What Are They Celebrating?

I’m sitting up late waiting for the kids to come home and watching an incredibly ancient version of “A Christmas Carol”—dating, I believe, from around 1845, two years after Charles Dickens penned his immortal tale. I don’t recognize any of the actors, and the film isn’t very good compared to later versions. (My personal favorite: The version starring George C. Scott, which I happened to watch earlier in the evening while supervising my husband’s decorating the Christmas tree).

Christmas movies. I own some 30 of them, and as I watched quite a few of them in the last few weeks, it suddenly occurred to me to consider how much any of them really had to do with Christmas.

The answer: Quite often, virtually nothing. In fact, the only film I can think of offhand that has a real, Luke 2 Christmas message in it, besides The Nativity, is Bing Crosby’s Bells of St. Mary’s, in which a gang of adorable children act out Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem and present a classmate’s baby brother as the Christ Child.

Not that the other films don’t try. In Meet Me in St. Louis, Judy Garland tries to convince her dateless sister to attend the Christmas ball with their brother. “And besides,” Garland gushes, “It’s so full of the true spirit of Christmas!” Going to a dance with your brother is the true meaning of Christmas?

With some films, Christmas is merely the holly-jolly background for the story, which has little or nothing to do with Christmas itself—which is not to say the films aren’t good. In one of my all-time favorite films, Christmas in Connecticut (1945), Christmas is a backdrop for a romance between war hero Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) and a food columnist (Barbara Stanwick) who spends Christmas Day on a friend’s farm attempting to prevent both her boss and the handsome guest she’s falling in love with from discovering that she’s actually a single New York apartment-dweller who can’t boil water without burning it—not a married homemaker who lives in the Connecticut countryside.

Some Christmas flicks offer a social gospel message: Help the less fortunate, forgive those who have sinned against you, take care of your family, and treat others as you yourself would want to be treated. But, of course, while these are elements of Christian teaching, they are not the Christmas message of salvation through the newborn Christ Child.    

Some totally secular Christmas films are among the best—or at least the funniest. Among films I never miss at Christmas are A Christmas Story, in which Ralphie longs for a genuine Red Ryder 200-Shot Carbine Action Air Rifle (“You’ll shoot your eye out!”) and 1942’s The Man Who Came to Dinner, a fast-paced farce about a famous writer who slips on the ice while on a lecture tour through the Midwest. He ends up spending Christmas at the home of a bourgeois couple, turning their lives upside down with his outrageous demands and interfering in everyone’s life.

You accept these films for what they are—non-Christmas Christmas films—and enjoy them.

Frequently in more-or-less secular “Christmas” films, the holiday becomes a catalyst for moral change. In the 1940 Preston Sturges film, Remember the Night, a chronic shoplifter (Barbara Stanwick) ends up spending Christmas with the family of a sympathetic district attorney (Fred MacMurray). Stanwick—embraced by a loving family for the first time in her life—undergoes moral reformation in a way that ultimately demands great sacrifice.

A Bill of Divorcement—Katharine Hepburn’s first starring vehicle—also features Christmas as a catalyst for moral change. Hepburn plays a spoiled society girl who quickly matures when her father unexpectedly arrives home on Christmas Day after 20 years in a mental hospital, only to find his wife on the brink of marriage to someone else.

While some Christmas films are fanciful fluff—think White Christmas and Holiday Inn—others have a more authentic edge. The Gathering is one of the most realistic Christmas films I’ve ever watched. Made in 1977, the film features Ed Asner as a wealthy businessman who has, for many years, been estranged from three of his four adult children. When Asner’s character discovers he’s dying of cancer, he wants the kids to come home for one last family Christmas, but doesn’t want them to know he’s sick. The question is, will they come without this knowledge? The film is a reminder that not every family is The Waltons, and they don’t become so just because it’s Christmas.

Since the first production of A Christmas Carol, many Christmas films have had contained a social message. One of the newer ones, Christmas with the Kranks, based on the John Grisham book Skipping Christmas, is an examination of the many shallow ways Americans celebrate Christ’s birth. In particular, we spend far too much money on gifts, decorations, Christmas cards, and parties. But the film sneaks in serious Christian messages when Luther Krank stands in the middle of a snowy street on Christmas Eve, staring into his own windows and realizing how much he has: his wife, a much-loved daughter, a home, good neighbors. And then, Luther impulsively offers his Christmas cruise tickets to a neighbor who’s been persecuting him for weeks. We learn through Luther that we should be grateful for what God has given us, to love our neighbors as we do ourselves, and to offer grace to those who have done nothing to deserve it.

So what are we to make of “Christmas” films? Why do so few of them reflect the “real” meaning of Christmas? Possibly, it’s because in our culture, the celebrations are more secular than sacred. For about six weeks, we decorate the house, buy, wrap, and mail gifts, bake cookies, and attend parties. It’s not until Christmas Eve that we actually celebrate the birth of Christ. And then, first thing the next morning, bang on cue, we’re back to celebrating a “secular” Christmas—plunging into the gifts and stuffing ourselves with a huge dinner. Is it any surprise that Hollywood films reflect this?

Perhaps more to the point, Hollywood and Christianity have never been best buddies, so it’s not surprising that the true meaning of Christian gets lost in Christmas films. It’s a reminder that, as with everything else in the culture, when it comes to “Christmas films,” we have to put on our Christian worldview binoculars and take a close look at what’s being billed as Christianity.

And then we should simply sit back and enjoy some of these wonderful films—starting with what is probably my own all-time favorite, The Bishop’s Wife.

In this 1947 film, we are introduced to a (very handsome) angel named Dudley (Cary Grant) who walks the snowy streets of New York City during the week before Christmas. Dudley helps a blind man cross a street, saves baby’s life when her stroller rolls into the street, and directs traffic for a policeman who wants to check on his laboring wife at a nearby hospital.

