#jlf rewatch

“How’s our boy?” I find this very cute? Hammond really is the mama duck to SG-1’s ducklings, the epitome of restrained affection.

His absolute and obvious disdain for Samuels is also a real treat. He rolls his eyes!

Samuels is played by Robert Wisden, who was also briefly in Smallville as Chloe's father Gabe. Both shows were based in Vancouver, and both ran for ten seasons, so there's quite the guest star crossover.

In a private meeting with Jack, Hammond goes from “this is what I look like when I’m not laughing, Colonel” to almost laughing when Jack cracks another joke. I love Hammond so much.

I think Ronny Cox as Kinsey is actually the longest running villain in the entire show? Apophis finally bites it in season 5, but Kinsey makes it all the way to season 8.

“And this must be the drain through which the money flows” is such a great line for a pontificating blowhard politician, as is his hypocritical speech. You immediately know who Kinsey is, and you hate him even though he’s actually right about a lot of stuff.

“Oh you’re right, we’ll just upload a computer virus into the mothership.” lol, the shade at Devlin/Emmerich here.

We get a date for the Chulak mission - 10 February (presumably) 1997. The computer in the previous episode indicated it was December 1997 so assuming time was the same in the alternate universe, it's been approximately 11 months since the pilot which seems about right.

The purpose of the mission is described as “to rescue both Dr Jackson’s wife and her brother, and determine the Goa’uld threat” which is the first mention we’ve had of Sha’re and Skaara in a while.

lol, Jack looking to Sam to give the correct pronunciation of Goa’uld because he doesn’t want to.

Lt Colonel “secondary objective” Samuels being the one to read from Jack’s report about Skaara being chosen really twists the knife.

“Because what is right cannot be measured by strength.” Great Teal’c line.

Argos gets discussed and it’s mentioned that SG-2 made recent contact with them - a nice little background aspect of the show that they do check in on the worlds they’ve visited from time to time.

Much is made of the lack of benefit to the Stargate program - guess that wonder drug from Emancipation didn’t pan out? Or maybe everyone just wants to forget that episode happened.

Sidebar - with all the clips it’s obvious that Daniel’s hair has been getting longer throughout the season - irl because Michael Shanks’ hair was shorter and was growing it out as filming progressed to get that Daniel look, but my headcanon in universe is that Sha’re used to trim it for him on Abydos, and since her abduction he can’t bring himself to get it cut

There’s an ongoing metaphor by Kinsey for the Stargate being a Pandora’s Box that’s kind of apt, the box (jar) being a gift from the gods intended to punish mankind after Prometheus gifted them fire, with humanity as Pandora, eternally curious and unable to resist peeking inside.

The show never had a Goa’uld character who took on the persona of Prometheus, Epimetheus, or even Pandora, which was kind of a missed opportunity.

Samuels the slimeball is “sorry it had to end like this” and Hammond rightly tells him to gtfo.

Nice crossfade, Mr Wood.

Here’s the perfectly simple premise: It’s seven days until Christmas and the magnanimous Mrs Anna Claus sends all the elves home since they’ve finished the toys early. She also tries to improve Santa’s navigational route and wants to help him with his mail, but is utterly underappreciated by her husband (Charles Durning).

Lansbury brings her distinctive voice to her pleasant I Want song - “I've been manning the business and planning each holiday plan/And I'm tired of being the shadow behind the great man”.

She takes the sleigh and reindeer, but due to bad weather emergency lands in New York City, meeting Italian stable boy Marcello (David Norona) who shows her the immigrant melting pot via the song and dance number Avenue A (well, the Italian-Irish-Jewish pot at least). There’s tap and joyous dancing, all culminating in a Consider Yourself-esque street celebration extolling the “great kaleidoscope called Avenue A.”

There's also a cameo from Jerry Herman, suitably playing a piano.

We meet Sadie (Debra Wiseman), a young Jewish woman and Suffragette, with whom Marcello is in love with from afar, Sadie’s mother Mrs Lowenstein (Rosalind Harris, who memorably played Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof) who fears the police after fleeing pogroms in Europe, local gossips Mrs Shaughnessy and Mrs Brandenheim, and Nora (Lynsey Bartilson), a young Irish girl who works at child labor factory Tavish Toys. Nora's Irish accent is...look, I'm not here to rag on child actors. She tried her best.

Our villain is Augustus P Tavish, played by Broadway veteran Terrence Mann, crooning that his toys “Only have to last till Christmas.” If you want to hear his voice used to full effect however, check out the original Broadway cast recordings of Cats (Rum Tum Tugger), Beauty and the Beast (The Beast, particularly If I Can’t Love Her), and The Scarlet Pimpernel (Chauvelin, particularly Falcon in the Dive).

