Read, then answer

Ebenezer Scrooge was a cold, hard man. He was tight-fisted with his money, squeezing every coin, and tight-fisted with his kindness too. On this Christmas Eve, as on every other, he sat alone, scowling at the world.

"A merry Christmas, uncle!" cried his cheerful nephew, bursting in from the cold.
"Bah! Humbug!" replied Scrooge sourly. To him, Christmas was nothing but a foolish excuse for poor people to waste money they did not have.

That night, however, Scrooge was visited by three spirits. The first showed him scenes from his own past, when he had been a lonely boy and, later, a young man who had let his love of money drive away the woman he loved. Watching, Scrooge felt a pang of regret he had not known in years.

The second spirit revealed the present: the warm, joyful home of his poorly paid clerk, where the family shared what little they had with open hearts. Scrooge saw their sick young son, Tiny Tim, and for the first time wondered whether the boy would live.

The final, silent spirit pointed towards the future — a future in which Scrooge had died unloved and unmourned, and Tiny Tim's chair sat empty. Trembling, Scrooge fell to his knees. "I am not the man I was," he wept. "I will honour Christmas in my heart and keep it all the year."

When Scrooge awoke on Christmas morning, he was a changed man. He laughed, he gave generously, and he became, the story tells us, as good a friend and as kind a man as the old city had ever known.