It was a fluke for Van Doren Stern that the director came into possession of his little volume for free donated for Christmas to the acquaintances, because, on the wake of many good writers, no one appreciated much the value of the writing to publish it. And as always, who doesn’t publish writes the major value tests. Sure, “A Christmas carol” by Charles Dickens had already made school and Ebenezer Scrooge’s story who during Christmas received as a gift the possibility to see the past again and discover the future, in the following hundred years was amply re-utilized by other writings, but “The Christmas gift” unites to this plot a more savory ingredient: life without the protagonist. George Bailey is not narrow-minded and greedy, he is only an exhausted man, at 38 tired for having got measured since the birth against the events of a miserable and unworthy life. After having realized to have amassed a quantity of disgraces, the risk to see a life job failing induces him to desire to disappear, not ever being born. So then his guardian angel Clarence is sent to him for being his mentor showing the world without that his presence could have influenced it. Only then George, between choosing this second option and the risk to pay the failure consequences, implores to have his life back, because only in that instant he understands that anyone has a role on the earth, irreplaceable and unrepeatable.
In a tell, in the plot of a sentimental tell, the way to say “all are useful, no one is essential” gets consumed and evanishes. Apart from the fact this aphorism comes to light with the sixty-eight anthropologists and so at Philip Van Doren Stern of the directors Frank Capra’s times it had been never pronounced, the argument is more than ever actual. In it the fundamental concept that we are all part of a becoming is expressed, more than the static dowels of a mosaic, more than the single pebbles of the sand wet by the sea waves. Every living who tramples the earth soil contributes to build the future and his part gets inevitably intersected with the others one. No one else will be ever able to make again the same actions, to give again the same course to the existence. Everybody, alone and together with others, with own talents and will. George Bailey has not been a failure, not only because he has friends –as at the end he was suggested by his angel- but above all because he made all, for the family and the community. When a fellow understands to be fundamental and indispensable in the universe economy, then he must absolutely abandon the unsuitability sense which pervades him. Friends who return part of the received are a great gift, as much to make all the failing doubts evanesce, but seeing the world which we have contribute to build of is still more significant and gratifying.
George’s unsatisfying life is comprehensible. He was an intelligent guy, endowed of a mind projected towards the discoveries, realizations. George was the classic able fellow to whom in any case life clips the wings. In him the duty sense and the evasion desire coexist, but as always happens to all the good guys, the first feeling securely anchors him to the reality and prevents him to wash hands. So impossible not feeling frustrated. George spends life in the attempt to give dignity to the little world surrounding him, but it is not sufficient because he make a lot for the others and nothing for himself. Mary, after all, is satisfied like that. She realizes the expectations of every woman of the epoch: she studies but doesn’t work, aspires to a numerous family and restores her dreams house. It is necessary to her, but not for George. We all come into life nude from a mother who has given us to life with pain, but anyone under his own star. Some mothers are assisted by the best primaries in clinic, others still give birth in their own bedroom assisted by a country midwife. George comes to life in an ordinary family, of the one which once a time we define the medium class of the society, constituted by honest and tireless workers, but no more. Since a child he watches with disdain the Henry Potter’s arrogant indisposition, but in the meantime he envies his financial possibilities. George knows well what he could do with that avid man’s money, he tries for years to disentangle himself from the adversities for submerging himself into a future constituted by the realization of many projects, but yet he cannot, life indissolubly anchors him to the destiny with which he was born.
This also because George is honest, whole, he doesn’t accept compromises not sells out the principles which if by a side have obstructed him by the other have made of him the man who more than all will leave a footprint in Bedford.
At the end I desire to remark that with this story the true meaning of Christmas has been evaluated. When George is in trouble Santa Klaus not arriving, but an angel sent by God. Christmas is our Savior’s birth recurrence, not the feast of a Saint Nicolas who from Puglia has landed to Rovaniemi. Life is wonderful, differently from all the home Christmassy little stories of the last times, it is based on the real spirit for which we celebrate the period and this would not be forgotten.