Miracle Revisited

This past week, I showed my high school freshman classes the holiday classic, Miracle on 34th Street – the original (and best) version from 1947, starring Maureen O’Hara, Natalie Wood, and, in what may have been the casting coup of the first half the 20th century, Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle.  (Much like Alastair Sim’s Ebeneezer Scrooge, Gwenn’s performance ruined for me all subsequent film Santas.)  I was somewhat surprised to discover that very few of the students had ever heard of the film, much less seen it, and I was genuinely curious to see what their reaction might be.  (It is interesting how students nowadays don’t get overly excited about the idea of watching a movie in class, since they spend more than half their days looking at screens anyway.  Old black & white films can be a particularly hard sell.  But, on the whole, it seemed to me they did enjoy it.)

Growing up, I must have seen Miracle at least fifty times, though I hadn’t watched it in perhaps the past decade or so.  As I took a seat at the back of the class and viewed along with the students, there were several things that, in my own childhood, I hadn’t really noticed, but now, with an older and more analytical eye, caught my attention.

Alfred’s Guilt Complex.  One of the minor characters in the movie is Alfred, a portly, young custodian who, during the holiday season, enjoys donning a Santa costume and handing out presents to children at the local YMCA.  When a hack psychologist convinces Alfred that his altruistic desires must spring from a guilt complex, Kris takes great offense and confronts the weasely shrink in his office.  Kris is clearly the hero, stating his admiration for legitimate psychiatry, yet his disdain for those who wield it with malice or incompetence.  Ah, a man capable of making distinctions.  We could use more of those in the world today.  I laughed aloud (perhaps a bit too loudly, judging from the response of some of my students) when Kris rebukes the shrink, telling him that he ought to be “horse-whipped.”  In our politically correct culture in which language has become sterile, it’s refreshing to hear something so direct and apropos.  (I’m not condoning capricious threats of violence but, dang, aren’t they sometimes the very thing that’s needed?)  It also occurred to me that, though the desire to do good is a reflection of God’s own benevolence, woven into the fabric of our humanity at Creation, guilt as a motivating factor is not necessarily a bad thing.  After all, Scrooge’s post-conversion charity was fuelled in part by his desire to do penance for the sins (largely of omission) of his past.  And such is likely the case, in varying degrees, for most of us.

Both sides are wrong.  One thing that struck me in revisiting this film is the way in which it reflects a microcosm of the American political spectrum (no arc of which, I would argue, can be reconciled with the one true faith).  Fred Gailey, the young attorney who befriends and later represents Kris, symbolizes at least in some ways, the political left.  For the idealistic Gailey, the truth regarding the existence of Santa, and whether kind old Kris is indeed that person, is ultimately not essential.  What matters are the warm fuzzy feelings (what he refers to as “lovely intangibles”) that a belief in something, be it true or false, can afford us.  In other words, truth is something subservient to sentiment.  But sentiment requires the edifice of legitimacy.  And to that end, Gailey cleverly manipulates the legal system to achieve a desired end, namely, to prove that something false is true.  (This brought to mind fairly recent legal rulings handed down with regards to marriage, as well as popular sentiment regarding gender and sexuality.)

Then we have the character of Charlie Halloran (played by William Frawley, perhaps best known as Fred Mertz from I Love Lucy).  Charlie is political advisor and campaign manager to Judge Harper, who resides over the case to decide whether or not Santa Claus is real.  In what has become perhaps my favorite scene in the film, Charlie makes it clear to the judge that a ruling proclaiming the fictitiousness of Santa will have devastating economic and political effects.  “Now, what happens to all the toys that are supposed to be in those stockings?” he rhetorically puts forth to the judge, then answering his own question, “Nobody buys them!”  Union employees will exact their revenge with votes, points out the cigar-toting Charlie, leaving the judge to hang up his robe.  This wonderfully acted scene perfectly encapsulates the political right’s embracing and elevation of capitalism, under which truth is subservient to material gain and (a false understanding of) power.

Faith is … what?  There’s a powerful line delivered by Maureen O’Hara’s character, Doris Walker, toward the end of the film.  It’s a scene in which, after having come around to the worldview of her suitor, Fred Gaily (the lefty), she instructs her daughter (played by young Natalie Wood) that, “Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.”  To that maxim, little Susie replies, “That doesn’t make any sense, Mommy.”  Watching the movie as a kid, I didn’t appreciate that little Susie was right.  Faith, of course, since it deals with knowledge that is revealed, requires trust.  However, we also know that faith, quite the opposite of being contrary to “common sense,” is something built upon the solid foundation of reason.  To quote Pope John Paul II, “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of Truth.”

The Real Miracle.  I must admit that, despite my conscious efforts to emulate Mr. Spock, I probably tend more towards the likes of Bones McCoy.  (That is to say, for any non-Trekkies, that I’m a bit of a sentimental romantic at heart.)  As such, I admit that, on the whole, I still enjoy watching films like Miracle on 34th Street – films that are well written, acted, and produced, and that deftly tickle the vulnerable underbelly of human emotion.  That said, here’s something to consider…  If we truly believe that God, the creator and king of time and space, of the universe and all it contains, robed himself in human flesh, entered into his own creation as a helpless infant through the womb of a virgin, united his divinity to our humanity so that our humanity might be elevated to the divine…  If we truly believe all that constitutes the true “Christmas magic,” then what need, really, do we have of a fat man in a red suit and flying reindeer?