It's A Wonderful Life

Written by Paul Donovan

As I grow older, I find it much more difficult to express my reflections on Christmas. Much has been written on the commercialization of Christmas and the need to return to a more family based ideal but even that message seems to have lost some meaning for me.   

One of my favorite Christmas movies is “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. It has become a traditional film for the season and it certainly fits the Hallmark “back to family” message, but that isn’t the theme that I want to look at.  For those who may not be aware, the premise of the film is a guardian angel, Clarence, who comes to the aid of George, a man who has begun to despair due to circumstances in his life.  The angel intervenes by showing George what life would have been like had he never been born.  George realizes that no matter how bleak his situation, he has had a wonderful life and that it is worth living.

As principal of a school like Loyola, I have the privilege of sharing in the lives of many families.  So what happens to Christmas when the circumstances of our lives take a turn for the worse?  It can seem so unfair that difficult times beset us in the midst of a season that celebrates life and family.  But in one way, that it is really why we have Christmas.  Three years ago, I spent my last Christmas with my father.  I remember feeling somewhat frustrated that he wasn’t feeling well and didn’t come out of his room to celebrate with the rest of the family.  As the evening drew to a close, my mother asked me and my brothers if we could help my Dad take a shower.  While this wasn’t my ideal way of spending Christmas night, the scene of my brothers and me helping Dad to the shower has become one of my most cherished memories.  The next day he was in hospital and died several months later.

We have done a nice job of romanticizing the manger scene.  We provide a nice cozy bed of straw and warm clean animals to gaze beautifully at the little child who lay sleeping so peacefully in the hay.  The romantic version is a tranformation of the dirty, smelly circumstances into which God became one of us, and in that sense it is quite appropriate.  Christmas is a celebration of light entering into our darkness and transforming it into something more beautiful than anything we can imagine.  At the darkest time of the year, we celebrate the coming of the light.  It was that intervention that made the story of “It’s a Wonderful Life” so powerful.  George’s circumstances hadn’t changed but, through the intervention of the angel, he saw his life in a new light.  My Christmas with my Dad did not match my nostalgic ideals of what Christmas should be, but it was transformed through the gift of my father’s weakness and eventual death.  These are our manger scenes.

This Christmas, if our circumstances are such that life is good and healthy, then let it be a time of great gratitude and a time where we can be instruments of Christ’s light to others.  If, on the other hand, we find ourselves in a place where the darkness looms heavy, then we pray that we can be open to the grace of Christmas, open to transforming light that dispels the darkness and gloom.  May we, with St. Paul, realize that “for those who love God, everything works out for good.” (Rom. 8) May you all have a merry and blessed Christmas.