Happy New Year everyone!
Welcome new readers and regular Coffey House subscribers.
Also, at long last I upgraded my computer to the one I had when I started Coffey House—hallelujah! I'm hoping my dinosaur system of posting is a Ghost of Christmas past. That said, I’m figuring out how to best deliver voiceovers on this machine. So this posting won’t have my dulcet tones in your ears. Did I mention the kids are still on holiday break? We’re having fun, but time is still my most prized commodity.
The Legend of Mr. Snatchum will return at the end of this week. But for now, a special gratitude post to my family, friends, fellow Substackers, and whoever is reading this! We are not strangers. Thank you, bless you—happy holidays!
KC
If you’re at all like me, today, January 1st is usually the day after the week I’ve been beating myself up for a year’s worth of failed expectations—all of the things I planned to get done and miserably failed.
Did I mention that it’s a long list? One of my friends calls it his “attack list.” That might be more accurate because mine tends to bite back.
And the conversation with self gets ugly real quick:
“You didn’t do this, this, or this! You only started that and that. Really, Kevin, what is it you do with your existing time?” These thoughts start to multiply like spiny weeds, spreading their endless roots of dark energy. Self-pity sets in, then it goes over my ears and I can’t hear anything positive anymore, I’m drowning in the mire of what a useless failure I am.
Ick. Pretty rough, right?
Well, this is what it used to be like being inside of my head during the holidays/end of the year. I could never accomplish my goals, because they were something someone short of a god (or at the very least a demi-god) couldn’t have possibly checked off.
To help survive my self-psychic-hazing, I’ve had a tradition for years of reading Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, and watching It’s a Wonderful Life during the holidays for spiritual support.
While Dicken’s tale is the one that sets the foundation for the lot of them, for me, the movie that came just over one hundred years after we were introduced to the unforgettable Scrooge, It’s a Wonderful Life, is perhaps the most relatable. (I also used to watch it with my late mother, so it holds an extra tight grip on my heart.)
The story of Scrooge (which, let’s face it, we also know as the Grinch), is well known. We follow the miserly anti-hero until he becomes enlightened and receives the miracle of redemption. But to achieve this arc, he has to see as an unobtrusive observer what life was like (Ghost of Christmas Past), what life is like now (Ghost of Christmas Present), and what his life will become if he continues living as a miser (the terrifying Ghost of Christmas Future).
As much as I love Dicken’s immortal tale, in It’s a Wonderful Life, instead of the Scrooge or Grinch-like anti-hero, we find the relatable, immensely likable George Bailey.
I don’t know about you, but here’s a protagonist we can instantly route for, yet, every year he is denied his ultimate wish of leaving Bedford Falls to explore and experience great achievements in the larger world. Frustration and resentment build until his Uncle Billy misplaces the annual payment to the bank examiner (disastrously placed in the lap of the greedy, gratuitous, plotting Mr. Potter), and George takes on the problem as his own. But make no mistake, Mr. Potter is not the antagonist in the story, it’s the twists and turns of life itself. It’s why this movie is one of my absolute favorites, when George becomes enlightened at the end of the movie, it feels deserved.
George Bailey’s downward spiral happens all at once for him. He rages on his family, gets drunk and into a subsequent bar fight as a result of bawling out his kid’s teacher, wrecks his car into a tree, then literally takes on a snowstorm on foot, staggers his way to a bridge and decides in a split second of rash judgment that suicide is the only rightful course of action. Spoiler alert, he’s saved by Clarence Peabody, his bumbling but dear-hearted guardian angel.
But it’s how Clarence saves him that’s ingenious. First, he puts George into action by feigning distress, correctly predicting George would pull him out of the freezing river, turning George from a suicide victim to a lifesaver.
After becoming stuck that perhaps George can’t be helped, Clarence decides to grant George his flailing wish: that he’d never been born.
The story turns into a living nightmare for George. In this anti-Bedford Falls, Pottersville, nobody recognizes him, he’s treated with bitter vile and disdain by everyone everywhere he goes. It’s an extreme but effective contrast, a sinner’s town that conditions its citizens to be selfish and self-absorbed by denying them just treatment, the antithesis of the good samaritan that is George Bailey. He was one of the drops of water in the larger pond called Bedford Falls that changed it for the better. He looked out for the common person. Without his existence, a sequence of tragic events unfolds: his little brother dies when he falls through the ice as a kid without George alive to save him. In turn, his brother wasn’t around in World War II to become an ace pilot and save the lives of several soldiers on an aircraft carrier.
After enough sequences and realizing that his life and the people in it are truly wonderful, George pleads to Clarence, “Help me, Clarence. I want to live again. I want to live again!”
The snowstorm returns and George’s lip starts bleeding. On one of the most famous runs in cinema history, George cheers the reality of his wrecked car, the buildings and businesses of Bedford Falls, and even returns to the source of real trouble and slaps against the dreaded Mr. Potter’s office windows, calling out, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter,” to which Mr. Potter replies, “And a Merry Christmas to you—in jail.”
The miracle of redemption and seeing the miracle of life doesn’t deter George. Jail seems probable—he even cheers on his misfortune with great fervor. Because he’s seen a life without family: a brother, wife, kids—himself. He finally understands the greater value of being present, taking life as it comes, not dreaming away reality by future-casting, and creating unattainable goals that become nearly inextinguishable resentments. And that makes him appreciate the little things, even in the tiny town of Bedford Falls.
I do want you to stress, that you my readers, matter much to this writer and I have much gratitude for you being my subscriber. Every last one of you. Without an audience, what is an artist? What is a storyteller?
I will certainly not be the best writer, but I will try my absolute best to entertain and distract you, even if it be for only a moment from the larger troubles of the world.
I look forward to continuing to produce engaging and entertaining stories, illustrations, and podcasts for you this year.
Not to go out like Tony Robbins, but: You matter. You are the little splash of water that can change the entire ocean of life for the better.
Go easy on yourselves this year, help others, and love.
See you soon!
Kevin
In the inimitable prose of another Dickens novel: "No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else." - thanks for all the awesome, burden-lightening fiction you post here. Can't wait for Mr. Snatchum's next entry.
Beautiful words, Kevin!