December | 2018 | Eye-Dancers

This year, Christmas just isn’t the same for me. All my life, especially growing up, Christmas represented the most treasured, the most special time of the year. And now, looking back, it’s clear what the glue was that held it all together, the one indispensable person who made the holidays something the entire family could enjoy and look forward to. (Not that it wasn’t clear before, but sometimes loss hones the focus, makes you see things with a crystalline clarity made pointed and sharp from the stiletto blade of absence.)

My mother loved Christmas. She started preparing for it weeks in advance. The first Sunday in December, in that long-ago world of the 20th century, she would round up the family, and we’d head over to Wambach Farms (a family-owned Rochester, NY-area market that, after serving the community for generations, sadly, closed its doors earlier this year) to buy our Christmas tree–and choosing just the right tree was no small task! We’d examine them all, until we found the one we all agreed on; then my father would load it into the trunk and tie it down, and we’d head back home and decorate for hours.

Mom also spread Christmas cheer to non-family members. She baked cookies for scores of friends and neighbors, invited people to the house all through December, and invented participatory games each year the visitors could enjoy.

For the past two decades, I’ve lived in Vermont–having moved away from my hometown at the dawn of the 2000s. But Christmas was no less special, even then. Until this year.

Last winter, my mother passed away from lung cancer. It was sudden, unexpected, undiagnosed until the very end. And now, at Christmastime, I find it’s hard to want to celebrate. For me, and what this time of year has always meant to me, the essence, the guts, have been ripped out. There is a part of me that wants to fast-forward a fortnight, bypass the holidays, and emerge on the other side of 2019.

But then I pause, catch myself. And think of my mother’s all-time favorite Christmas movie . . .

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When It’s A Wonderful Life debuted in movie theaters in 1946, it wasn’t the box-office hit its producers and director, Frank Capra, hoped for. It seemingly had everything going for it–a rousing, feel-good message on the heels of a nightmarish, horrific world war, a first-rate cast and crew, and the return of popular actor James Stewart to the Silver Screen after five years away, during which time he’d served with distinction in the war. But, despite being nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards (losing out to The Best Years of Our Lives), the movie fell flat with audiences that year. It was only decades later, when television audiences were re-introduced to it every holiday season, that its star rose.

Even for all that, there are, and always have been, critics of It’s A Wonderful Life specifically and Frank Capra more generally. His films are too mawkish, the naysayers argue. They view life through rose-colored glasses. Long before It’s A Wonderful Life graced the Silver Screen, Capra had made his mark with pictures such as It Happened One Night and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, among many others. His detractors coined the term “Capricorn” in response to his movies, brushing them off as “sentimental hogwash,” as old Mr. Potter himself grouses in It’s A Wonderful Life.

Capra responded with his motion pictures and successful career as a film director, and with quotes like this one: “My films must let every man, woman, and child know that God loves them, that I love them, and that peace and salvation will become a reality only when they all learn to love each other.”

And of course no Capra movie, perhaps no movie, period, embodies this sentiment more than It’s A Wonderful Life. Most are familiar with the story of George Bailey, the character played by Stewart, an “everyman” who falls on hard times and sees his fortunes dwindle to the point where he is facing jail time for a mistake his uncle has made with their family-owned bank’s finances. George, upon learning and coming to grips with his dire situation, returns home on Christmas Eve after a fruitless day searching for the lost money. Frustrated, fed up with his life, he rails, throws a tantrum, berates the kids and the “drafty old house” they live in. “It’s like living in a refrigerator,” he yells. And when he reaches for the cap on the newel post of the staircase banister, about to head upstairs, it comes off, loose–as it has always done. But this time, this time . . . He motions to throw it, but, pulling himself back together–at least for the moment–he puts it back in place.

Later, he leaves, heads to a bridge in a blizzard, and considers jumping off, into the cold water, ready to end it all. Just as he is about to take the plunge, Clarence, his guardian angel, who has been observing the entire sad tableau, dives in first. He knows George will be compelled to jump in after him and rescue him to safety, which is exactly what happens. It is at this point that the true magic of this Capra classic reaches its apogee. Clarence ultimately shows George what the world would be like if he’d never been born, how much worse off people would be, how things George has always taken for granted would be wiped away, gone, as if stricken by a sorcerer’s spell. This causes George to realize he’s really lived “a wonderful life,” and he begs Clarence to take him back, to allow him to return to his old life with all the problems and trials and jams.

When George does return, he’s a new man, grateful for the very things he had been cursing before the experience with Clarence began. He runs home, hugs his wife and children, even kisses the loose newel cap when it comes off the post again. And then, of course, we learn that George won’t be going to jail, after all. His wife has set in motion a miracle. The town, his town, is coming to the rescue. And as his brother, Harry, proclaims, amidst the gathering throng of family and friends, George is “the richest man in town.”

Corny? You bet. Sentimental? Gushing! But it’s pure cinematic gold. And every time I watch it, I feel better for the experience.

This year, more so than ever. Because, for all its contrivances and old-fashioned saccharine qualities, It’s A Wonderful Life emphasizes the good things in life, and reminds us that, even amidst pain and loss and hard times, we have things to be thankful for. Yes, it’s true. For me, Christmas will never be the same. There is an absence there that can never be filled again. But watching George Bailey kissing his broken staircase and laughing over his bloodied lip helps me to see that if I feel loss this Christmas season, it means there is something in my life, in my past, that is special enough and pure enough and loving enough to elicit this feeling in the first place. It’s something to embrace, not flee from. To appreciate and value. And remember.