Santa Claus (well played by Edmund Gwenn) comes to Herald Square and wraps up the millennium in one neat package. Clever, and pleased with itself, and liked by practically everybody; but since I have always despised the maxim "Honesty is the best policy," I enjoy even less a statement of the profits accruing through faith, loving kindness, etc. I expect next a "witty, tender little fantasy" presenting the Son of God (Sonny Tufts) as God's Customers' Man." (1)
Miracle is such a perennial holiday favorite that it has been remade at least twice, and yet it is little more than a cute love letter to our sanctimoniously secular, peculiarly American brand of consumerism, in which the meaning of Christmas has been hijacked by a cartoon figure made up of an unholy hodgepodge Saint Nicholas, his doppelgänger Santa Claus, a popular illustration by Thomas Nast, Currier & Ives, and the story "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" by Clement Clarke Moore. The distinction, I think, is crucial: while believers in Jesus are expected to take the story of his birth as gospel truth all their lives, belief in Santa is only expected from children. When they grow up, their faith is extinguished by their embrace of a factual, rational universe in which it is absurd to accept the existence of a jolly old man (even if he is a saint) who distributes gifts to all subscribing children around the world - in one night!
The Polar Express is easily the most expensive ($165m) and elaborate of a long line of holiday movies that are committed to convincing children (and the child who lies dormant within all of us grownups) that Santa Claus exists. There are some - non-Christian foreigners, mostly - who are so confused by our juxtaposition of Jesus and Santa that they have come to the conclusion that the former is the latter as a young man. Who knows but that this confusion will become prevalent in succeeding generations that never adopt a religion, let alone reject one? Not only is the deployment of The Polar Express' motion capture technique taken to somewhat scary - even creepy - extremes, but its incorporation of every cliché about Santa and his elves on the North Pole (which is a piece of frozen ocean that is constantly on the move) is a sign of its determination to transcend critical judgement.
A recent Guardian article addressed the curious tolerance of film viewers for otherwise execrable films that have anything to do with Christmas.(1) The new movie, Last Christmas, written by Emma Thompson, has proved to be as awful as Love Actually - that Christmas-viewing favorite among the British. Factors that would otherwise sink a newly-released film - bad writing, predictable plots, poor execution (acting, directing, editing, etc.) - somehow has no effect on a holiday-themed film. One proof of the strange immunity of holiday films to criticism is the fact that no one watches them at any other time of the year. They are an integral part of the process with which we try to induce what is mysteriously known as the "Christmas Spirit." We play old songs like "White Christmas" and "Jingle Bells" and festoon our homes inside and out with garish decorations and lights - all of it designed to put us in the mood for the season. If the Christmas Spirit means anything to me, it's about memories of Christmases past. In a powerful way, continuing to keep Christmas well is a commemoration but also a kind of séance in which the ones I have lost are represented in spirit. I continue to take part in the old rites because they cannot.
I already declared, years ago, my favorite Christmas movie, made by Frank Capra. But it isn't It's a Wonderful Life, which Capra made after the war and is a film that I would love to remake. My favorite Christmas movie is Meet John Doe, but it isn't about Christmas. The film ends on Christmas Eve in the snow with distant bells ringing, but it wasn't supposed to. A desperate man has come to city hall to fulfill a promise - to jump from its roof at midnight if people didn't start loving one another.
In a speech earlier in the film, the title character (whose real name is John Willoughby, played with aching conviction by Gary Cooper), tries to convince anyone who is listening (on the radio) that it's time to live up to the Christmas ideal:
I know a lot of you are saying to yourselves, "He's askin' for a miracle to happen. He's expectin' people to change all of a sudden. Well, you're wrong. It's no miracle. It's no miracle because I see it happen once every year. And and so do you -- at Christmas time. There's somethin' swell about the spirit of Christmas, to see what it does to people, all kinds of people.
Now, why can't that spirit, that same, warm Christmas spirit last the whole year around? Gosh, if it ever did, if each and every John Doe would make that spirit last 365 days out of the year, we'd develop such a strength, we'd create such a tidal wave of good will that no human force could stand against it. Yes sir, my friends, the meek can only inherit the earth when the John Doe's start lovin' their neighbors. You better start right now. Don't wait till the game is called on account of darkness. Wake up, John Doe. You're the hope of the world.
John Doe's mistake was probably trying to stretch brotherly love too far (and too thinly). Of course, the Christmas Spirit simply can't last. It was never meant to, even when Christmas was a pagan celebration to tell the gods of winter that, no matter how cold and dark and dead the world around us may seem (with the winter solstice a week from today), we are here with our lights and life and abundance to defy it.
In these terms and in the old spirit of Christmas, I wish all of my readers (all five of you) a lustrous and joyous Christmas.
(1) The Nation, August 30, 1947.
(2) "Turkey anyone? Why standards slip at Christmas when it comes to film," by Steve Rose, 2 Dec 2019.
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