Why We Watch It's a Wonderful Life

There is only one movie most people watch around Christmas, and that has to be the ultimate Christmas movie, Frank Capra’s sublime It’s a Wonderful Life.

What’s remarkable to me about this movie is that everyone still watches it and loves it, even though it is unapologetically religious. It’s a Wonderful Life is what Hollywood today would label “faith-based,” even though no one would describe it that way. And yet, it’s inescapable. This is a movie about prayer. It’s a movie about angels and a movie about faith.

Hollywood would never make a movie that dared to say, as It’s a Wonderful Life does, that we all believe in God and that there are such things as angels watching over us and that in times of complete and total helplessness we pray.

Of course, other themes run through the film, like FDR’s New Deal and the lifting up of the poor in the wake of Herbert Hoover (embodied in Mr. Potter). There is no doubt that this was a very left-leaning story with the building and loan and giving of ourselves to share with everyone, which could, in some cases, be seen as socialist ideology pushed into Hollywood content.

Some have called it outright Communist propaganda:

And indeed, the nightmare vision of Bedford Falls as realized by George Bailey is one of capitalist excess. That reflects the worldview of the socialist/communist mindset, but it also reflects, somehow, a world without God.

Seeing it through a political lens, therefore, is a luxury. The fundamental themes that run through this film aren’t about politics so much as about the fundamentals of American life: home, family, God. These are subversive themes that do not factor into movies today unless they’re on the Hallmark Channel or Lifetime.

Maybe that’s why it’s never been “canceled” by our culture, despite how so much of it chafes against the ideals of both the Left and the Right. Ultimately, it tells the story of the kind of America most of us want, and no, that doesn’t mean “whites only.” It means valuing what really matters.

It’s a Wonderful Life was released just after World War II, but it flopped. The production budget was too high. It was viewed as too sentimental by critics, like Bosley Crowther at the New York Times. It was released in January, after Christmas, and more than anything, audiences wanted to escape their troubles.

So why has it endured? It was rediscovered by audiences on television and somehow resonated with future generations who didn’t live through the war and the Great Depression, aka our last Fourth Turning. What’s still shocking about it is that it has endured despite the absence of religion on the Left and especially in Hollywood.

I never thought much about the religious aspect of this film when I turned to it again and again throughout my life to ground me in what really matters. That is the struggle of George Bailey, who wants greatness for himself. He wants to leave Bedford Falls and see the world. One by one, his dreams are dashed as he must give them up for whatever reason - the war, the stock market crash, and finally, marriage and family.

What gets me every time I watch this movie is the end, when we hear those words - no man is a failure who has friends.” It makes me tear up even thinking about it now. That is the lesson that George Bailey learns. He isn’t a failure. His life hasn’t been wasted. Most of us come around to this idea, no matter who we are or what dreams we’ve abandoned.

So thank you, dear readers, for being my friend. I have been hated for so long by so many people, it would be easy to believe their accusations against me, that I’m a terrible person no one likes and whose writing, words, and ideas are “toxic.” But here is proof—30,000 of you—that proves them wrong.

Merry Christmas George Bailey. Merry Christmas to Bedford Falls. Merry Christmas to you.