Mann is delightfully hammy in the role, in spats and spinning a cane, delivering every line on pitch as if it’s a song. It's CAMP and I love it. The movie's worth it for his dulcet tones alone.

Mrs Claus (taking the name Mrs North), is employed at Tavish Toys as a supervisor, singing and dancing around the factory floor, improving morale but aghast at the working conditions and poor quality of the toys.

Meanwhile, back at the North Pole, Santa only notices his wife is missing because his cocoa hasn’t been made right (ugh). It’s up to head elf (there’s always a head elf) Arvo is tell Santa she’s gone and deliver Santa some home truths.

Arvo is played by Michael Jeter, one of those delightful character actors with so many credits it’s impossible to identify where you would know him from (for me it’s Father Ignatius in Sister Act 2).

Santa bemoans that he can’t bear to think of Anna about her out there “alone and helpless.” Smash cut to:

What is it about Victorian/Edwardian garb that just feels like Christmas?

Sadie is literally on her soapbox (a manifestation of the trope), and Anna asks her advice about industrial action for the factory. In return, she gives Sadie advice for persuading other women to her cause, utilising the soft power of persuasion rather than shouting slogans. They go a recruiting through song, culminating in a suffragette march where they are joined by Nora, Mrs Shaughnessy, Mrs Brandenheim, and Marcello. I really like this one! It’s uplifting and upbeat, if a sanitised depiction of the struggle for women’s suffrage.

It musically echoes the opening number Mrs Santa Claus, even repeating lines that Anna sung for herself, now applied the the community of women who have embraced her: "We've planned our strategy and our flag is unfurled/For we have gifts of our own to offer the world."

Anna and Nora bond over missing the people they love - Anna her husband, and Nora her mother and little brother who are still back in Ireland (her father is working double shifts to raise the money to bring them over). It’s time for another song and dance number, Whistle - a tribute to vaudeville. This one is a bit overlong and unnecessary, the kind of number that works on stage post-intermission to ease the audience back in, but isn’t needed onscreen.

At the North Pole, Arvo and the Elves try to cheer Santa up by dancing to the tune of We Need a Little Christmas (first composed by Herman for Mame), but he remains sullen. Honestly, this Santa really sucks. He bemoans his predicament, and Arvo has to prod him to write down what his wife means to him. Of course he does it through song, promising to change but it’s a very shallow mea culpa.

Meanwhile Anna plays matchmaker, setting up local policeman Officer Doyle and Mrs Lowenstein, overcoming her fears when Doyle assures her he won’t be taking Sadie away for exercising her free speech. Mrs Lowenstein finally unpacks the bag she’s always kept ready in case they needed to flee again, including her grandmother’s silver candlestick - the matching one being lost when they fled the old country.

Marcello invites Sadie to the Policeman’s Ball, and they sing We Don’t Go Together At All, a pretty song I unapologetically love. However it does end with a trope I absolutely hate - where Marcello taps his cheek but when Sadie moves in to kiss it, he turns his head so she kisses him on the lips. It’s all played very sweet, but probably not something you’d see if the movie was made today.

At Tavish Toys, Anna leads the kids in a work slow down, and then a city-wide strike and boycott. Because this is fantasy world, this immediately leads to the mayor declaring that no child will again work under such conditions, and a call for child labor laws. I think its no coincidence that this passion project of Lansbury's deals with issues such as women's and worker's rights - however santitised. We must assume the elves have union benefits back at the North Pole!

At the policeman’s ball, Mrs North gets to wear this absolutely banger outfit, and gets toasted as “the Mrs Santa Claus of Avenue A.” Lansbury was 71 when she played this role, and all credit to Bob Mackie for dressing her not only with a stylish vibrancy in the earlier scenes, but putting her in a gown like this and going for glamour rather than the dowdy Mrs Claus cliche.

You may also recognise Nora’s outfit recycled from A Little Princess.

I also appreciate that Sadie hasn’t been overtly softened in her relationship with Marcello - she’s the one who gives the speech, engaging in some self-deprecation in decrying herself “the biggest mouth on Avenue A” and wearing a beautiful dress, but not torn down or diminished because of her activism - but rather celebrated and validated by the very people who used to deride her. She's learned the art of pitching your message to the audience rather than riding roughshod over them, but isn't any less of an activist.

But while Anna has finally been given the recognition and appreciation she’s craved, for some reason she misses her dropkick of a husband. “He Needs Me” is a nice song but undercuts the message a bit as she decides that “I need him much more”. You really don't Anna, go that extra step and stage a Santa coup - you deserve more than playing second fiddle to a dude who took two days to even notice you were gone!

