Jimmy Stewart Christmas
Sunday, July 27th, 2008
“Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”
Does that sound familiar? It should, if you’ve ever watched a Christmas special in your life. It’s one of the last lines in It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart, a movie that’s proven itself an absolute classic and oft-repeated movie over the holidays.
It’s a Wonderful Life is the story of George Bailey, a depressed man on Christmas Eve who’s contemplating suicide. Sent to save George is an angel, Clarence, who tries to persuade the angst-ridden George that his life has not been a failure.
To do so Clarence takes George into his own past, where George relives everything he’s done with his life: and in the doing Clarence reveals a sort of rivalry between George and a villainous businessman named Mr. Potter. Potter tries often to develop the area according to his own whims, and George does his best to stop those plans. Usually he does so by making the area a better place to live for its residents, and he succeeds quite nicely.
But on the eve of Christmas everything goes wrong, and Potter sets George up for a financial fall. George, thinking all is lost, tries to kill himself. Then he is stopped by Clarence, and everything is brought back to the start again.
Clarence then takes George into an alternate reality of sorts, one in which George never existed. The area, once bright and lively, is dingy and miserable without George’s positive influence. Having learned this, George begins to feel better about all he’s done.
And, after heading home, his spirits rejuvenated, George learns that his family and friends have covered the financial shortfall. All is saved, and they have a wonderful Christmas together.