ALL THE GHOSTS OF DICKENS' CHRISTMAS

Famous trick question: "How many ghosts visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve?" Everyone would guess three, but it's actually FOUR. Everyone forgets about poor Jacob Marley, but he's as important as the other three because he shows Scrooge his AFTERLIFE. So Scrooge gets to see even what comes AFTER Christmas Future. That then he would be stuck between Heaven and Hell. The other three ghosts are still important: Christmas Past is Memory, a being of light always changing age and gender. Christmas Present is Joy, a pagan Santa in green and holly enthroned on a mountain of good food (in spite of the children under his robe). And Christmas Future is Death (the bony hands, the black cowl - missing the scythe, but everyone gets the gist). All four ghosts contribute to Scrooge waking up a far better man, at peace with his past, full of joy, conscious of death and of the afterlife.

Perhaps that's why the Christmas Carol has been adapted every winter season, sometimes more than once, while other Yuletide classics like the Snow Queen and the Nutcracker get shorter shrift. That, and because ghosts and time travel are very popular now and were in the Victorian era!

MEMORY PERSONIFIED AS YOUTHFUL OLD PERSON

Yor era un hombre grande y viejo, pero su rostro no tenía barba ni arrugas. Todo en él, su traje, su cara, su pelo, era gris como la piedra. Cuando estaba allí, inmóvil, parecía tallado en un gran trozo de lava. Sólo sus ojos ciegos eran oscuros y, en sus profundidades, brillaba el resplandor de una pequeña llama.
(Yor, the blind Mountain-Man/Bergmann)


It was a strange figure -- like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white, and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
(The Ghost of Christmas Past)

 
Mind that both of these characters are personifications of Memory --as the recollection of the personal past-- and portrayed as aged but lacking wrinkles and facial hair, and being physically in youthful shape when it comes to vigour and stamina.
-Do you think the Ghost of Christmas Past influenced Ende's Yor?
-What is the significance of being "OLD" yet lacking wrinkles, and especially of lacking facial hair? Does it carry notions of both youthfulness and a non-binary/asexuated character?

WAKE UP, KIRARA!!!

This is my Noble Academy Christmas Carol bunny, which I have had for a while...

WAKE UP, KIRARA!!!

CAST

Kirara Amanogawa (in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge)
Towa Akagi, née Hope Daylight (in the roles of Robert Cratchit and Jacob Marley)
Shut as the Ghost of Christmas Past
Stella Amanogawa and Ken Takamagahara (as themselves)
Wataru Kaido (in the role of Isabelle)
Lock as the Ghost of Christmas Present
Asuka Kitakaze (in the role of Isabelle's husband)
Tsukasa, Masumi, and Minami Kaido
Karin "Rinrin" Akeboshi (in the role of Tiny Timmy Cratchit)
Ranko Ichijo
Kyoko Tachi (Kirara's manager)
Hitomi "Hitomin" and Yoko "Youtan"
White-Haired Close as the Ghost of Christmas Future

SETTING: Canon GPPC setting

PREMISE: When a stressed Kirara shuts her friends and family out as she prepares thoroughly for a great Christmas runway, she receives three visits from ghosts that cause her to revaluate her holiday priorities:
1) Christmas Past: child Kirara as a lonely celebrity brat, her father's disappearance (parents' divorce), how much Kirara worshipped her mum, and her short-lived romance with her senpai Wataru as an NA freshwoman...
2) Christmas Present: how the basketball team, the Hope/Akagi siblings, the production staff at the agency, and the Kaidos (including Wataru and his new fiancée Asuka) celebrate Christmas...
3) Christmas Future: 30-sth Kirara a drug addict in a coma on life support, her former friends living parallel lives and more concerned with their own lives, her parents living in retired obscurity, Rinrin having become as cold and arrogant as Kirara in the present and also on the path to drug addiction, as Ranko's star rises (and she tempted Rinrin to take drugs)...
In the end, she awakens completely changed and ready to embrace the spirit of the winter holidays on Christmas Eve morning... <3 <3 <3