Christmas Spirit and Christian Morality
While everyone else celebrates Christmas regardless of their wealth or status, Scrooge remains the odd one out. He declares "every idiot that goes around with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding", showing he cannot accept any generosity offered to him.
Scrooge repeatedly calls Christmas a "humbug" - expressing rejection and viewing it as deluded or deceitful. He's genuinely irritated by any mention of Christmas, seeing it only as a day of lost profit rather than family celebration.
Tiny Tim represents the importance of family and love, embodying pure goodness. His potential death in Scrooge's vision becomes the catalyst for redemption. Dickens deliberately creates religious symbolism here, linking Tim to Christ's sacrifice to save mankind from sin.
Key Point: The contrast between Fred's persistent cheerfulness towards Christmas and Scrooge's bitterness shows Dickens presenting them as complete opposites - Fred embodies the true spirit of Christmas.
"God bless us, everyone" becomes Tim's famous line, whilst his hope that "people saw him in church because he was a cripple" might remind them of Christ "who made blind men see and beggars walk". This positions Tim as a symbol of giving towards the less fortunate and embracing Christian charity.