After overcoming the nervous tension that is predominant in the days and hours preceding one’s final exams, I returned home for the winter break in an antithesis of my prior unease. The holiday season, now that my head could be freed from thoughts of textbooks and study sessions, had unofficially begun. Or so I thought. With three days before Christmas I still had this indescribable feeling that it did not seem like Christmas. Despite the decorated tree, the hung stockings (mine of course being the one with Cookie Monster still on it, a remnant of my childhood) and the media’s guarantees that buying diamonds and expensive cars were assurances that one’s relationship, marital or otherwise, was secured during the holidays, the season had not really begun for me. After some head scratching, some soul searching, and regrettably, yes, some carol singing (if you count singing “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by the Blue Oyster Cult in the game “Rock Band” as caroling), I finally understood my lack of the holiday spirit: I had not watched Frank Capra’s classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Watching the follies and later redemption of George Bailey amidst the working class town of Bedford Falls was a holiday tradition for my family and I, one that probably dates back to my childhood. With age (as if a nineteen-year-old can legitimately talk about such a thing) came a better appreciation for the movie; what once seemed bland and unforgiving had later become relevant and, yes, for this ordinarily dry well, a bit tear-jerking. But as I watched the movie for the millionth time and grew overcome with a wish to sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” I thought to myself: why is it that of all the many movies that take place during the Christmas season “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with all its depressing themes of failure, suicide, and the collapse of the small town economic structure, continues to be aired by NBC during this time? Why has a movie that takes place in the postwar Forties meant so much for so many people, enough to be recognized as a Holiday classic? How is it still relevant?

Like a broken record played every year during December by the agents of the problem itself, the media, the constant lament of the commercialism of Christmas, seems an issue we complain about ourselves. Yet, pardon the pun, we buy into it like drones made ecstatic with talk of sales, discounts, and whatever Oprah Winfrey commands as being apropos for gifts on her show. Now I am not trying to condemn any and all buying of gifts, but I think presents, whether a jet-black Lexus or a discounted cashmere sweater with a red dot on it, are poor and incomplete tools for expressing one’s love or gratitude to another and are thus not worth the anxiety felt by many during the holiday season.

It is hard to say who is at blame; at mass during the break the presiding priest in his homily suggested that Bing Crosby’s song “White Christmas” was the catalyst for the future trivialization of the Christian-based holiday. Now I can neither confirm nor deny the verity in this claim, so I will let you the reader make up your mind. It seems to me, though, that “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with its focus on community and the humanity of the season over the superficial and greedy, as headed by the miserly Mr. Potter, seems to be what we all wish Christmas was like. Its simple message of people coming together to help out their brethren, that everyone, regardless of class or occupation, is intrinsically important in keeping together the fabric of the society in which they occupy, seems like good advice that comes every holiday season.

Yet, this advice is appreciated then and there, then forgotten for the rest of the year until the next holiday season. George is toasted by his war hero brother as the “richest man in town,” thus affirming that oft-repeated sentiment that wealth is not a dollar currency but rather, if “Hallmark” sentimentality allows me, one of the heart and manifested in one’s relationships. So in this sense one can see the universality of the movie’s themes - that of feeling irrelevant in the whole scheme of life, that man lives as a singular unit with no effect on anyone and is thus insignificant as dust.

I suppose, even for a student at Penn, that often, unless one has an impenetrable confidence, one can feel lost, irrelevant, even swallowed up by the thousands upon thousands of students and faculty that inhabit campus day by day. Even if one is not the sole proprietor of a penny ante building and loan like George Bailey, there comes a time when a period of self-reflection leads one to question one’s status in life. While this might be a crossroads faced at a later age and not for one approaching the cusp of their dreams as a college student, it is even now something that may spring up, even if only an afterthought. But even so, maybe for some of us the realities of one’s home conflict with the immeasurable dreams and goals one has for their future, one that is often devoid or even shunning of their roots.

In this sense, then, these overarching principles of the movie, regarding life and how to live it, even fit into the contemporary college student’s life. Like Harry Bailey, George’s brother, one is given opportunities, achieves a myriad of successes, and is thus faced with the crucible of abandoning one’s home or returning for what might seem, as George feels when his ambitions take a backseat to the family business, like an entrapment in a less glamorous and dream-crushing existence. Therefore, the last scene becomes not a reaffirmation of money as the numerical indicator of success and personal fortune but rather as a signifier for a deeper meaning. That is, that no achievement is too small and that riches supersede the sometimes tyranny of money and its idolization. And while this outlook might crush or at the least conflict with the sentiments of some of our best Wharton-ites, it seems that one’s paycheck cannot reflect however much success one truly has achieved. Despite the mere superficialities of the setting, time period, clothing, and technology that all grew obsolete well before the commencement of this century, it is the feelings, the sentiments, and the emotions that remain timeless and relevant for everyone.

It is easy to get lost in appearance, in the tangible parts of life and lose sight of what truly is important. I know for me, a habitual workaholic who finds books and assignments to be a fitting refuge from the other parts of life I much rather wish to avoid, the sufferings and frustrations of Jimmy Stewart’s character are a scary yet very real possibility. When these modes of escape should one day become futile, pointless, and even concealing of what truly is important, what will I do?

And so having the movie broadcasted every year at the same time is much appreciated, for us humans are forgetful and repetitive creatures. With hope forming in the somewhat melodramatic ending of the angel Clarence gaining his wings and the town stepping up to help an old friend at the eleventh hour, this movie is not a depressing tradition like watching a post-stroke Dick Clark host his New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Rather, it is a reaffirmation of life when we as a human race need it the most. Families and relationships are not the sum of dollar transactions, but rather of the interactions that bound each other as dependant, cohesive units. The challenge, then, is to remember these things all the year long. I suppose in this case, a better comparison to our forgetful state would be Uncle Billy rather than George.