A Christmas Carol With More Ghosts And Less Learning
By: Christopher Shelley
Tags: Humor, Satire, Christmas, Holidays, Literature

A Christmas Carol With More Ghosts And Less Learning

Your past is a real buzzkill.

Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash

At the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, as snow fell outside my window and I contemplated how I couldn’t possibly improve as a human being, the Ghost of My Former Assistant, I Think His Name Was Jacob, visited me.

He warned me I’d be visited by other spirits. I said, “I hope one of them is Jose Cuervo.” He shook his head and vanished.

But darned if the ghost wasn’t right: as the clock struck one, I was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. He showed me scenes of my younger self missing opportunities to improve as a human being, like coughing up the money to attend UConn instead of settling for Fitchburg, not making my employees work on holidays, and not having a seventh mug of spiked eggnog earlier that night.

“Your past is a real buzzkill,” he concluded. “If I were you, I wouldn’t repeat it. Especially the eggnog. Know what’s going to haunt you next? Your cholesterol.”

The ghost took me back home. He lingered in my hallway until I gave him twenty bucks to haunt my ex-wife’s new boyfriend Adrian. The ghost thanked me and vanished. I took a leak, then went back to bed.

At two, the Ghost of Christmas Just A Few Minutes Ago materialized. He led me through moments that had happened just a few minutes ago, like me giving the previous ghost twenty bucks, taking a leak, and going to bed. He noted that I’d skipped washing my hands after I’d taken a leak. I told him he should be called the Ghost of Busting My Balls.

At two-thirty, right in the middle of one of the Ghost of Christmas Just a Few Minutes Ago’s scenes, a new ghost visited: the Ghost of Christmas Just a Few Minutes From Now.

Awkward! The two ghosts shared a moment of false amity over the mix-up. Meanwhile, as I looked back and forth between them, seeing what had just happened and what was about to happen, I grew dizzy and fainted.

When I awoke, it was two forty-five, those ghosts were gone, and the Ghost of Christmas Present was in my library, cradling a snifter of my Macallan 18 Year Sherry Oak Single Malt Scotch. He said, “This is the best scotch I’m having right now.”

The Ghost of Christmas Present dragged me around the neighborhood, showing me things that were happening right then, mostly people looking at their smartphones and ignoring each other. Some people were wrapping presents. One guy was breaking into a Best Buy. The ghost muttered, “Does nobody have sex anymore?”

At four-thirty, the Ghost of Leap Year visited me. She was a woman. She showed me how my leap years past were pretty much like normal days. She shrugged and said, “That’s all I got. So few ghosting jobs go to women.” I told her to email me her resume because I had some openings in digital marketing.

What a night. I was so tired, but The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showed up, freaking me out with his spooky black robe and like, zero face.

He showed me two versions of what was yet to come. In the first version, my company looked profitable, I looked rich, and my future girlfriend did close-up magic at corporate fundraisers.

He snapped his finger bones to show me a woeful second version of the future, where my company was in ruins. A crazed, obese, balding version of me stumbled through office debris, chased by a group of other ghosts, among them the Ghost of All The Times I Forgot My Friends’ Birthdays, the Ghost of Narcissistic Life Choices, and the Ghost of Karma Payback. The scene was too horrid to bear. My family hadn’t built the company from nothing, but we had acquired it in a hostile takeover from a family who had. I wouldn’t be able to bear the shame of failure. I implored the spirit to show me no more.

The ghost spoke not a word, but rather communicated by shrugging in a way that implied that it would be a shame if something bad happened to my future.

I begged him to return me to my home, promising that I would do anything to avoid such a grim fate. Anything.

He caressed my cheek with his pinky finger bones and stared at me as if to ask, “Anything?”

I gulped. “Anything.”

I’d rather not say what I did that morning for the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Let’s just say his name is no longer accurate.

Later, after a much-needed shower and thorough mouth-rinsing, I flung open my window and breathed in the cool air of Christmas. I shouted at Tiny Tim, the crippled kid who was always asking for handouts, but he couldn’t hear me because I live in a high-rise penthouse.

Flush with Christmas spirit, I only made my staff work until seven instead of nine, and I ducked out at five.

I met up with my accountant Bob Cratchit’s smoking-hot wife Emily, as I always did on Fridays. I treated her to dinner at Le Bernardin, where we enjoyed their scrumptious Seared Hiramasa. The spirits had changed me; normally I took her to Olive Garden.

She told me all about her cousin Marion, who performed close-up magic at corporate fundraisers.

Thank you, spirits. And God bless us, every one.