The Christmas Visitor

In the letters of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, the author is really upset about some notion about the earthly ministry of Jesus. It is not easy to say just what it is, but someone seems to be open to the idea that Jesus “seemed to” have come to earth and taken on flesh and lived the same kind of life we did. He didn’t, actually, but he seemed to.

The Hallmark video, A Christmas Visitor, which I have enjoyed watching many times, presses right on the nerve that separates the gospel of John from the teaching the Johannine letters are trying to quash. I suspect it could be called docetism. We get this from the Greek dokein, “to seem,” so it could be called “seeming-ism.” What gets the writer of the Johannine letters so upset is that someone seems to be teaching that Jesus did not actually take on flesh and did not actually become a human being, but only seemed to.

In A Christmas Visitor, the Boyajian family lost a son in Iraq. It was a terrible loss for the family. The father carried on as TV fathers tend to do. “I gave them my son,” he says. “They gave me this medal.” The mother acts out her grief in some ways she recognizes (and justifies) and in many other ways as well. The daughter feels herself confined to a perpetual second place, never really as important as her martyred brother, and having very slim personal reserves.

The father, George Boyajian, decided, finally, that enough is enough and he is going to start over by celebrating Christmas again. The film loses track of this early moment until the very end of the film when the spirit of his son John, embodied in a “person” named Matthew is asked, “Why did you come back to us?” The person who is, but who does not seem to be, John, answers, “Because you were right. It was time.” [This is John in the body of Matthew.]

“You were right” points to what would be the most remarkable part of the movie if it were a part of the movie, which it is not. Somewhere, “John” is monitoring how his family is doing and when his father says it is time, “John” returns in the body of Matthew and does a lot of wonderful things to turn the family around. “John” was listening. Where, without “Matthew,” was he?

In the meantime, in the body of the plot, “Matthew,” heals the daughter, Jean, of her cancer, restores a long broken Christmas star to full functioning, and remembers things about John that he could not possibly know. How does he do all that? Because he is not Matthew; he only seems to be Matthew. He is actually John, visiting his earthly family in the body of Matthew. Matthew seems to be John, but he is not. The film maker puts the last nail in that board by having Matthew, as he is leaving, morph briefly into John, then back into Matthew, while the father holds his salute.

Miracle on 34th Street (1994)

On the other hand, the Santa Claus of Miracle on 34th Street really is Santa Claus. There are two phases in the identity positioning in this movie. We see a fat man with a white beard approached by a desperate employee of Coles Department Store, who asks him to fill in at the last minute as the Santa Claus in their parade. He is a very good “Santa Claus” and the department store hires him to be their official Santa.

The second phase is that at the hearing, it is the job of the judge to rule whether a man who believes himself to be Santa Claus can be ruled sane. His lawyer doesn’t argue that his client is sane; he argues that he is not dangerous. That doesn’t work.

Finally, the judge hits on an analogy that works for him. On a dollar bill a little girl gave him, he notices that it says “In God We Trust.” The judge argues that if the U. S. government can declare its belief in God without demanding any evidence, then he, the judge, can declare that the man before him actually is Santa Claus without demanding any evidence.

Between these two times—the parade at the beginning and the hearing at the end—viewers are treated to Santa Claus playing the part of “Santa Claus.”He speaks a lot of languages, which ought to seem odd. He knows sign language. He has his own “Santa suit” with real gold buttons and gold thread. By claiming that he is who he says he is, he brings the woman who hired him into existential crisis, and raises the desperate hopes of her daughter that she will finally get a home in the country and a baby brother.

At the hearing, there is casual banter about “department store Santas,” of which Kris Kringle, the main character, is one. The daughter of the Cole’s employee who hired Kris is very worldly wise. “I know how this works,” she confides to him. “You work for Coles.” Kris pauses momentarily and says, “That…is true.”

He pauses because he knows that the true answer he gives will be taken to mean things he does not mean and that are not true. The little girl will understand the answer to mean “I am an employee of Coles and therefore am not the real Santa.” What Kris really means and what all the viewers are in a position to appreciate is that he works for Coles AND he is the real Santa. He’s just filling in until he has to take off on Christmas eve

These two stories, both of which I enjoy watching every Christmas, are the formal opposite of each other and it doesn’t bother me a bit.