I judge each version of A Christmas Carol by the ghosts

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And the best ghosts in any version of A Christmas Carol was in Chuck Jones’s 1971 tv special, which you can watch here:

If the embed doesn’t play you can watch it on YouTube. I don’t care much for this version of Ebenezer, and at only 25 minutes the story is obviously extremely short–the big change at the end barely feels earned.

However, as someone who already knows the story very well, I appreciate the abbreviated version of it, especially since it’s so fucking gorgeous. Seriously, there are so many amazing choices being made here, from the candle-lit darkness of Scrooge’s stair to the zooming POV to the inclusion of Ignorance and Want (which I screencapped for my holiday Twitter avatar).

I watched this as a little kid and there was a lot I didn’t understand: What contract did Scrooge have with the sad young woman? What was the big deal about the lunch and the bed curtains? Still, those ghosts scared the naughty out of me.

Of course, if you just can’t bear another version of Dickens’s story, there’s always Ernest Saves Christmas.