A man down on earth needs our help.
Splendid! Is he sick?
No. Worse. He's discouraged.
-- From “It’s a Wonderful Life,” 1947
I know it’s a holiday, and we’re supposed to be in good cheer, but can we admit that it’s OK to feel a little discouraged? It’s been a tough year. Courage is no small thing, and 2011 promises to be another year where we’ll need all the courage we can find.
You’d have to go back three generations -- to 1940 when national unemployment averaged 14.6 percent – to find a year that has been as bad as this one for working people. More than 1.1 million people are out of work in Florida, and today’s statewide 12 percent unemployment is about where we were last year around this time.
There are families going without –without food, without medicine, without transportation – and they are still losing ground. Small business owners are closing the books on 2010 and wondering if they’ll still be in business in a year.
It’s not a coincidence that Christmas comes at our darkest time of year.
The Winter Solstice, the longest and darkest night, happens around this time. We’re entering the bleak days of mid-winter, a time of famine for our agrarian ancestors. Maybe that’s why we celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day, the tentpole for what we all recognize as the spirit of the season. (The Gospels never actually mention the time of year of the Nativity.)
“It’s a Wonderful Life,” the 1947 movie starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a broke and depressed family man on Christmas Eve, wasn’t a hit when it was released, but it’s hard to imagine a Christmas without it now. On February 12, 1938 (so the story goes) a historian named Philip Van Doren Stern had an idea while he was shaving – a story about a small-town man who contemplates suicide until a guardian angel shows him what life would have been like without him. Stern tried to write the story, “The Greatest Gift,” for the next five years, and never seemed to get it right until he changed the setting to Christmas.
Frank Capra, the director who adapted Stern’s story, was a Republican who bragged that he never once voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but also a populist whose films were liberal enough to get him summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In Capra’s film the villain, Mr. Potter, becomes a caricature of a greedy banker, but hero George Bailey is a banker too. The main difference between the two is heart, and maybe what we would today call ethical business practices.
Potter makes his money by fleecing the working people of Bedford Falls. He’s critical of the Baileys’ lending to low-income buyers, and their forgiveness to people getting behind on their payments. “What does that get us?” Potter rants, “A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class.”
George replies, “Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?”
If you follow politics, you’ll probably hear echoes of recent controversy.
After the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was established by Congress to look at the causes of the current financial crisis, four Republican members broke ranks and put out a report pinning the blame on policies to increase homeownership among low-income buyers. (This after apparently voting to exclude the words “Wall Street” and “deregulation” from the report.)
The theme of their renegade report is that, “The unprecedented number of subprime and other weak mortgages in this bubble set it and its effect apart from others in the past.” The ultimate blame for the collapse and the destruction of millions of jobs is therefore on “declining lending standards.” As Potter would say, we let too many of the “lazy rabble” buy homes.
Never mind that many people now experiencing the tragedy of foreclosure wouldn’t be in this position if they hadn’t had the unfortunate timing to be home-shopping in the middle of a bubble of speculation. Or that the financial industry created consumer lending products that obscured the real costs of buying a home while reaping commissions from average folks ill-equipped to unravel all the “terms and conditions.”
I like that at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Mr. Potter gets away scot free, even with all his bad behavior.
That doesn’t make good guy George any less wonderful. Because when George Bailey goes to that bridge, an angel doesn’t save him from drowning. He saves himself by jumping in to save someone else.
That’s Christmas to me. For at least one day a year, you have the responsibility to be selfless and kind to your fellow man. And as someone once said, you should do your best to honor Christmas in your heart and keep it all the year.
