It’s that time of the year! A time when TV channels are inundated with old Christmas movies. C’mon…you have a favorite, don’t you? Sure, for the most part they are schmaltzy, sentimental, sappy, and mostly nostalgic teasing us with thoughts that Christmases past were idyllic if not perfect and tempting us to think this year’s Christmas too can be just perfect.
However, in some small way many such movies are a commentary on the Christmas story or at least someone’s understanding of the Christmas story and the meaning of Christmas. (In my experience the meaning of Christmas seems to differ from person to person.)
Take the Grinch, for example. Different and outcast he was able to steal the physical Christmas, but not the heart of Christmas. Not a bad parable for our time as we too often bury the heart of Christmas in consumerism covered up by calling it gift giving, and yet, somehow, the heart of Christmas breaks through and continues throughout the ages.
It’s a Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart’s character, George Bailey learns the hard way the message of the Incarnation….God at work in and through human flesh. The impact of this savings and loan owner went far beyond interest rates, borrowing, loaning, and investing.
Even Christmas Vacation has a message however hidden in its comedy. Families are dysfunctional (hopefully not as much as the Griswold family) yet somehow in the end most seem to pull off being a family. The baby Jesus, Luke tells us, was born to an unwed couple. In addition, Christmas Vacation seems to be a parody on a Christmas whose meaning is in us and our efforts, and not on any spiritual meaning of Christmas.
Okay, maybe all this is a stretch so I can defend watching some of the schmaltz each year. Yet many seem to have some tug or nod however slight to a piece of the Christmas story.
What is missing in the movies, as in just about everything from Hollywood, is the true reality of life. Sometimes there are not happy endings in life. Missing from the Christmas movies is any hint of a shadow of the cross over the cuddly infant. Matthew tells us at least one of the gifts was a burial spice. Most Christmas movies do not have the scratch of the straw, the stench of a barn, nor the splinters of a manger that give hint to splinters on a cross yet to come and of real life that comes with pain as well as joy.
The Christmas story which we also romanticize and, to continue with a word, schmaltz, is real life. A baby is born into a challenging situation with many struggles yet to come. So often the Christmas story is reduced to our picture of an infant, cozy and wrapped in a blanket. Missing is the news of a God come to earth in this child. Missing is a God willing to stoop to be in a place and a way beneath any god.
I don’t know if God cares that this most powerful of stories becomes so superficial and almost trivial. I just know God seems to think the risk of being so reduced is worth it. God seems to think being with God’s creation and people is worth any and all belittling that may come God’s way from those viewing such a God as weak.
We can enjoy our plastic trees and our LED candles. We can look back nostalgically, and we can think for a moment that the true meaning of Christmas is a warm feeling. Yet somehow the Christmas story breaks through. Somehow it stays with us and will do so long after we are gone.
Life itself is the best commentary on the Christmas story. Neither the Grinches nor the Scrooges of the world can rob Christmas as the story of God coming to earth. Our imperfect efforts nor even our consumerist passion can blot out completely God’s gift to us at Christmas. Hollywood can have their endings. They may cloud or tarnish the Christmas story a bit, but they cannot contain it nor end its message. Joy to the World will always strike a more powerful note. Joy to the World seems somehow to break through our striving to make Christmas dependent upon us.