The Three Spirits
[[File:|thumb|315px|Philatel-426 and the Three Spirits. (PROSE: A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol)]]The Three Spirits was a moniker used by at least one set of the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come, who apparently had the power to traverse dimensions and frequently enacted versions of the Christmas Carol plot on individuals who were often, but not necessarily, called Ebenezer Scrooge.
History
On Halloween 2019, when Pythagoras-858 was briefly trapped in the Prime Universe's Spirit Realm, and had to “haunt” his friend Juliet-178 to tell her how to physically bring him back, Pythe briefly got off-track and started referring to Juliet as Ebenezer, stating in a uncharacteristically formal tone: “I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer. You will be haunted by Three Spirits…”. He soon realised the Realm was “messing with [his] head” and started sounding like himself again. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
During the 2019 Christmas season in the Cupid Homeworld, with the holiday having been introduced to the dimension for the first time, (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure) the Three Spirits were able to influence and enter the Homeworld for the first time. With Mailbag-431 managing to manifest in front of Philatel-426, he turned out to be the focus of the exercise, embodying the Ebenezer Scrooge role. Philatel was thus taken on the traditional journey through time and space by the Three Spirits.
After reaching the requisite epiphanies, however, the pattern broke, with Philatel remaining stuck in the future Cupid Graveyard instead of being taken back to his home time and his own house by the Ghost of Christmas Present. Realising that something was wrong, Yet-to-Come flung Philatel to the Spirit Realm, where they discovered that the mysterious invaders who had taken it over, and had raised themselves up as judges and prison-wardens of the dead, had captured Past and Present right as they left the Homeworld. As they were bound in chains which the living could touch, but not the dead, Philatel was thus set a final trial in freeing them. In order not to muddle his emotional growth, the Ghosts erased his memories of the episode when returning him to his house; reasoning that they had not been attacked before due to the invaders fearing Yet-to-Come, they resolve to stick closer together from now on. (PROSE: A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol)
Philatel retold his tale to other Cupids, with Pythagoras-858 later mentioning it to Jenny Everywhere in December 2020; (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker) Philatel's “Dickensian journey of self-discovery” was already mentioned in Cupid Fact File #1225, which was written before the end of the Christmas season. (PROSE: Father Christmas)
Behind the scenes
The idea that the Three Spirits seen in A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol frequently engaged in formulaic Christmas Carol scenarios is a metafictional reference to the prevalence of adaptations of and riffs on A Christmas Carol in various media, including several related to the Prime Universe, with the suggestion that the same three dimension-hopping Spirits may have been the ones seen in any number of such works.
