Effie
The protagonist of this short story is a young girl named Effie. The opening line belongs to her and is the engine driving the narrative. Her exclamation of wishing there would never be another Christmas because she has tired of it introduces her to the story of Scrooge.
Effie’s Mother
In response to her young daughter’s horrid desire for there to never be another Christmas, Effie’s literate mother declares her to be as bad as Scrooge. When Effie inquires as to the identity of this Scrooge fellow, Effie’s mother briefly recounts the plot of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and the rest of the story will proceed to be a sort of reinvention of its redemptive ghost story illuminating the psychological mechanism of dream imagery.
Nursey
In a truly astounding coincidence, the woman who grows up to become Effie’s nurse (in the British connotative sense related more to the duties of nanny) is named Nursey. Okay, not really, but Nursey is the name by which she comes to be identified. One of her finest talents recommending her for the position is an ability to spin stories which both entertain the young girl while also preparing her to enter into slumber. And on this particular evening when Effie’s head is already filled with the imagery of Scrooge and his Christmas spirits, Nursey’s bedtime story of elves, poor kids, sugarplums and blizzards pushes the girl into a redemptive dreamworld of her own.
A Christmas Spirit
A young child dressed in fur holding a magic candle and giving off an almost blinding glow becomes Effie’s spirit guide through the dark side of Christmas she has never had to see before. The angelic child performs much the same role as the spirits which visit Scrooge in illumination for the poor little rich girl why her wish for an end to Christmas is a demonstration of the selfishness of uninformed privilege.
