“Marley was dead, to begin with.”

It’s one of the most famous lines in English literature. Certainly, it’s one of the most famous openings to any novel ever written.

And yet, until this morning, I would have told you that Charles Dickens’s line was, “The Marleys were dead, to begin with.”

Multiple Marleys? How did that happen? Why would I think that?

I was thumbing through my copy of A Christmas Carol (which happens to be the version illustrated by my beloved bride a decade ago), when my eyes fell on the page and I noticed the discrepancy.

I was shocked, baffled, confused.

Well, I’m not 100 percent sure, but I think that I last read A Christmas Carol in 2002, when I was freshman in high school, more than two decades ago. Since that year, however, I have probably watched The Muppet Christmas Carol each and every December, without fail.

And wouldn’t you know it, when Michael Caine’s Ebenezer Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve and is warned that three ghosts will haunt him that very night, there are two spectral Marleys (Jacob and Robert Marley) that visit him, played by the cantankerous Muppets Statler and Waldorf.

Time plays tricks on the memory, they say — perhaps especially when the Muppets are concerned.

We’re Marley and Marley
Whoooooo
Doomed, Scrooge!
You’re doomed for all time

Your future is a horror story
Your chains are forged
By what you say and do
So, have your fun

When life is done
A nightmare waits for you
We’re Marley and Marley
Whoooooo