The spirit first appears to Scrooge on a throne made of traditional Christmas foodstuffs that would have been familiar to Dickens's more prosperous readers.

[4][5] The spirit becomes the mouthpiece for Dickens's view on social reform and Christian charity:[2][6] generosity and goodwill to all men – especially to the poor – and celebration of Christmas Day.

[9] Indeed, Dickens experienced poverty as a boy when he was forced to work in a blacking factory after his father's imprisonment for debt.

Originally intending to write a political pamphlet titled, An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child, he changed his mind[10] and instead wrote A Christmas Carol[11] which voiced his social concerns about poverty and injustice.

In this novella, Dickens was innovative in making the existence of the supernatural a natural extension of the real world in which Scrooge and his contemporaries lived.

[1] Dickens making the Christmas Spirits a central feature of his story is a reflection of the early-Victorian interest in the paranormal.

[14] The Ghost of Christmas Present is described as "a jolly Giant", and Leech's hand-coloured illustration of the friendly and cheerful Spirit, his hand open in a gesture of welcome confronted by the amazed Scrooge has been described by Jane Rabb Cohen as elegantly combining "the ideal, real, and supernatural" with humour and sympathy.

[16] The American Santa Claus commemorated in the 1822 poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (better known as The Night Before Christmas) by Clement Clarke Moore is derived from his pagan English counterpart and the gift-giving Saint Nicholas of Myra, but the Ghost of Christmas Present should not be confused with the American version, who was little known in England before the early 1850s.

Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.

In easy state upon this couch there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge as he came peeping round the door.

Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles.

[19] The Spirit takes Scrooge to the city streets with which Dickens himself was very familiar and which he paced each night while composing A Christmas Carol – 'past the areas of shabby genteel houses in Somers or Kentish Towns, watching the diners preparing or coming in'.

During the family feast, we are introduced to Cratchit's youngest son, Tiny Tim, who, despite his disability, remains full of Christian spirit and happiness.

Among these Sabbatarians was the MP Sir Andrew Agnew (1793–1849), who introduced a Sunday Observance Bill in the House of Commons four times between 1832 and 1837, none of which passed.

This is a revealing comment, as it shows that God sent the Spirits for Scrooge's redemption and that Dickens, therefore, intended A Christmas Carol as a Christian allegory.

"[18] The Spirit thus reminds the reader that poverty is not a problem of the past or the future but also the present and mocks Scrooge's concern for their welfare before disappearing at midnight.

Dickens was to reiterate his warning about the treatment of people experiencing poverty in a speech he delivered at the Polytechnic Institute in Birmingham on 28 February 1844, shortly after the publication of A Christmas Carol.

In a metaphor taken from 'The Genii in the Bottle' from The Arabian Nights he said, The character does not appear in Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost (1901), the first film version of the story.