There was a girl sitting on a step one rainy night in Iverstown. She was on her way back home, carrying nothing but a suitcase and a lot of reluctance. Then a stranger appeared, and in a small, brief moment, her lonesomeness lifted.
Around this time of year, a few films are released and others recycled on the telly to cash-in on that popular consensus that we should all be practicing togetherness. Yet the most popular Christmas films often feature a barely disguised theme of utter despair. Frank Capra’s quintessential It’s a Wonderful Life is an obvious example.
Meet Me in St Louis is another one. Vincente Minnelli’s beautiful tapestry of a family in the early 1900s doesn’t aim for a melodrama or heartstrings. Instead, the drama is rather restrained, with the detail of family dynamics providing more than enough fare. Judy Garland introduced the world to the popular Christmas song Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas with a scene in which no Christmas song has ever been more pertinent.
While essentially not a Christmas film, Douglas Sirk’s All The Heaven Allows used Christmas as a method to illustrate Cary Scott’s (Jane Wyman) growing isolation. In a pivotal scene, Cary stares into the blank screen of her new television, which merely stares back at her with her own reflection.
Now, while all of these films do an excellent job at reminding us all of what should be important, something I always go back to at Christmas without fail isn’t actually a film at all, but rather a couple of episodes of a favourite television series. In an early Christmas special, Bewitched featured a story in which Darin and Samantha visit an orphanage to take care of a young boy during the holidays. Cynical and restless, he’s almost a portrait of Scrooge’s Christmas-past.
In a funny and heartwarming departure from the usual theme of the series, Samantha decides in quite a small minute to reveal her witch identity to the boy, and take him flying on a broomstick to visit the real Santa and discover for himself what Christmas is all about. The episode is spot-on perfect and really shows everything that this show is remembered for.
Again, much later in the series, Bewitched delivered another amazing special. But this time, things got political. Using a story written by a class of school kids, this episode dealt with some friends of the Stephens who happen to be black. Tabitha likes to refer to her friend Lisa as her sister, but as girl at the playground points out, she can’t be her sister because she’s a different colour. Worse, a client of Darin’s decides he’s too “unstable” to take care of his account when he mistakenly believes Darin to be in an interracial relationship.
In a scene that would undoubtedly have caused a stir in 1970, Samantha uses a twitch of her nose to make Darin’s racist client see everyone in the room as black – even himself. Later of-course, he sees the errors of his ways and makes a heartfelt apology, even joining them all for Christmas dinner.
Redemption, forgiveness, appreciation and generosity all culminate to counteract the enduring theme of loneliness that permeates all of the most loved Christmas stories. Is feeling all alone at this time of year one of our biggest fears? Do we respond to stories like these because they remind us of what’s important? It all seems rather schmaltzy when you think about it literally, but somehow, in all those months either side of December, we do seem to find it difficult to black out the distractions and hone in on what we’d like to be most enduring.
