Merry Christmas Movie House! Merry Christmas Emporium! Merry Christmas You Wonderful Old Building and Loan!

I know.  I’m a sap.  But I cry at the end of this movie every year.  I really do.  I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of other times I’ve cried since I’ve turned 13, but ol’ George Bailey gets me every time when he looks up to Clarence and winks.  I’ve spent years thinking about why.  I can think about the movie and the scene now and it doesn’t make me particularly emotional.  I can go through the whole movie, and while I enjoy it, my heartstrings aren’t tugged.  But when all those people bust through the Bailey’s front door, with their fists full of cash to bail George out, I get that pain in my chest and by the time that bell rings, I’m teary.  Every Christmas Eve without fail since the age of sixteen .

It’s a Wonderful Life would never get made today, and if it did it would be savaged.  First of all, I don’t think there’s a modern equivalent of Jimmy Stewart.  George Clooney is probably the closest, but can’t match Stewart’s goofy, yet affirming charm.  But more importantly, the idea that a banker values the needs of his community over his personal needs is crazy.  I’m sure it was crazy then, but It’s a Wonderful Life was filmed immediately after World War II, when there was a collective sense of community, a notion that we were all in this together, that we all sacrifice together, and we all gain together.  The film carries the idea that it matters to all of us what happens to George and Mary Bailey and Mr. Gower and the Martinis and Bert the Cop, because when they succeed, we as a society succeed, and when they fail, we are diminished.  That idea would be sneered at as socialism today.  Sad.

But what sets It’s a Wonderful Life apart is its faith in the inherent goodness of people.  Evil Mr. Potter is defeated in the end, not because he is arrested, beaten up or lynched by the residents of Bedford Falls, but because the residents of Bedford Falls help out one of their own.  They don’t judge or scold George, they just come to his rescue when he needs help, proving cynical old Potter’s view of humanity wrong.  And I think that’s what gets the waterworks going every year.

Even through all the years growing up into my early thirties where I was so cynical and jaded, I still privately believed in the inherent goodness of people.  And It’s a Wonderful Life is a celebration of that.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy (belated) Solstice Day, or Kwanzaa or Life Day or Festivus, or whatever you celebrate at this time of year.  It’s been an interesting one, and I’m glad I can share a small part of it with you.  Take care.