Dec. 3: Christmas movies: Timeless or Trite?

Bless my mom, who gave me the title for this note. She hopes I will examine such fare as White Christmas, Bells of St. Mary's, It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, The Grinch, Elf, and Love Actually. 

How terrible it is that I have never seen any of those movies.

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As much as I champion On Her Majesty's Secret Service for being the best Christmas movie of all time (Die Hard is not a Christmas movie), I still have to tip my hat to A Christmas Carol. It is unique for several reasons, one of which is that it has one of the least sympathetic protagonists in all of literature.

Come on, kids, and let's go back to Grade 7 language arts class where we learned that the protagonist is someone who is trying to accomplish something; the antagonist is someone (or something) that is trying to stop the protagonist from doing so. We learned that there are three kinds of protagonist/antagonist relations. There is man against man (James Bond trying to stop Blofeld from unleashing chemical warfare on the world.) There is man against nature (see Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea) and there is man against himself (like Prince in Purple Rain.)

In A Christmas Carol, Ebeneezer Scrooge is the protagonist. His goal is to live out his life as a stingy bitter old man. His mission fails because of the intervention of four ghosts and a whole bunch of visions. In the end, it wound up being a dream (or did it) and Scrooge winds up saving the life of Tiny Tim. And God bless us, every one.

Now I'm a sucker for A Christmas Carol and its endless variations. I liked An American Christmas Carol, starring Fonzie himself, Henry Winkler, as the Scrooge stand-in, Benedict Slade. I liked the Bill Murray movie, Scrooged. My friend, Stephen Hair*, played Scrooge for nearly 30 years at Theatre Calgary's annual stage production of the show. I've seen the play a few times and one year, I went backstage and surprised him with a copy of his favourite novel, Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. I went to a local church to see a production of A Christmas Carol and was delighted to see that an estranged friend, Mushybee, was in the cast. Thank God because we became friends again after that.**

I am less enamoured with cartoon versions of A Christmas Carol - Muppets, Mickey Mouse, and the computerized version starring Jim Carrey. I guess Alastair Sim, who died when I was three, is my favourite cinematic Scrooge. I detested a musical version, filmed in 1970, where Dame Edith Evans portrayed the Ghost of Christmas Past as an old lady in red rather than the young satyr-like being that is the way that ghost is supposed to be and where Scrooge (Albert Finney)*** sang a song about how he likes being miserable.

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My mom's favourite movie is Holiday Inn, which is about a guy who opens a holiday inn on his Connecticut farm as a way of dealing with heartbreak. I think my mom watches it every year. My dad makes fun of her for this, asking if anything is going to change in the movie since the last time she watched it. But dad doesn't understand what my mom and I know - watching an old movie is like visiting an old friend. There is enormous comfort that comes from viewing a beloved movie or television show. Science backs me up on this.

Holiday Inn contains music that was written by Irving Berlin. Two of the songs are White Christmas and Easter Parade. Here is what the writer, Philip Roth, said about this coup in Operation Shylock:

The radio was playing “Easter Parade” and I thought, But this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin “Easter Parade” and “White Christmas.” The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ — the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity — and what does Irving Berlin brilliantly do? He de-Christs them both! Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow. … He turns their religion into schlock. But nicely! Nicely! So nicely the goyim don’t even know what hit ‘em. They love it. Everybody loves it. … If schlockified Christianity is Christianity cleansed of Jew hatred, then three cheers for schlock. If supplanting Jesus Christ with snow can enable my people to cozy up to Christmas, then let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"

In reality, Berlin wasn't trying to get one over on the Christians. He was just following his assignment, which was to write a song about every one of the holidays. I don't fault him for writing a secular song. No one should be forced to celebrate something they don't believe in.  

Yes, that also applies to bakers of wedding cakes.

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I don't know what Philip Roth would have thought of the Charlie Brown Christmas special, which put the Christ back into Christmas via Linus Van Pelt's recital of the nativity narrative according to St. Luke. Seeing as how he's a Christian and that his last name starts with Van, I am assuming that Linus and Lucy attend a Christian Reform Church (though Lucy is likely less happy about this than her brother.)

Charlie Brown is the protagonist of the Charlie Brown Christmas special. He is also the antagonist. His goal is to feel good about Christmas. The problem is that he's allowed himself to become so jaded that he can't find any joy in the season of comfort and joy. Everything changes when he hears the gospel. So Christopher Hitchens was wrong. Religion doesn't poison everything; it didn't poison the Charlie Brown Christmas special. It elevated it.

Okay, Mr. Critic. Charlie Brown Christmas was about two religions colliding - Christianity and consumerism. Valid point. But I'll take the New Testament over anything I might find wrapped under the tree 22 days from now. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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* I haven't spoken with him in years. A while ago, I thought I might still make a splash on the Canadian theatre scene as a playwright. The older I get, the more I realize that won't happen and the less worthy I feel to be friends with theatre folk. And that is the reason. I don't want to bore them with my wistfulness.

** We are still friends. She is six inches taller than me and can punch me in the face with her elbows.

*** If you're keeping score, this is the second note in a row where I mention Albert Finney.