The Ghost of Christmas Past leads their guest into a warm and well-lit home. It's clean but not sterile, the neutral colors of the walls and furniture selected to enhance the more personal decor. Family pictures line the walls, showing a married couple and one, then two children. A third appears later, round-cheeked and dark-haired, gazing seriously into the camera.

And, of course, it's Christmas: garlands on the walls and a tree is strung with white lights and tinsel and little wrapped candy canes, and a boy in his early teens -- the one from the pictures on the wall -- is scattering ornaments among the branches. The girl from the majority of pictures, older than the boy, has draped herself in a throw blanket on the couch, absorbed in the book she's reading. The scene is accompanied by the clattering of someone cooking in another room, and the strains of Christmas music coming from the radio.

"And there's our girl," the Ghost of Christmas Past says, as the youngest child strides into the room. She's as serious now as she is in all of the pictures, maybe four or five years old, and her dress is red velvet and white lace compared to her sister's dark green sweater and blue jeans and her brother's t-shirt and sweatpants.

Bitty Stacia plants her hands on her hips, staring at her sister on the couch.

"Mila! You're not helping!"