"I'm so tired of Christmas I wish there never would be another one!"
The opening line of the story is the engine that fuels that plot. A privileged eight-year-old girl named Effie has grown oh so weary of all the pain and misery that accompanies the arrival of Christmas. Like, for instance, having nothing else to do but sit and watch while her mother arranges a stack of gifts. Clearly, something drastic must be done for this young girl is destined to grow up into something beastly like the owner of “The Blue Carbuncle” in the Sherlock Holmes story who has the nerve to complain about what hard work it is getting ready for Christmas—as all her servants go about the actual task of getting for ready. Learning from her mother the story of Scrooge in response to this “dreadful thing to say” Effie is perfectly set up for a redemptive playing out of the Scrooge story that will save her such a terrible fate. She will receive the greatest Christmas gift of them all: learning how to care about someone besides herself.
So Nursey told her best tales; and when at last the child lay down under her lace curtains, her head was full of a curious jumble of Christmas elves, poor children, snow-storms, sugarplums, and surprises. So it is no wonder that she dreamed all night; and this was the dream, which she never quite forgot.
The first half of the story is a kind of reinvention of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which Effie is visited by a spirit of Christmas. It is different, of course, by virtue of the fact that Effie is aware that her redemptive spirits appeared in a dream whereas Scrooge is usually presented as an actual ghost story. Having first learned of the story of Scrooge this very day, Effie’s subconscious is subsequently tickled by the bedtime story of her nurse who can always be counted upon to come up with memorable tales that Effie takes into her world of slumber. The result is a visceral dream with a plot and characters and a moral lesson which Effie is determined to remember into full consciousness.
"I've got it! I've got it!--the new idea. A splendid one, if I can only carry it out!"
Effie’s dream has been almost as entertaining to watch from the outside as to experience from the inside. Her mother has been contentedly observing her sleeping daughter during her dream state as the child smiles, laughs, talks in her sleep and even excitedly claps her hands together. Upon waking, Effie is still in a state of intense emotion but it is mixed: she is on a high from learning her moral lesson in a most exciting way, but this excitement is tempered by the desire to make the events of the dream come true in the real world. And here is where Alcott’s story takes off from its inspiration at the pen of Charles Dickens. Instead of merely telling the reader that Scrooge’s behavior changed as a result of the lesson he learned, Effie is show proactively having transformed from the spoiled rich girl complaining about Christmas boring her into a dedicated social worker determined to make the holidays better for the less fortunate. Of course, an eight-year-old girl is not exactly equipped with the resources of an ancient miser so it will take some help from a mother who clearly does not need to live out a Scroogefest of redemptive ghostly tour guides herself.
