A Christmas Carol - Hallmark Presents - Must see All time Christmas favourite (Patrick Stewart)

Moneylender Ebenezer Scrooge buries his friend and business partner Jacob Marley before returning to work at his counting house. Seven years later, on Christmas Eve 1843, Scrooge's loyal, but meek clerk Bob Cratchit is the target of Scrooge's cruelty and bitterness. Scrooge declines his nephew Fred Bowley's invitation to join him for Christmas dinner, dismisses two gentlemen collecting charitable donations and frightens away a carol singer by brandishing a ruler. Scrooge reluctantly gives Cratchit Christmas Day off so long as he comes in early the next day. Returning home, Scrooge encounters the tortured ghost of Marley. Marley warns Scrooge that the suffering he causes others, he will have to repay - even in death, and says Scrooge must either repent his wickedness or suffer a worse punishment than his own. Marley says three spirits will visit Scrooge over the course of three nights before departing.

At one o'clock, Scrooge is visited by the angellike Ghost of Christmas Past, who takes him back in time to his lonely childhood in boarding school, where his friends go home for Christmas but he is not wanted, because his father turned against him after his mother died. Scrooge's sister, Fran, Fred's late mother, says that their father has changed, agreeing that he could come home for Christmas. Scrooge is employed by the benevolent Albert Fezziwig. At a party, Scrooge was in love with Belle, a young woman, and they became engaged. However, Belle chose to leave him when Scrooge proved unable to commit to her over amassing his fortune. Distraught, Scrooge extinguishes the Ghost.