A Christmas Carol (2009)

Colin Firth: Fred

Photos 

Quotes 

• Fred's Wife : [playing an animal guessing game]  Is it a horse?

  Fred : No.

  Guest #3 : A cow?

  Fred : No.

  Guest #4 : A dog?

  Fred : No.

  Guest #2 : An ass?

  Fred : Well... yes, and no...

  Fred's Wife : Oh, I know who it is, Fred! It's your Uncle Scrooge!

  Fred : Yes!

• Fred : A Merry Christmas to you, uncle!

  Ebenezer Scrooge : Bah! Humbug... What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.

  Fred : What reason have you to be so dismal? You're rich enough.

  Ebenezer Scrooge : BAH! Humbug!

• Fred : Don't be cross, Uncle!

  Ebenezer Scrooge : What else can I be when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!

  Fred : Uncle!

  Ebenezer Scrooge : Nephew! Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.

  Fred : But you don't keep it!

  Ebenezer Scrooge : Let me leave it alone, then. Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!

  Fred : There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round - apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that - as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

  [Cratchit applauds]