The War on Christmas: Redux

17Dec07

George Bailey, Bill O’Reilly, Henry Potter, Sean Hannity, Scrooge, Michelle Malkin, Micheal Savage, and Frank Capra on the War on Christmas

 

The long long war on Christmas has been co-opted by infidels.  In the early days of this epic conflict, this war could have been described as a minor league guerrilla operation. The body counts were low, traffic tended to flow uninterrupted,  there were no bombs or grenades going off, it flew below the radar, and like the current war on terror,  it was difficult to know who the bad guys were.   

Unlike the current phase of the war on Christmas,  there were no attempts then to pin the nefarious enterprise of eroding the Christian holy day upon some shadow enemy with names no one in history ever heard of like “Islamo-Fascist” and the like.  

No, until recently, the war on Christmas had been more subtle, and the enemies more anonymous, and water boarding had not been a part of the process.  But times are rapidly changing.   

Historians might have seen the origin and beginnings of the war on Christmas in Dickens.  The proverbial symbol of a lump of coal along with the very un-Christmas like the bah humbug (no “Merry Christmas for Scrooge”)  attitude may have marked the beginning of the war.  But it was also present in Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  

In those early days of the war as depicted by Capra,   the spirit of Christmas was set upon by collective apathy and threats from materialistic forces, as symbolized in the mean old banker (Old man Potter) who tries to take over the town of Bedford Falls by capitalizing on other’s misfortune. 

Yet in both of those epic tales,  Christmas wins,  Christians win,  and the need for political correctness on holiday sentiment is not even in play.  In Capra’s film, there was not a single threat from any character played by a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, nor Atheist to be found, although it should be remembered that Jimmy Stewart’s character (George Bailey) is in a strong state of doubt about God just when he jumps in an attempted suicide into the frozen river below the bridge. 

I suppose his agnosticism should be acknowledged along with the pure Mammon like character of old man Potter who could have doubled for Scrooge any day.    

Frankly,  if there were a specific enemy to be found in the early days of the war on Christmas,  it would have to have been in the generic cynicism that Jimmy Stewart displayed, or the crass materialism that was shown as the alter ego of the town of Bedford Falls during Stewart’s dream when he returned as a ghost to the renamed  town of Pottersville, the namesake of the materialistic and unholy banker played by Lionel Barrymore.   Pottersville was the symbolic embodiment of a town that had become a godless, materialistic, faithless enterprise that all could see had lost hold of its Christmas spirit.  And as if to underline the point,  Mary the woman that George Bailey might have married, (had he not committed suicide in a fit of agnosticism and rage over not being able to keep up with the Jones’s), and whose name might be construed as to have had a biblical namesake,  had become a barren, loveless, frightened, and lost person without a faithful George at her side as the George’s angel reveals to him in a Dickens like revisit to a world without George in it.   

Yet despite the symbolic roles assigned to George Bailey, and Henry F. Potter as ultimately good and evil characters,  most viewers of Capra’s film at the time would have agreed that the slippery slope leading from god to godless, or Christmas Spirit to crass materialism was not lined with Islamo-fascists nor any other named group against Christians, but was a slope contained in all of us:  contained in our souls.  

It was nothing more than the self doubt about god reflected in the character of George Bailey just as effectively as presented in the challenges of Job.  Put another way,  liberals were not responsible for the symbolic slide toward Pottersville.   Not then.    

So given the original anonymity of the enemy of Christmas, i.e., our collective bouts with agnosticism,  what is most interesting is that the war on Christmas today now has distinct players all lined up neatly either on the side of either good or evil.  On the one hand, one group is in the role of all good Christians, and the other in the role of, well,  godless liberals. 

The preeminently good players, i.e., the Christians,  might be symbolized by the likes of outwardly Christian folks like Sean Hannity,  Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly,  or even Tony Snow who recently spoke about the second war on terror being the “war on god” which was supposedly being waged from the pulpits of liberal universities. 

Kindly note that all of these advocates for god are highly conservative Republican types who echo the sentiments of large swaths of the Christian Right of today in their defense of Christmas against godless liberal pagans sometimes known more simply as “dems.” 

Put another way, as odd as it may seem at first,  Michael Savage might get to play George Bailey (and get to kiss Donna Reed as a bonus, whooee), and a skinny Ted Kennedy would get to play Harry F. Potter and spit on poor people, especially if they are minorities.   

