I finished watching Klaus recently, and it’s stuck with me ever since. Not because of the beautiful animation and visuals (though both are stunning) or because of its take on the Santa Claus mythos (if you’ve seen a couple of Santa Claus origin stories, you’ll be able to predict most of the major plot twists). No, Klaus has been on my mind because of its unique and refreshing take on the magic of Christmas.
In most Santa movies, Christmas magic is for children and the young at heart. The beauty of lights on snow, writing a letter to Santa and finding just what you wanted under the tree, peering out a fog-covered window for a glimpse of his sleigh—in these films, it’s the children who understand those things innately, and if an adult wants to understand Christmas, they too must be enamored with the gentle mysteries of Christmas gifts and the beauty that seems to grace each and every day during the holiday season. Cynical adults are cured of their misanthropy when they remember what it was to be a child on Christmas Eve. They find joy in the holidays when they recapture the joy of childhood.
And honestly, I don’t have a problem with these movies. Some of them (Elf, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town) remain my favorites. Childlike joy and wonder is, for many, a cherished part of the holiday season, and I don’t think it’s wrong for movies to glorify that at all. However, Klaus presents a very different view of that magic. In movies similar to those I mentioned, when adults create that sort of Christmas magic, they do it out of the goodness of their hearts or to redeem themselves from cynicism. They want their children to have a good Christmas, or they want to remember those good Christmases before reality sapped them of their joy.
In Klaus, the adult protagonists don’t revel in the joy of Christmases past or seek to recreate that joy for the children in their care. Jesper encourages the children to write letters to Mr. Klaus so he can return to his opulent lifestyle. Alva teaches the children to read and write because they won’t leave her alone. Klaus delivers toys to unburden himself of a painful past. These aren’t selfless people acting out of the goodness of their hearts; they’re selfish, they’re bitter, they’re heartbroken and aloof. They create Christmas magic entirely on accident, giving rise to the most cherished bits of Santa lore either through misadventure or to make their own lives easier.
And you know what? It works.
The magic they create doesn’t fail because it wasn’t crafted by the pure of heart. It encourages the children to be kind. It teaches them literacy. It spurs parents to put centuries of animosity behind them—at first to even the score, and later because they’ve found joy in neighborliness. These acts of kindness might have been done for selfish reasons, but they ultimately transform a grey and hostile community into one alive in color and joy.
And it isn’t just the town of Smeerensburg that’s transformed. Spoiled and childish Jesper becomes a kind and selfless neighbor. Bitter and defensive Alva becomes a caring and attentive teacher. And Klaus, aloof and longing for the love of his wife and the family they never had, becomes a beloved toymaker and grandfather for children in two communities and—eventually—the world. The same magic these three people created for personal gain changes them and ensures they will never truly be separated.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that, by the end of the movie, these three have recaptured that childlike wonder intrinsic to so many other Christmas movies, but it doesn’t happen here. The wonder they have rather takes the form of gratitude: for the family they have, for the community they built, for the magic that allows two old friends to reunite once a year over a shared plate of cookies. It’s a gentler sort than the kind children have, but it’s also stronger. It doesn’t need to be protected from cynicism, because it’s overpowered cynicism.
And that’s what Klaus is about, really: the magic not of receiving joy or rediscovering it, but of creating it. It’s not about receiving, but giving; of acts of kindness that slowly but surely work through the dark and hostile fabric of a single town to change it from the inside. It’s a movie about overcoming cynicism not through receiving kindness, but through giving it to others.
If you watch it for no other reason, watch it for that.
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