I want to tell you this morning about my favorite “Merry Christmas.” There is no joy is this “greeting.” It is said in an intimate tone, although as you see in the picture, it is said by a judge presiding over a courtroom. This is the Honorable Henry Harper, played by Robert Prosky in the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street. Every other utterance he has made from that exalted seat has been formal and procedural. He disallows an objection by counsel, he warns the courtroom to be quiet, he orders that a reindeer brought in as a witness (an object lesson, really) be removed from the court. Judge-ly things.

This “Merry Christmas” is not that. In looking at the dollar bill in his hand, he sees that “In God We Trust” has been circled with a red felt tip pen and he realizes that he does not have to sentence Santa Claus, who is seated in his courtroom as the defendant to a life of custodial care courtesy of the state of New York.

Until he was handed this dollar bill, which was clipped to a home made Christmas card a little girl gave him, he saw the future clearly. He was going to rule against Santa Claus and pay the price for the rest of his professional career. Or he was going to acquit a perfectly ordinary looking man sitting in his courtroom and who persists in claiming that he is Santa Claus—a professional violation he would never live down. When he was handed the bill, he realized suddenly what it meant,

He spends some time later, explaining to the courtroom just what the logic was by which he could declare the defendant, one Kriss Kringle, not guilty. But we don’t need to go that far. The shift from the formal reading of a proclamation that would have found Kriss mentally incompetent, to the quiet and profound relief we hear in Judge Harper’s voice tells viewers everything we need to know. This is a voice of a man who has just realized that he does not, after all, have to choose between personal or professional humiliation. It is, consequently, a voice full to bursting with gratitude and relief. It is right at the border of joy. There is a chuckle in it. The chuckle is not quite expressed, but it adds a tone to the words he speaks as if it were an additional acoustical layer. And the chuckle, being almost there, is lovely.

Before Judge Harper, my favorite Merry Christmas was provided by Luke’s account of the aged Simeon in the Temple. He was told to come to the Temple and he came. He had been told that he would not die until he had seen “the Christ of the Lord.” That’s Luke’s language. Simeon would have heard it as “the Messiah whom God has finally sent to save us.” “Finally,” I say, because Simeon had lived a long time and he was so ready to be received by death. It looked to him like being able, at last, to rest.

So the little child was handed to him and he let go all the tension that he had needed to get through the day after day after day of his very old life. He let it all go, as I hear him, and shifts into the chuckle-imbued relief Judge Harper uses and he says, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” [1]

Or, as we would say today, “Merry Christmas.”

[1] Simeon was very old, so the King James language came naturally to him.