Happy Holidays

I had never heard of It’s a Wonderful Life  until one winter night in the early eighties.  I was feeling out of sorts.  I don’t remember the particular details but I know that I was feeling down, unfulfilled, frustrated, disappointed, perhaps lonely, unconfident, worried and otherwise unhappy.  Those who have never felt that way need not read on.  That night, I felt that there was only one thing I could do—turn on the television.  I happened onto a quaint looking black and white film that begins with a discussion in heaven about the assignment of a guardian angel to a man who was in a similar mood to my own.  As I watched and became increasingly involved, my perspective changed so that when the film was over, I had tears in my eyes and felt much better about myself. Continue reading “It’s a Wonderful Life”: A Cure for the Holiday Blues

Happy Holidays

For the past few winters, my teaching schedule has me reading Anna Freud’s monograph, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense at around the same time that I come across the Christmas classic, Miracle on 34th Street. One wouldn’t think that they have much in common, but each year I am re-reminded of passages in the book that come to life in the film.

Miracle on 34th Street is a light, beautifully constructed story about a bearded, white haired portly gentleman (Edmund Gwenn) who insists, and clearly believes, that he is the real Santa Claus. Although he gives as his address an old age home in Great Neck instead of the North Pole, he does go by the name of Kris Kringle. From the Continue reading “Miracle (of Fantasy) on 34th Street