In Competition No. 3279, you were invited to submit an extract from a contemporary reimagining of Charles Dickens’s A ChristmasCarol. In 2018, the former children’s laureate Michael Rosen updated the novella – my ‘Ghostly little book’ as Dickens called it – for a 21st-century age of austerity; fast forward a few years and its themes and moral message strike more of a chord than ever.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. This week’s brace of entries was a spirit-lifting pleasure to judge, as were all your submissions over the course of the year. Thank you to veteran competitors and newbies alike.

The festive winnings of £30 each are awarded to those printed below. A Merry Christmas to you all.

‘I am the Ghost of Christmas,’ said the Spirit.

‘Hang about,’ said Scrooge. ‘Don’t you mean “Christmas Past”?’

‘Ah. No,’ it replied. ‘I’m having to do them all, since the other two went off home after Brexit. But this vision applies to all three Christmases.’ He produced a screen on which a woman was singing about a lonely goatherd.

After three minutes Scrooge screamed: ‘No! Let’s cut to the chase and assume I’ve reformed. Is Cratchit still working?’

‘Er, not exactly. Mr Kraczyk went back to Poland. Brexit again, I’m afraid. There’s only the work experience lad, Tim.’

‘Well, we’ll buy him a Christmas dinner.’

‘Sorry. Bird flu did for the turkeys, and nobody will pick sprouts nowadays.’

‘Christmas cards? Parcels?’

‘Mail and rail strikes, alas.’

‘And we’ve been doing this gig since 1843!’ sighed Scrooge. He looked at Tim and they said in unison: ‘God help us, every one!’

Brian Murdoch

‘Merry Christmas, old friend!’ exclaimed a delighted Ebenezer Scrooge as the ghost of his late partner, Jacob Marley, materialised on Christmas Eve in the office they once had shared, the office where Scrooge now did business as one of London’s wealthiest financiers and most honoured philanthropists. ‘I thought never to see you more, Jacob, and now that I behold you, I hardly know how to express my gratitude for the redemptive changes your last visit wrought in my life. It gladdens my heart to perceive that you no longer bear your heavy penitential chain.’

‘Indeed, Ebenezer, my punishment has been mitigated thanks to the good you have done in this world. But I come this night with gloomy tidings concerning your cryptocurrency investments. Your losses must, alas, severely curtail your charities. With your new, warmer heart, you failed to detect and deter an actual humbug as it picked your pocket.’

Chris O’Carroll

‘To exploit service delivery efficiencies and fall in with quantum theories concerning the fallacy of linear time,’ Marley said, ‘three Spirits of Winterval will simultaneously stage a perhaps triggering intervention. Its objective? To raise your consciousness to psychosocial factors contributory to the poor late-life outcomes you’re experiencing. Winterval Past, dissecting your inappropriate responses to youthful disappointments, will suggest Regret is the ungendered parent of Reform. Winterval Present, focusing on Timothy Cratchit, son of your intern Robert, will demonstrate how mentoring a musculoskeletally divergent youth may yield Paralympic success sufficient to bolster your self-worth. Winterval Future, referencing mortality, will address the urgency of a lifestyle reboot.’

‘Humbug, Jacob!’ Scrooge harrumphed. ‘You and your spooks are merely othering me for living a goal-oriented, thrift-based existence. A truly inclusive cosmos would celebrate my difference.’

‘I hear and respect you,’ Marley murmured, deflated.

‘Perhaps,’ Scrooge smirked, ‘you’d join me instead for Dry January?’

Adrian Fry

‘Are you the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?’ asked Scrooge. The phantom answered not, but pointed onward to a family around a dinner table, somewhere in the English Dodecanese, near the Isle of Hampstead. A Santabot served neither turkey nor goose, but a platter of lab-grown algae, mussels and assorted insects. Then the family huddled around the hearth, wherein burned a pile of documents: the last paper from the last tree. Upon the documents was written: ‘COP39’, ‘COP40’, ‘COP42’, etc and beneath each, the subheadings ‘Last Chance Saloon’, ‘Doomsday Clock’, ‘Net-Zero Target’ and so on. ‘Are we doomed?’ asked one. ‘Not if he relents,’ replied the Santabot. ‘Then it is not too late! Christmas can be saved!’ exclaimed Scrooge. Breathing a huge sigh of joy, he switched off a light, recycled a yoghurt pot, sold half his BP shares and pencilled COP53 into his diary with a warm virtuous glow.

David Silverman

‘I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!’, Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ‘The strange, gabbling fair-haired woman animated by a frightening litany of delusions, the polished yet casual Hindu multimillionaire and the stiff, ungainly lawyer with curiously arranged hair, like a miniature structure of galvanised iron. Does not each instance perfectly exhibit in its own way an aspect of Christmas so apposite to the season of goodwill as to be virtually the expression of a natural state? Credulous belief, lavish wealth, a vaguely benign but muddle-headed attitude to things at large are the pillars on which the destiny of the nation stands. Such clear facts, however delivered in dramatic fantasy form, have reassured me that I face no threat to my fortune from ritual celebrations, and that knowledge alone is well worth the price of a turkey.’

Basil Ransome-Davies

No. 3282: new look

In Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, one chapter is narrated by a carbon atom, another by the market. You are invited to submit a short story narrated from an unusual perspective. Please email entries of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 11 January.

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