Five tales written for Christmas, 1843 to 1848, combining realism and fantasy. "A Christmas Carol in Prose" makes its ghostly appeal to Scrooge, the hard old miser, and "The Chimes" is a variation of the same motive. "The Cricket on the Hearth" is an idyll of home life, "The Battle of Life", an imaginative deliverance on resignation, "The Haunted Man", a fairy tale with the beauty of kindness for its moral.