She hurries back to the reindeer but is prevented from returning by Tavish, who has implausibly figured out who she is, and wants to stop Christmas so people will have no choice to buy toys from him again. It’s neatly and swiftly resolved by her recalling that as a boy the toy bear he’d received from Santa was stolen by his brother, and Mrs Claus gives him another one. Okay then.

Meanwhile, Santa is still sulking over his bad cocoa. WHY DON’T YOU TRY AND FIND HER YOU USELESS SACK OF SHIT?!? AREN’T YOU OMNIPOTENT? GET OFF YOUR ARSE AND DO SOMETHING!

This is a real false note for me - yes Anna has the sleigh and reindeer, but there is no way out of the North Pole other than that? He just sits and waits for her to come home - I suppose this gives her the agency, but it does feel like she is ready to return to her old life of being unappreciated, instead of going home to demand that he treat her right.

However Santa is slightly redeemed in that he declares that he will use her new navigation route, and also that she can join him in the present delivery duties. She also gets a new cape.

In New York, her friends also get their heart’s desire - Mrs Lowenstein her grandmother’s missing candlestick, Sadie and Marcello each other, and Nora the arrival of her mother and baby brother.

Overall I think this mostly holds up and deserves to be in the Christmas movie rotation. It’s a very female-focused piece - Mrs Claus is in the role of guardian angel, improving the lives of everyone she meets, but her solidarity is with Nora and worker’s rights, Sadie and women’s suffrage, and Mrs Lowenstein and her generational trauma.

It’s a charming little musical with a quintessential performance by Angela Lansbury and a nice parting message:

Meet Jessica Slocum (unclear if she has a blue-haired English Aunt obsessed with her pussy):

Believe it or not, the messy braids/floppy hat combo was peak fashion at this time (look up Blossom if you want to know more).

Jessica’s idea of a good time is to wander around a department store looking forlornly at the other girls shopping with their mothers, to the angelic voice of the late great Olivia Newton John singing “what if?”

Meet Philomena (Doris Roberts, also late and great), a witch who for some reason works in a department store even though she can grant wishes. She also saves mannequins from trash compactors and encourages people to pick up litter. I kind of wish the movie was about her.

She grants Jessica’s wish of a Mom for the holidays, and bring one of the store’s mannequins to life in the form of Amy Miller. Now, ONJ was always a better singer than an actor, and maybe it’s just the childhood nostalgia talking, but she’s exceedingly charming in this.

Jessica’s dad is this dweeb Jim Slocum (Doug Sheehan), who allows her to move in after she shows up at the door claiming to answer an ad he placed for childcare. You can see where this is going.

There’s a wiff of Xanadu about the whole thing, except instead of a Greek Muse awoken from a painting, this time ONJ is given human form from plastic, and sadly there are no roller-skating musical numbers.

What follows are various Born Yesterday tropes, including Amy cooking chicken noodle soup for breakfast, reading Jessica’s diary and inviting her crush over, and trying to put out a fire with eggnog. Jess learns that having a mother comes with conflict, and Amy learns to cry, as another ONJ song plays in the background.

There’s also the drama of taking one of the store’s cars to go tree shopping (driven by a mannequin chauffeur), and Jessica needing to remember her lines for the school Christmas play (the Santa mannequin helps her out).

There is however a genuinely hilarious moment as Doug sits in the aftermath of the Christmas tree fire, surrounded by burned family photos of his dead wife. Amy pops her head around the corner and chirps: “Are you sure you don’t want some gazpacho?”

There are three different shades of pink in this outfit - the early 90′s, everyone!

Since it’s all very low stakes, we need a villain in the form of mustachioed Jacob Carter Mr Morelli (Carmen Argenziano), the store’s security chief who hates Christmas and (for some reason) mannequins, and wants to bust Amy for shoplifting the clothes she left the store wearing when she came to life.

There’s also a subplot about how the mannequins with no faces or souls are replacing the “real” mannequins, treated 100% seriously, accompanied by creepy music.

Was this some kind of social commentary about department stores losing their vibe and becoming mass-commercialised and soulless rather than retaining customer-focused charm, told through the lens of mannequins who come alive at night vs those who don’t? Probably not. This has no bearing on the actual story other than the threat that if Amy turns back into a mannequin she’ll be replaced and destroyed. But this remains unresolved at the end as we can only assume Amy’s mannequin friends, not so lucky to become human, will shortly be relegated to the trash compacter Philomena saved Santa from in the opening sequence.

