It's A Wonderful Life Because It's A Wonderful Christmas

It’s a Wonderful Life Because It’s a Wonderful Christmas!

In 1946, the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life came out and quickly became an American Christmas film classic. The movie was based on a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1843, called The Greatest Gift. In the movie, George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) has given up his own personal dreams in order to help others in his community attain their dreams. After many years, through no fault of his own, a packet of money which was supposed to be deposited into a larger bank was lost. Because of the loss of that money, his small Savings and Loan was on the brink of bankruptcy, and he personally was facing financial ruin and possible imprisonment. On Christmas Eve, while entertaining thoughts of suicide, his guardian angel appeared, and in a fashion similar to Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, George Bailey was shown just how vastly different everyone’s lives would be had he never been born.

The theme of this movie isn’t new, and it’s been copied many times over down through the years. So, it got me to wondering, what if Satan had been successful in preventing the birth of Jesus Christ? All through history, Satan has tried to throw a monkey wrench into God’s plan for the redemption of mankind by killing off the Jews in one way or another, being the driving force behind their idolatries and captivities. He did everything he could from trying to muddy the waters and dilute the bloodlines, to killing a whole village of innocent children, and even tempting the Lord to worship him in the wilderness. He failed every time, but what if he hadn’t. What if at some point the generation of David’s offspring had come to an end? What if Jesus hadn’t been born, or maybe was killed in his infancy by Herod’s men? What if Christmas wasn’t Christmas? Never was, or never had been?

Well, to my thinking, if there never was a Christmas, then we’d be singing…

I. The Winter Blues

Now, there are a lot of theories as to the origins of this period of celebration we call Christmas today. It’s believed that the early church didn’t celebrate the birth of Christ. Now, I don’t know if that’s because they didn’t believe it was something they should do, or maybe birthdays just weren’t that big of a deal back then. I don’t know, but it is supposed that the celebration itself came about through the Christianizing of some seasonal pagan celebrations such as winter solstice or the Roman season of Saturnalia.

But what started as a simple recognition of the birth of the Messiah, has developed over the years into a huge, commercialized season of gift giving, colorful lights, beautifully decorated trees, Santa Claus, elves, reindeer, and eggnog. All of which have very little to practically nothing to do with the birth of Jesus Christ. But we celebrate it. We look forward to this time of year. We gripe about how commercialized it’s become, and we try to bring it back to its original intent by calling it a time for family and making happy memories, giving to others, visiting with friends, helping the needy, singing happy Christmas songs, and love.

Christmas as we know it today has grown into a worldwide celebration. No other religion puts on a party that equals Christmas. No other faith system has a holiday that comes anywhere near the scope or scale of Christmas. Hanukah and Ramadan might try to keep up, but they fail miserably in their efforts to equal the festivities of Christmas.

But if there were no Christmas, all of that would be gone. We wouldn’t have to worry over arguments debating religion verses secular. There wouldn’t be any Christmas parades or school breaks. No parties after work and no dirty Santa gift giving. We wouldn’t have to worry about shopping for the perfect gift and I doubt we’d even have the buying frenzy of Black Friday anymore. I mean, why rush to get a gift if the party doesn’t exist?

We wouldn’t need to make a decision between a fake or real tree. There wouldn’t be any reason behind decorating the house or tree. No more Christmas movie specials, no school holiday performances for parents to watch their kids sing and dance. There’d be no more It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, or All I Want for Christmas, is You!

Do you see the picture I’m trying to paint? Without Christmas, life would be pretty boring this time of year. It’d be dull and drab, dark and cold. Even without Christmas it’s still winter. Without this holiday, all we’d have to look forward to would be birthdays, anniversaries, April Fool’s Day, and maybe Halloween. I seriously doubt there would be any Thanksgiving because folks, if there is no Jesus, then there’s no Redeemer. Without a Redeemer then we really don’t have much to be thankful for do we? I suppose we might be happy to be born, to labor all our lives, and then to die, but that’s about it.