This creation of opposing sides in the war on Christmas is a very interesting new development, especially in light of the politics of that most famous of the early warriors of god,  the one an angel converted from agnosticism, a little like a modern version of Saul of Tarsus who became Paul of the new testament:    George Bailey of Bedford Falls. 

Unfortunately for the war effort, George Bailey who rescued Baileyville’s Christmas from the grip of a godless Pottersville, displayed all the traits of a bleeding heart liberal,  and old man Potter who strove to take Christmas out of Bedford falls and banish it from Pottersville had all the traits of un unrestrained, free market, capitalist who would just as soon load your socks   with lumps of coal while smoking Cuban cigars.    

Let’s take a look at George.  First,  he places the savings and loan he runs,  in complete jeopardy by loaning to the great unwashed masses or who old man Potter calls the “rabble.”  He even loans money to black women and Italian bartenders no less, much to the chagrin of more experienced business managers like old man Potter at the Bank across the way. 

Further, in the process of catering to the less than fortunate,  he outwardly states his pride in being able to provide credit to the middle class so that they can enjoy some of the fruits of this great land.   Fruits like home ownership. He is not just stuck working with the lower and middle class,  he does it by choice and he is proud of it.  Partly because of this liberal flight of fancy,  he winds up having no money to invest in a “ground floor opportunity” in the plastics industry.  Others will profit from making “plastics from soybeans,” but not George,  he has been giving away too much of the banks money to poor people to invest elsewhere.   

Worse than that,  he hires and maintains employment for people who are mentally handicapped.  His decision to keep Uncle Billy, whose mental incompetence and tendencies toward alcoholism are obvious,  and it becomes the trigger for the run on the Savings and Loan that Harry F. Potter is so eager to exploit. 

In a far greater flight to liberal fancy,  he succeeds in helping the town floozy  to move away from the streets toward a wholesome life in the middle class and a new life in New York.  

Finally,  he gives up on the offer of a huge salary from Potter, just because he believes more in what he is doing (helping the rabble) than in surpassing the Jones’s at the expense of his conscience.   

Now, for Harry F. Potter:    Mr. Potter is the recipient of a large deposit intended for the Bailey Savings and Loan that is delivered to him accidentally by Uncle Billy,  the mental incompetent employed by the liberal George Bailey.  Mr. Potter,  free market capitalist that he is,  recognizes that he can make a financial gain at the expense of George Bailey’s savings and loan and destroy the competition in the process. 

The retention of deposit being nothing more than a white collar crime,  Potter does not think twice about returning the found money to the rightful owner.  He’s capitalist to the core in all of its unfettered glory where only the strong get to win. 

We learn during the dream sequence of the film where we see what life would be like with Potter running things that:  the town floozy would become the town prostitute, Uncle Billy would be committed to an insane asylum, the entire town would become a commercialized secular enterprise controlled by Potter, and the Italian bartender would become the purveyor of “hard liquor” to men who wanted to drink hard and get drunk fast.  It may be assumed that the Italian rabble that he is,  does not become a homeowner in Potterville.   

So in this war on the spirit of Christmas, which I suggest really does go on within all of us as a sort of nagging doubt about the goodness of life, or even the godliness of life,  it is good to keep a perspective on the battlefield and where it lies.  It lies within all of us if the book of Job, or the doubting of Thomas, or the early attitudes of an unconverted Paul are to be believed as presented to us in that book of ages called the bible.    

Yet I further suggest that there is a distinct irony in how the war is now being portrayed as a battle between godless liberalism and godly republicanism.

 

That view is very much at odds with the sentiment of a movie that many of us would agree sits comfortably in the hopeful and generous heart of many Americans as symbolic of us as Americans and as a people.  It is symbolic of our belief in the ultimate triumph of good over mere mercantilism.

 

But what is most ironic in the polarization of Christmas, is that when looking at that beloved film through the prism of the new war on Christmas,  I find it so easy to see Hannity,  Savage, Malkin,  and O’Reilly standing tall behind old man Potter all the while mocking George Bailey for his wacko liberal views on life and as they root for him to fail in his progressive vision of Baileyville as a town filled with middle class people with homes of their own living in dignity and voting like democrats. 

Merry Christmas 

 

    

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