American actor Jimmy Stewart, center, sits glumly at a bar in a scene from the film "It's a Wonderful Life," directed by Frank Capra, California, 1946.
RKO Pictures/Getty Images“It’s a Wonderful Life” opens on the black-and-white-and-snow-covered streets of Bedford Falls, a quaint picturesque town some place in Upstate New York. It’s a far cry from coastal California, where snow falls once in a blue moon and never sticks.
Still, every year as a child, my family would pile onto our old worn futon in the living room and pop in the tape of this 1946 classic Christmas film (and later the DVD, when that tech came around). My California Christmases were defined by driving round neighborhoods looking at lights, holding candles and singing hymns on Christmas Eve, and watching George Bailey struggle and fail to leave Bedford Falls, positively impacting the lives of all those around him in the process.
This year, I’ve found myself longing for family and togetherness more than ever. I haven’t seen my family in over a year thanks to COVID-19, and I’m not sure when I’ll get to see them next. But I could bring back one family tradition: an annual rewatch of the Christmas classic.
The danger of nostalgia is that it can be broken when confronted by the reality of the past, and there’s a reason “It’s a Wonderful Life” hasn’t become part of my holiday traditions as an adult. I was raised in a conservative Christian household by a pastor, and though I tried my best to abide by the church’s teachings, I also find myself chafing against them (All women must suffer pain during childbirth for something one woman did once? Really??). As an adult, I embraced feminism and my bisexuality, and found a new freedom outside the rigid conservative framework I was raised in.
For my father, I knew “It’s a Wonderful Life” resonated as a religious message. Townsfolk pray for the main character, who is guided by an angel. But could it still have a message for lil ol’ agnostic lost sheep me?
I settled into my (newer) sofa during a cool but decidedly not snowy California evening to see.
What I found was a movie that seemed almost eerily written to speak to Christmas in 2020.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a simple film, based on a short story sent out as a Christmas card to a few hundred people (and in case you somehow haven’t seen it yet, consider this a spoiler tag). A young, ambitious George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) is intent on traveling the world and making something of himself, but each time he almost leaves Bedford Falls, those hopes are dashed by family drama or the villainous moneybags Mr. Potter.
At his lowest point, Bailey goes to a bridge to throw himself into the icy waters below, then the angel Clarence appears to turn Bailey’s perspective around by taking him to an alternate reality where he had never been born.
It is not a pleasant reality. Quaint Bedford Falls is now Pottersville. Bars, dance halls and casinos line main street. His mother is a grouchy old boarding house landlady. His brother died young and never became a World War II hero. Worst of all, Bailey’s wife, Mary, is (gasp!) an old maid librarian!
Bailey feels horrified by what he sees, and begs to return to the world where he exists.
“He doesn’t realize how profoundly he’s changed the world,” my dad says when I call him up to ask why this movie is still important to him all these years later. “And I think that’s true with everybody, we don’t realize how we’ve touched people’s lives for good or for bad.
“Clarence says, uh,” and here, I can hear my father choking up over the phone, which is one thing I’ve always loved about him, how easily he cries. “He says, ‘You’ve been given a great gift, George,’ towards the end of his alternative reality. And that is a great gift. Occasionally we get those gifts, like when someone says, ‘You may not remember this but you said this and it gave me a new look on life.’”
This being a Christmas movie, there is of course a happy ending: Bailey returns to his own universe full of newfound joy. He discovers that, in his absence, his community has rallied around him to save him from ruin.
It’s not a perfect film, and parts of it haven’t aged well. Even as a child I never understood the horror at Mary’s fate sans George Bailey. She was still pretty in glasses and got to work at the coolest of places, a library! The only Black character in the film is Annie, the maid, which, while not unusual for movies of the time, is always hard to watch. And the movie introduces Clarence by saying he has “the IQ of a rabbit,” which, gross.
But it is still a good film, and a prescient one. Rewatching it this year, I was shocked by all the ways it resonated with the world in 2020. In George Bailey’s childhood, a character dies offscreen of Spanish flu. Much of Bailey’s young adulthood takes place during the Great Depression, with Bailey struggling to hold the community together, to keep people fed and housed amid predatory business interests. Today, more than 50 million Americans face food insecurity, and more people are resorting to shoplifting to meet their basic needs. Evictions on renters are currently suspended in California, but come Feb. 1, those protections expire. Small businesses are closing because they are unable to pay back rent and bills with no revenue coming in. Meanwhile, big companies like Amazon (the Mr. Potters of the world) see their revenue soar (the irony that “It’s a Wonderful Life” is streaming on Amazon Prime is not lost on me).
During a run on the banks early on in the film, George Bailey uses his own savings to pay out all the panicked Building and Loan members, pleading with them to only take what they need to get by. At the end of the panic, the company is left with only $2, but it’s enough to survive. It’s a moment that today would be called mutual aid, and it’s echoed at the end of the film when the whole community turns out to give George Bailey their savings.
I confess: I cried. And not just because I imagined how great it would be to stand in a crowded room singing carols without fear in that last scene. I cried because of the belief in possibility that “It’s a Wonderful Life” represents. That each of us can make a difference, and that as a community we can build each other up. At a time when the whole country feels divided over politics and business and whether to wear a mask (please, wear a mask), I cried because the belief that we can come together to support one another seems so hopeful and unattainable. But maybe it’s a message that will change some people’s hearts.
“Doing the next right thing is always simple,” my father says. “A simple attitude. But sometimes it’s not very easy. ... And you need a power greater than yourself to do it, God.”
As a child watching “It’s a Wonderful Life,” I saw in it a message of vindication, a “you’ll be sorry when I’m gone.” I fantasized about my own disappearance and how everyone who dismissed me or treated me poorly would regret my loss. As I said, childish. But this holiday season, I found the film had a different message: What can I do, I wondered, to lead a life like George Bailey? What are the ways in which I can put more good into the world than bad? As my father says, it’s simple, but it’s not always easy. After watching the movie, I decide to take an easy step and set up a monthly donation to a local food bank. As “It’s a Wonderful Life” shows, sometimes our small actions have big repercussions we can’t even imagine.
