Christmas Spirit is a holiday-themed novella written by Meredith Carson and the World Codex Staff. When Ebenezer Scrooge finally “shuffled off his mortal coil”, there had been some intervening years between that passing and the legendary and fateful intervention by his Christmas ghosts and his old, dear friend, Marley. He would remain forever grateful, indeed, to Marley for having reignited a spark of life that had been extinguished many years before that. Leaving the earthly sphere and the realm of time was a sudden, solemn and even peaceful thing. One minute he was huddling there on his bed and the next he was witnessing it all from above.

Scrooge had not always had his characteristic disdain for all things Christmas -- far from it -- since it had been his childhood aspiration to find a fine, fat goose for his mother to roast for their holiday feast. His father’s insistence instead upon him cleaning his room and his seeming skepticism about his son’s ability to do anything was overturned by his doting mother, who chased young Scrooge outdoors where he rushed off to join his best friend, Peter, and Peter’s father as they hunted for their own Christmas fowl.

Meredith Carson and the World Codex Staff’s holiday-themed novella, Christmas Spirit is an elegant and intricate blend of Victoriana, metaphysics and apocalyptic fiction as the now-departed Ebenezer Scrooge shares the details of his own life and reveals the future of humanity. As with the other offerings by the World Codex Staff, I began reading this story expecting to find my imagination challenged and my insights on the world and reality tweaked just a bit, or maybe even a bit more. I was not disappointed. This well-written and absorbing story kept me enthralled from the first page to the last. I especially enjoyed Scrooge’s retelling of the fateful hunting trip on that snowy Christmas Eve. Christmas Spirit is most highly recommended.

“Let me properly introduce myself for those of you who may be wondering who I am, my name is Ebenezer Scrooge. The time has come to bequeath to you all everything that I have seen. Those impressions of your world and your possible future of which I am now aware, and the shocking end of the 3rd millennium as you know it to be.”

Christmas Spirit by World Codex Staff and Meredith Carson is a twist of the classic Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Specter Ebenezer Scrooge becomes the host for two spirits that show two different worlds in the future. One is at its core ideologized with scientism and ends in catastrophe in 2066. The other, post-2066, is the desired existence－“no pollution, no poverty or squalor, and beauty prevails as the planet itself has undergone its own trans-mutational, transformative transition”.

It’s a short read but one that I reread several times to contemplate these foreshadowed future worlds that are presented. Has science gone too far? I’m aware of the scientism debate and I’m sure no sound mind would really think that science is solely the answer to how we should live our lives, let alone use it as the only reference point for our complex morality. I feel that a certain group is forever irked by Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape, which is understandable. However, the term 'scientism' is somewhat finger-pointing at science as a whole, a field that has contributed so much to society. I’m ambivalent about this version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol but Christmas Spirit is intrinsically thought-provoking, and definitely will be argumentative for some readers.

Christmas Spirit by World Codex Staff and Meredith Carson is a short but fascinating first person narrative by the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge, the incorrigible miser character of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Written in the style popular in Dickens’ day, Scrooge has returned from the grave with information gleaned from Chronos, the Greek god of time and the destiny of mankind, to warn humanity of dire consequences if we continue on our current path.

Christmas Spirit opens with a scene from Scrooge’s childhood, a scene that provides the reader with the heretofore unknown cause for his disparagement of the religious holiday in A Christmas Carol. Where Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past and future, now as a ghost himself, with knowledge far beyond our current ability to foresee, he describes scenes from his physical and spiritual lives that draw parallels of how technological developments could lead humanity away from the path designed by Chronos; a path that could result in disaster for the human race as early as 2066.

As with Dickens’ story, Christmas Spirit leaves the reader to ponder whether it is a secular story or one of Christian allegory. Regardless, it’s a short and quick read that belies the profundity within. A truthful warning or an imaginative fiction, I’ve read the story three times, and with each re-read, I find another gem of philosophical import. I highly recommend Christmas Spirit to all readers for its intrinsic philosophy applicable to the religious and non-religious, spiritual or not, and those who simply enjoy interesting stories written in a style seldom seen these days.

Christmas Spirit by World Codex Staff and Meredith Carson is not a re-documentation of Ebenezer Scrooge in the classic story, A Christmas Carol. Christmas Spirit is not about the life of Scrooge but his life after death. Scrooge relives childhood memories that help shape the man he became before the ghosts of Christmas visited and changed him for the better. Scrooge has returned as a spirit to warn us that Chronos, the lord of Avenue E, has described to him the parallels and treachery mankind will face in the not so distant future year of 2066. What will become of mankind if Chronos’ warning is not heeded? Will Scrooge's childhood and his life after death be enough to guide mankind back to the simpler things, possibly back to the path of God before technology and science can lure us further away from the most basic things in life?

Christmas Spirit has a well defined plot through the eyes of Ebenezer Scrooge as he visits his own childhood as well as the distant future. The characters are easy to understand and relate to as Scrooge recounts the warnings of Chronos for mankind and the consequences of straying from the path we were intended to take. I love how World Codex Staff and Meredith Carson can make the reader think about how technology affects daily life on a more profound level. I would recommend that everyone read Christmas Spirit. I believe that the story will inspire people to take stock of their lives and possibly rethink living with the lack of spirituality.