This is the sort of thing many Christians believe God’s angels actually do—intervene at critical moments in the lives of humans.

When Dudley encounters a sad-faced woman (Loretta Young), he follows her and discovers she’s the wife of a bishop named Henry Brougham (David Niven) who is obsessed with raising the funds to build a magnificent cathedral—so obsessed that he’s neglecting his wife, young daughter, and friends from the old neighborhood. These old friends now seem far less important than the wealthy parishioners whom the bishop spends his time flattering into donating the funds to build “my cathedral.”

When the necessary funds fail to appear, the despairing bishop prays, “Oh, God, what am I to do? Can’t you help me? Can’t you tell me? Oh God, please help me.”

Dudley is God’s answer to Henry’s prayer. In becoming the Bishop’s assistant, Dudley theoretically frees him up to spend more time with his family and friends. But the bishop—who can think of nothing but his cathedral—is slow in taking advantage of Dudley’s help.

Among the Christian messages of this film: A cathedral should glorify God, not human benefactors. The bishop’s biggest headache, Mrs. George B. Hamilton, says she will donate $1 million dollars on condition the cathedral be built in her late husband’s honor. While Henry initially stands up to her conditions, he ultimately makes “a slight sacrifice of your principles,” as Dudley puts it, in order to get the cathedral built.

“Don’t you think it’s worth it for this glorious edifice?” Henry asks.

“I’m not so sure it’s glory at a time like this,” Dudley responds. “You know, these are lean years for the world. So many people need food. So many people need shelter. That big roof could make so many little roofs.”

While the harried Henry is too busy to pay attention to the human props in his life, Dudley makes time for Henry’s overworked secretary, his unappreciated maid, and his family, even getting down on the floor to tell a story of the biblical David to the bishop’s lonely little girl. Later, Dudley stands in for Henry when the bishop finds himself too busy to hear a boy choir rehearse a hymn that offers adoration to Christ.

The Bishop’s Wife offers a social gospel message—but one that seems appropriate to the post-war years.

The film ends with a lovely Christmas Eve sermon the Bishop delivers after finally learning his own holiday lessons—a sermon that begins:

Once upon a midnight clear there was a child’s cry. A blazing star hung over a stable, and wise men came with birthday gifts. We haven’t forgotten that night down the centuries; we celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, with the sound of bells, and with gifts—but especially with gifts.

We forget nobody—adult or child. All the stockings are filled. All, that is, except one, and we have even forgotten to hang it up. A stocking for the Child born in a manger. It’s His birthday we’re celebrating: don’t let’s ever forget that. Let us ask ourselves what He would wish for most, and then, let each put in his share: loving kindness, warm hearts, and the stretched out hand of tolerance. All the shining gifts that make peace on earth.

In this little sermon, we are told what Christmas is “really” about—not gifts, but the Christ Child, and His ideas about how we should live and treat one another.

So many of the best Christmas films are seldom (or never) shown on television; others are not currently available, and viewers may not be aware that they even exist. Some—like A Bill of Divorcement—are not advertised as Christmas films. Below is my own list of favorite holiday films, in no particular order—especially less familiar films viewers may not have heard of, or seen in decades. Rent them, buy them, enjoy them, and let the best of them lead you to a greater understanding of how God intends us to celebrate, not only Christmas, but the reality of His presence in our lives the year around.

1. I’ll Be Seeing You, 1944, starring Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotton. Mary Marshall (Rogers) meets a good-looking GI (Cotton) on the train as she travels home for Christmas. As they begin to fall in love at her family’s home, Mary keeps from her GI the fact that she is on furlough from prison, where she is serving time for involuntary manslaughter. The soldier, meanwhile, has a secret of his own: He’s been hospitalized for shell shock.

2. Come to the Stable, 1949. Based on a story by Claire Booth Luce, the film stars Loretta Young and Celeste Holm as nuns who travel from France to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to keep a promise they made to God to build a children’s hospital. But few of their new neighbors want the hospital built in their backyard—especially the New York gangster who owns the land the nuns want, and the wealthy songwriter who’s worried about losing his peaceful surrounding. This sweet and amusing film was nominated for six Academy Awards.  

3. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, 2001. Anglophiles will enjoy this feature-length film, in which the great, spats-wearing detective is summoned to a country estate by a wealthy old man who is convinced someone is planning to kill him. (He’s right.)

4. Christmas in Connecticut.

5. The Homecoming, 1971, starring Richard Thomas and Patricia Neal. This film, which inspired the series The Waltons, is a coming-of-age story about a boy’s longing to become a writer in Depression-era Virginia.

6. Remember the Night.

7. Holiday Affair, 1949, starring Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh. I admit, this is a piece of holiday fluff about a war widow whose little boy who wants a train for Christmas, but if you like the two stars (plus Harry Morgan as a wise-cracking cop), you’ll probably enjoy this romantic Christmas film.

8. The Man Who Came to Dinner.

9. A Child’s Christmas in Wales, 1987, starring Denholm Elliott and Mathonwy Reeves. A lovely tale, based on the poem by Dylan Thomas. A grandfather spends a rainy Christmas Eve telling his grandson about a snowy Christmas of his childhood, filled with aunts and uncles, candy cigarettes, and toy whistles that only dogs could hear.

10. In the Good Old Summertime, 1949, starring Judy Garland and Van Johnson. Despite its title, this film is a Christmas story involving two clerks who work (and fight) in a turn-of-the-century music shop in Chicago. What they don’t realize is that they are pen pals. If that plotline sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen You’ve Got Mail or The Shop Around the Corner.

Anne Morse is a senior writer for BreakPoint.