story of redemption - the miser Scrooge becomes the benevolent Scrooge.  But you have to remember that Dickens grew up knowing extreme hardship as a child as a result of his father being imprisoned for debt, so his stories all have an undercurrent of fury against a society where poverty was considered a matter for punishment.  For me, the pivotal line in A Christmas Carol is when the ghost of Christmas Present draws back his robes to reveal two urchins.  "This boy is ignorance" he says "This girl is want. Beware them both...but most of all, beware this boy...".  Today we have a better, more caring society, but, perhaps now more than ever, we still need to beware that boy.