Different Takes

Tonight I was reading a post from St. Benedict's Table

It starts out:

Steve Bell sent an e-mail message to me the other day, in which he invited me to engage a conversation around the way in which this society "does" Christmas. At the heart of his e-mail was a fairly hefty question: given the past year's run of natural disasters, the continuing HIV/AIDS tragedy in Africa, the ongoing holocaust that is world hunger, and the horrors of seemingly endless war and violence (Iraq, Palestine, the Sudan and Uganda, to name just the obvious few), does our version of Christmas make any sense? Does is proclaim anything truthful into these situations of despair and loss? Or is it simply bizarre - even morally wrong - to continue to celebrate Christmas in the tried and true ways, when quite clearly there is no "peace on earth?"

which is very thought provoking and I have no problem with.

At another point, the author (Jamie Howison) says:

"But sadly, when it comes to Christmas, the modern imagination has been shaped far more by Dickens than by the Gospels."

and

"It is all supposed to turn out well, just as it does for Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life."

Now, it just so happens that my hubby loves movies, and this year bought some Christmas titles, including A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. So while I generally agree with Howison's post, I found his use of these stories to represent the trivialization of Christmas to be, well, wrong.

Dickens' story as well as Capra's have at their core a deep reflection of justice issues. Dickens wrote the story to address the inequities of society in a way that people would understand. And what a better model of how the rich hoarde and lord than the infamous Potter?

This year as I watched the moview, I wondered, How did I miss this? How did I think this was lite holiday fare? While drawing upon images that are heartwarming and optimistic, there is a darkness to these movies in that they reflect fundamental inequities of society. More than "life is good and Christmas is a time of love", I found these movies had an underlying theme of "Life is full of injustice and good people must stand up against it."