BreakPoint Blog
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The stories that reflect the Story Have you ever noticed the similarities betwen A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life? I mean, besides the fact that they're both set at Christmas. (That is significant, but I'll get to it in a moment.) Both stories involve a man receiving a special visitation on Christmas Eve, and being taken back through his own past. One man sees the bad things he's done, the other the good. But both are forever changed by the journey. Neither story is overtly religious, and yet both of them are rooted in a religious view of human nature -- and when you take them together, they comprehensively show the Christian view of that nature. The first, at its most basic level, shows us man as a sinner in need of saving; the second shows man as a creature of worth and value. And when you take into account that both their stories take them from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day, it's hard not to see in them the life-changing power of man's encounter with the divine. Ebenezer Scrooge's nephew Fred opines that nothing belonging to Christmas can be "apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin." So read and watch these two stories, but view them in the context to which they belong. You'll see just how faithfully they reflect the greatest Story. |
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I'm not terribly thrilled with NR right now anyway, as the print version recently ran an article about Dickens that was not very nice. To which one can only say (all together now): Bah, humbug!
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/286555/scrooge-first-1-percenter-jim-lacey
No mention of prisons, work houses, or reducing the surplus population...
If George Bailey had been a hard-nosed capitalist like Old Man Potter, how would his town have been different? Oh, wait - the movie tells us.
And Jim Lacey fails to mention what the films dramatize: the effects of dispassionate capitalism on Scrooge, and on Potter. In fact, the major *difference* between "A Christmas Carol" and "It's A Wonderful Life" is the approach to business of Scrooge vs. George Bailey.
Hmmm - would Mary Hatch have dismissed George the way Belle did young Ebenezer, if George had been more devoted to profit?
Double-hmmm - maybe Bob Cratchit would have *welcomed* a lump of coal in his stocking...
But enough of this idle speculation; gotta get ready to go back to work next week.
(Of course, Rolley could have told you I'd do that;
http://images.skymall.com/images/products/f7/29/0c/204076845x.jpg )
Earlier this year you (I think - or maybe Kim?) asked about our favorite movies and what those choices said about us. In addition to these two, I like James Caviezel in "The Count of Monte Cristo". It's not the Christmas theme, but in that movie a man is also gloriously set free - first physically, then later emotionally and spiritually. Seeing someone redeemed before my eyes is very satisfying, I think.
Back to this post, it's also noteworthy that both Ebenezer Scrooge and George Bailey are at the point of death on Christmas Eve (Scrooge apparently via natural causes, or the finger of God, while George is ready to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge). Both have encounters with supernatural beings, providing a Heavenly perspective on the Earthly journey. And upon finding new life (ahem) the next day, they exhibit an almost Pentecostal exuberance not typically observed in Anglicans or Presbyterians. ;-) In one story we're told that the change was permanent, and although the other has a shortened ending we can hardly believe any differently than that George is forever affected.
Ah, yes, much to ponder. Thank you, Gina.