Who Has Friends

It’s a Wonderful Life is my favorite Christmas movie. But it wasn’t always.

I grew up in a household that wasn’t overly sentimental about Christmas. In my childhood, the holiday was mostly about the presents, and I wouldn’t come to appreciate that time with my grandmother, parents, sister, and an uncle who trained into the town each December until around my teenage year--—a sense of gratitude that overlapped with the realization those days were numbered, as my sister started hanging out with friends more and me less, after we sold my grandmother’s house and she moved into an senior citizens’ apartment building, then after I went away to college and my parents split up and my uncle stopped coming every year, and then my sister did the same—

Sometime in those teenage years, before I left the house, but after it had become apparent to me that Christmases, like all other aspects of my life, would change, I fell in love with It’s a Wonderful Life.

My sister liked it before I did. I can only assume that she was exposed to it through someone else’s family, because though my mother had seen it and liked it well enough, she rolled her eyes at the idea of watching the same movie over and over, year after year. But at some point in our teenage years, it became a family tradition, and we watched it Christmas Eve or Christmas night, whenever NBC showed it that year.

It can be difficult to quantify why this movie remains my favorite now. I’m not a student of film, and I tend to balk at older pictures for their production value and, for this era, the annoyances of the Transatlantic accent that keeps me from getting lost in the world of a film. For better or for worse, It’s A Wonderful Life is the only black and white picture I own, much less the only one I’m inclined to watch time and again. On top of that, there’s a lot of contrivance to the film, which takes bold jumps through time in service to its plot, in service to its payoff, often as not in un-artful ways. Objectively, I can more readily appreciate Elf or The Family Stone, and even Home Alone has a longer track record of nostalgic value for me, for having loved it from elementary school on.

And yet.

The closing minutes of It’s a Wonderful Life are no less of an emotional wrecking ball for me now than they were when I first encountered this film twenty or so years ago. When George Bailey runs down the snowy street, cheering like a maniac at every familiar landmark, I put aside that his reaction is derivative of Scrooge after he was visited by three spirits, and instead bask in the wonder of a life well-lived. That this character is home and, more than he ever has in his life, appreciates that home and all of the people and places in it. When he gets home, he kisses the broken piece of his banister, for the sheer fact that that daily annoyance is a part of the life he’s lived and loved. He scoops up his eager children in his arms, kisses his wife, and only stops long enough to receive his bounty--a small fortune that his friends have amassed for him because his building and loan office was in trouble.

And then there’s that final moment. A bell rings and George finds a gift left behind by his guardian angel, Clarence--a copy of Tom Sawyer with the inscription, Remember no man is a failure who has friends. A more jaded viewer might dismiss the message as propaganda: a suggestion to the working class that we shouldn’t want for more, for what really matters are not material things, but human connections and we ought to be happy just the way we are. It’s a pain getting older, as such readings seep into my consciousness. They can almost spoil the moment.

But then I make the choice for myself, at Christmastime, to be a less discerning viewer. I remember Christmases long ago, in my grandmother’s old parlor with the artificial tree and all of the fragile shining ornaments, strands of tinsel, and strings of light. The joy of presents, yes, but also the joy of family at a time like that, too. And not only family. I remember Christmases spent at my best friend’s house with his family and rolling dice and listening to stories about the fights his father got into when he was a teenager, and the parties I hosted each December in Baltimore with White Elephant gift exchanges and far too many people for my little, overheated apartment. I think not only of Christmas, either, but a thousand moments in a thousand places--my friends from the college newspaper and the guys I played basketball with in high school, a cappella shows, and long road trips and the kinds of friends I can go years without seeing only to come together again without skipping a beat.

Remember no man is failure who has friends.

When I put aside cynicism and give myself over to the holiday sentimentality, I can believe in Clarence’s inscription. By extension, I can feel good about myself for the life I’ve lived, less on account of accomplishments or potential for the future, than for the simple fact of the people I’ve known and loved.