Seven years after the death of his business partner Jacob Marley, a miserable old man named Ebenezer Scrooge is working in his office. He hates happiness, love, family, generosity, and Christmas. When his nephew Fred invites him over to Christmas dinner, Scrooge yells at him and refuses. Scrooge then tells off the people collecting charity donations, and grumbles and complains that the fact that his clerk Bob Cratchit gets a paid day off for Christmas is theft.

That night, he is haunted by Marley's ghost, which warns Scrooge that the dead who led bad lives are forced to roam around and not be at peace. The ghost also claims that three other ghosts are going to appear to Scrooge, and leaves after telling Scrooge to change his life before it's too late.

Scrooge shakes all this off as indigestion, but sure enough he soon gets a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past. This spirit takes him on a tour of his childhood memories and Scrooge quickly starts crying when he remembers himself as a neglected boy. The past also features scenes from Scrooge's young adulthood, when he transforms into the greedy miser that he ends up being after rejecting his fiancée and not learning the lessons of hospitality taught by Fezziwig, the man he was apprenticed to.