Can We Talk About White Christmas?

"We're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny F*%*ing Kaye!" - Clark Griswold in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Happy New Year! I hope you are having a very merry Christmas season. (It's not over until Epiphany so this post isn't too late.) While there are plenty of great movies for this time of year, the one I can't miss is 1954's White Christmas. Maybe it's because it was one of the first movies I ever saw; it was one of the few VHS tapes my parents owned back in the 80s when you could rent a VCR. It just hasn't been a real holiday season until I've heard the "Sisters" song and gotten choked up at the ending's surprise reunion.

"Judy, we need to discuss your turtleneck addiction."

Over the years I've noticed and enjoyed different aspects of the movie. As a little girl, I loved Vera Ellen's style as Judy: girlish puffy sleeves, twirly skirts, and blonde ponytails. Now, I much prefer Rosemary Clooney's Betty and her womanly evening gowns. That black mermaid one at the Carousel Club would look amazing on any red carpet.

During my most recent viewing, I realized that General Waverley's backstory doesn't really make sense. His retirement from active duty in the middle of a campaign hardly seems practical at a time when the United States was waging war on two continents. Did he just age out or had he run afoul of someone at the Pentagon? Maybe his supervisors didn't approve of his performing arts sponsorship that inspired many of his troops to sing, tap dance, and later dominate show business on Broadway and in television.

I also realized how the movie's 1954 setting hints at an American culture in transition. Characters are feeling their age with declining eyesight and pants that don't fit. One song jokes about wishing for the simpler times of just following army orders. The "Mandy" number expresses nostalgia for the jokes and songs of minstrel shows, trying to adapt America's favorite racist entertainment into a technicolor cartoon of reds, purples, and greens. Bob Wallace and Phil Davis' production even throws shade on Vera Ellen's former co-star Gene Kelly, griping about all the modern "Choreography" supplanting traditional hoofers. They're following the old "Let's put on a show to save the day!" trope, but they're not kids anymore and post-war life still has challenges.

In First Things last month, Peter Leithart suggested that White Christmas also captures America's spiritual decline.

"In place of Jesus, we get a mash of mid-century Americanism ... There are good, altruistic deeds, done out of loyalty to an old friend, and from beginning to end the film glows with the warmth of post-World War II patriotism. If there’s a faith here, it’s a gospel of small-town American and faith in the decency of the American military ... Whatever one thinks of those sentiments, they don’t constitute a gospel." 

Well, sure it's not a gospel. The title song is just the results of generic sentiment + celebrity vocalist = hit single. If you base your life priorities off a Danny Kaye movie you'll go as nuts as Clark Griswold did. But there are plenty of prior Christmas songs and movies about revelry rather than baby Jesus, including White Christmas' prequel, Holiday Inn. There's no reason to single out this one movie.

In fact, White Christmas's lack of gospel pretense is what makes me find it such a refreshing holiday staple. Too often, made-for-TV Christmas movies try offer some vague inspirational lesson, so most are a tired reworking of A Christmas Carol. This secular conversion template features a workaholic (shrewish single woman or neglectful family man) who undergoes some sort of supernatural upheaval and thus embraces kindness and sacramental turkey dinners. If you just "believe" and listen to that kindly senior citizen's advice, Santa will bring you true love and that greedy businessman will stop harassing your quirky neighbors. While certainly fun, this snow-covered fairy tale shtick is a poor substitute for the Incarnation. It attempts to offer meaning through the "spiritual but not religious" archetype.

White Christmas, on the other hand, is simply fun with a dash of reality. While Bob Wallace does eventually put aside his workaholic habits to pursue romance with Betty, a magical wish doesn't make it happen. He has a successful career, but he uses his business and connections to help an old friend. When he asks people to help him, he acknowledges that not everyone might be able to change their holiday plans. (Although how did he charter those special Christmas Eve trains? That's magic.) Nobody has to summon an angel or sing a special song to make it snow; it's just nice icing on the cake after the plan comes together.

At the risk of sounding too humanistic, that's honestly how most people spend their holidays. The weather doesn't always cooperate, your job might not be going great, you might have had a misunderstanding with your loved ones. Hector Elizondo is not going to show up and solve all your problems. But you can still come together and make the best of things. Dancing and songs bring joy.

If you watch one movie about saving a ski resort this winter, make it the one with tap-dancing.

(Images taken from GlamAmor's excellent post on Edith Head's costume design for the film.)