In stave 2 of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, we find Scrooge visited (haunted) by the ghost of Christmas Past - which is his own past. Our pasts can often haunt us, and perhaps they should haunt us. The root of this haunting is that we are able to judge our present lives in light (not the Ghost has a light shining forth from his head) of our past life...or better yet, in the case of Scrooge, we are able to judge our current death in light of our former life. This awakens us to what we once knew and experienced so clearly but have since forgotten - viz. that the meaning of life lies in the gratitude and joy of being.