There was a wonderful article about the Capra movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life”, in the Star Tribune this morning. The movie was released in 1946, one year after the end of World War II. While it was reasonably received by the movie critics at the time, it was not as well received by the public. In fact, in terms of money, it was a flop, not breaking even with the cost of making the film. Not even the star power of the film, Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, could produce the profits needed to make the movie popular.
Why did it flop?
First, it is a dark film.
Unlike many other Christmas films made at the time, e.g. “Going My Way”, “The Bells of St. Mary’s”, “Holiday Inn”, “Miracle on 34th Street”, it is not a happy film. People generally go to movies to be entertained, not depressed. It mattered not to audiences, that in the movie, “Holiday Inn”, that Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire are dancing and singing Irving Berlin tunes around in black face at an inn that Crosby owns and only opens on national holidays. Something like that film would be viewed as offensive these days. All that mattered to audiences at that time was happy songs that could be danced to and hummed by them. (Note: the song, “White Christmas” debuted in that film.) People wanted happy endings. Why?
The Christmases from 1914 to 1946 had been consistently very “dark” Christmases.
World War I, the war that was to end all wars, killed over 16 million people. The Spanish Flu killed over 50 million people world wide in 1918. These two world tragedies were followed by a world wide depression that lasted many, many years, throwing families into destitution. Farmers lost their farms throughout the United States because of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Just when the world began to lift itself out of the darkness of the Great Depression, the world, and the United States, were plunged into the horrific violence and genocide of World War II. Darkness was a major part of people’s lives.
I remember my mother, growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, telling me that the Steel Mills of Pittsburgh were running day and night at such a high pace during World War II (making the steel needed to construct weaponry for the war effort), that the pollution was so thick in that city, you could barely see the sky because of the smog that hung over the city. Imagine for a moment living in a city in which the air was so befouled it was hard to breathe, and a sunny day was rare. Might you get depressed? Of course you would.
So, with multiple decades of dark Christmases, is it any wonder that “It’s A Wonderful Life” was not greatly embraced by people?
We must remember is that the movie is about a man who is contemplating suicide at Christmas. An angel is sent to earth to try and steer this man from dying by suicide. In its telling, a review of the man’s life from the time he was a little boy is reviewed. We see how he always put others first before himself. We see how he sacrificed his dreams to serve others. We also see how he despairs when he finds that his chief rival is ready to ruin the man and his young family. The man decides that he is worth more being dead, rather than being alive. The last third of the film is dark indeed when he experiences what the world would have been without him being in it. Thankfully, he realizes that his assumption about his life being worthless was wrong, and the angel restores him back into the world.
Even though there are light, wonderful Frank Capraesque moments in the film, it is essentially a dark, and moody film. After all that people had suffered for decades, they would rather have lighthearted fare like Holiday Inn, with all its racist undertones, and happy, light tunes that everyone could whistle and to which they could tap dance.
The “Good Old Days”
The comedian, W. C. Fields, was fond of saying, “Ah, the good old days. May they never return.” What Fields observed is that it is easy to look back fondly on past days with a degree of sappy nostalgia, ignoring the reality of what it was REALLY like during those “good old days.”
At the risk of sounding fatalistic, I contend that there never was a time when everyone was at ease and there were no problems or concerns. As just the history from 1914 to 1946 points out, human life always has had its challenges. While we may nostalgically look back at our own “Christmas Story”, when we were hoping to get our Red Ryder BB gun, those times were filled with all the struggles we have today.
Let’s take the movie, “Christmas Story”, as an example. While Ralphie’s big concern was not getting beat up by the bullies of his school and neighborhood and he wanted that Red Ryder BB gun, in the real world of that time, the Korean War was being fought and many of his classmates were getting infected by Polio, that is, until that time it was mandated by the government that all kids get vaccinated with the Salk vaccine.
As a baby boomer, I grew up with the spectre of nuclear holocaust over my head. We had Nuclear Explosion drills in our schools, in which we would get below our desks and put our heads between our knees, covering our heads with our hands, as if that would protect us from being instantly incinerated by the fire storm caused by a hydrogen bomb. As a kid, I lived with the fear of a nuclear war for many years. The very real threat of nuclear annihilation is present in the World War III song, that satirist and musician, Tom Leher composed and performed in 1961, “So long mom, I’m off to drop the bomb, so don’t wait up for me.”
After the Cuban Missile Crises was thankfully resolved, and the Soviet Union pulled its missiles from Cuba, we replaced that crises with the very long, very bloody, very costly Vietnam War. That War hung over the heads of all young people throughout all the Christmases of that time. I remember as a teenager being in church on Christmas Day. The woman sitting next to me in the pew wept throughout the Christmas Mass. Why? She had just received news from the War Department that her son was killed in Vietnam on Christmas Eve. I remember another very dark Christmas during my Sophomore year in College waiting to hear whether I was going to be drafted to fight in that war (I nobly declined a student deferment to be in solidarity with many of those my age who were not in college). It was a time when who was being drafted was decided by the lottery. My number was not chosen by the draft board.
We keep on trying to find a time when there was no hardship in the world at Christmas, but it seems that as one crises ends, another takes its place. In the 1980’s we had the HIV pandemic. That hit many of my liturgist/liturgical musicians in church music very hard, many of whom died from HIV during the 1980’s and 1990’s. We just ended over twenty years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. How many Christmases were adversely affected by that never ending, poorly run war?
