Miserly Victorian businessman Ebenezer Scrooge dismisses the season of goodwill as pure 'humbug'. He underpays and bullies his clerk Bob Cratchit, refuses the friendship of his nephew Fred Holywell and is grasping and ruthless. On Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghost of his late partner, jacob Marley, who says that unless Scrooge changes he will suffer a horrible fate after death.