And now, we are facing our second Christmas under the cloud of Covid-19 and its many manifestations. Many feel so hopeless. Many wish for the good old days when Covid-19 was not here. With what decade would you like to replace it? 1914 to 1918 when people were dying on the battlefields of France in World War I? 1918 to 1919, when over 50 million died from the Spanish Flu? 1929 – 1939 when the world fell into the Great Depression? 1940-1945, when the world was immersed into the blood bath of World War II? 1950 to 1953, when many American lost their lives in the Korean War, and children and adults were being infected by Polio? Would you want to go back to the threat of nuclear annihilation of the Cold War period, the Vietnam War, HIV pandemic? No matter where we turn, each decade with all its Christmases have, for want of a better word, sucked.
There is no perfect Christmas.
I sit here in my chair, writing this reflection, with my broken right foot elevated and with a breakthrough Covid infection. Many years of church ministry have taught me that there is no “perfect Christmas”. That is the primary lesson from the Christmas movie, “Christmas Vacation.” Clark Griswold, in that film, is trying to manipulate his family into having the perfect Christmas, which he entitles, “The Griswold Family Christmas.” For those of us who know the film well, all his plans for the perfect Christmas blow up in his face … with great comic effect.
One of the hardest days for me in church ministry was Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. I told people I would take Holy Week with all its multiple liturgies over one Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. By the last Mass, and the last “Merry Christmas”, I was emotionally, spiritually, and physically exhausted. Scrooge’s sentiment about people being buried with a stake of holly through their hearts and boiled in their own pudding, was one with which I could resonate by the last Mass on Christmas Day. That is why when I returned home my beautiful bride would have a drink with brandy, sweet vermouth, a couple of cherries, and a few ice cubes prepared for me so that I could unwind.
The Christmas Season is a very busy time for funerals. Many of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” could often be filled with funerals, as those with terminal illnesses would target Christmas Day as a goal to be met before they would die. There were many December 26th funerals over 42 years of ministry. I once had five wakes and five funerals in a row immediately following the liturgies of Christmas. With many in my family working in hospitals and nursing homes, it was rare for any of my family to not be at work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
In fact, it was at the last Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve I played, that I decided to retire from active ministry. Two of my mentors in the diaconate died suddenly from heart attacks preparing to celebrate Midnight Mass. I thought to myself that last Christmas Eve night I played, “I’ll be damned if I will die getting ready for Midnight Mass.” And, so, made the decision to retire on June 30th of 2019.
The Lesson of It’s A Wonderful Life? Hope in the midst of darkness.
What a movie like “Its’ A Wonderful Life” teaches us and why it is so pertinent to us today, is that the one thing that is constant and shared in the lives of all human beings is darkness at this time of year. However, as dark and dreary and scary as this time of year may be for us, hope is not extinct but very much present.
We all know that historically, Jesus was not born on December 25th. Historians and astronomers have pinpointed the birth of Jesus around the time we celebrate Easter, at the birthing of the lambs. Christianity established the 25th of December initially as a response to the pagan bacchanalias celebrating the lengthening of daylight following the Winter Solstice. Theologically, the early Christians used nature as a metaphor to illustrate that just as in nature, daylight begins to lengthen minute by minute at this time of year, the light of Christ pierced the darkness and violence of human life in all of human history. At the time of Christ’s birth, Judea was feeling the darkness and oppression of the occupying Roman army and the Roman Empire.
The darkness that we are experiencing now is no different than that suffered by our parents, our grandparents, and the myriad amount of people in our family ancestry. As we sit with the threat of Covid and its new incarnation, Omicron, as I sit looking at surgery in the new year and the long recovery following that surgery, I feel hope. The love of God, incarnated in Christ at Christmas, is very much present in those I have around me who love me.
The other lesson that “It’s A Wonderful Life” teaches us, is that it is very important to reach out to those who are experiencing darkness, experiencing hopelessness and be the light of Christ to them. As others incarnate Christ’s light and love to us, so must we also, incarnate Christ’s love and light to those who feel unloved.
My first Christmas Eve at St Stephen’s Catholic Church in South Minneapolis.
St Stephen’s was a parish that based its parish mission on the Social Justice Doctrine of the Catholic Church. Up to the last few years, when the parish abandoned its outreach to many of the poor and homeless in the inner city of Minneapolis, St Stephen’s was noted for its outreach to the homeless, running a homeless shelter for over 40 years, and providing services to all who lived on the street. Those who worshiped at St Stephen’s were often broken people when they came, but the welcome of Christ, embodied by the church community, brought healing and wholeness to their lives. I remember a homosexual parishioner who said to me that prior to becoming a parishioner at St Stephen’s, he was contemplating suicide, believing the lies often spoken by the leaders of religions about his sexual orientation. At St Stephen’s, he discovered that God loved him dearly and accepted him just as he had been created.
This one Christmas Eve, at the Children’s Mass, a homeless man showed up at church. He wore a vividly colored purple suit. He also was intoxicated. He came and sat in the front pew and wept throughout the Mass. It was a cold winter night, and he had no place to stay. Because the parish’s homeless shelter was filled, and one of the requirements to stay at the shelter was that those staying had to be sober and not using drugs, this man could not stay there. New to the parish, I did not know how to respond to this poor man. I reached out to a gay couple at church with their young children. I remember one of the men, a social worker, approaching the homeless man following Mass and sat down with him. He listened to the woes of the homeless man who them embraced him wept on the gay man’s shoulder. After consultation with his partner, they decided to place aside the plan they had made with their children, and then took the homeless man with them to find him shelter for the night. This gay family incarnated the light and love of Christ to a homeless man desperate for love.
Conclusion
Yes, these times are very dark in the world due to illness, political unrest, economic unrest, and so many other factors that are a part of our present lives. But the light and love of God continues to reaches through that darkness awaiting us to receive and to grasp.