Amy has the power to bring other mannequins to life, but they all cheer her off at the end instead of asking her to wake them up so they can stage a mass breakout and save themselves. Way to pull the mortality ladder up after you, Amy.

Kids, the 90’s was nothing but hats and scrunchies. It was a simpler time.

And side ponytails. So many side ponytails.

Amy and Jim fall for each other blah blah blah, Jessica has to confront losing another mother so soon after finding her, but at the end of 90 minutes all is well, Jess and Jim’s love for Amy turn her human forever, Morelli gets almost mown down by the mannequin chauffeur and probably has a break from reality, Philomena continues doing her witchy thing, and a Mom for Christmas becomes a Mom for life.

Look, this is not a good movie. There’s only so much work the nostalgia filter can do, and there is a huge amount of schlock and cringe in this. But Olivia Newton John (RIP) is charming, Doris Roberts (RIP) gives an empathetic performance worlds away from Marie Barone, and it’s inoffensive, family fare.

Should your interest be piqued, it can be watched here:

We open with Francis P Church (the late great Charles Bronson) in a cemetery, brushing the snow off the grave of his wife Elizabeth and baby Eleanor who died a year earlier. He opens up a gold watch with her picture inside, and it plays a gentle tune. He then takes out a bottle of whiskey, but turns away from the grave before he takes a swig.

In real life Church was indeed married to Elizabeth Wickham, but they had no children and I can't find any information about when she died (Francis passed in 1906). However in terms of framing a character, this is pretty effective.

We see The Sun newspaper being delivered, giving us the date of 17 December 1897.

Then we're at the docks, where James O'Hanlan (Richard Thomas) and Dominic Donelli (Massimo Bonetti) are fired after getting into a fight with another worker who levies several ethnic slurs and anti-immigrant rhetoric at them. Thomas was apparently one of the Walton kids (which I've never seen), and is one of those working actors who has seemingly been in every procedural known to man - he was also in The Americans and Ozark (but I haven't seen those either).

Their eight year old daughters Virginia (Katherine Isabelle) and Maria (Virginia Bagnata) meanwhile, are being mocked by her classmates for believing in Santa Claus. Look, the child performances in this movie are...what you would expect. But I'm not here to criticise kids, they do their best.

James can't find another job, reduced to reading The Sun a day late once it's put out in the trash, and the family is struggling. His wife Evie (Tasmin Kelsey, who I remember as Gairwyn from Stargate SG-1) is an optimist and tells him to keep up his spirits. James: "The trouble is there's too much damn spirit and not enough damn jobs."

In actuality, Philip O'Hanlan was a surgeon and coroner and they were a middle class family who lived on the Upper West Side. Virginia went on to achieve a doctorate in childhood education and was a teacher for over 40 years - her childhood home is now a school.

Frank stumbles into the offices of The Sun to pick up another bottle of whiskey from his desk, and then to the local bar to brood. Local pompous aristocratic jerk Cornelius Barrington (John Novak - who has apparently been in every Canadian-filmed production ever, including Smallville and Stargate) arrives to goad Frank about his affinity for those filthy poors. In doing so, he makes Frank sound legitimately badass: "The great egalitarian editorializer, friend and champion of the common man, would-be slayer of the capitalist dragons!"

The newsroom is populated by editor Edward Page Mitchell (the late great Ed Asner), copyboy Teddy (Shawn Macdonald), and sole female reporter Andrea Borland (Colleen Winton - apparently she was also in two episodes of Stargate but I can't place her). She's ambitious and frustrated that Mitchell will only let her report on society matters. Not gonna lie, there's a whiff of Perry White, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen about them (or maybe it's just that I rewatched the 1978 Superman recently). There's a bit of snappy dialogue:

Andrea: Did you like my society piece on the Vanderbilt ball?

Mitchell: I printed it, didn't I?

Andrea: Well...half of it

Mitchell: That was the half I liked.

Andrea heads to the bar and hesitates only for a moment at the "men only" sign before going in to find Frank and try and retrieve the article Mitchell was looking for - "The Shame of Greatness".

Frank hands her a page of a few ideas and a lot of gibberish, while Corenlius watches literally eating popcorn. There's just a big bowl of popcorn sitting out in this men's bar and grill!

If gifs were a thing in the 90's this would have been a meme.

Andrea rewrites the article and gives it to Mitchell in Frank's name. It's a great success, with Teddy walking around reciting lines and calling it "a real humdinger!" Frank confronts Andrea, and she confides in him that it was his lecture at her university that inspired her to keep going when she was only one of three women in the class (and the other two ended up getting married).

We get the dramatic irony in Frank's refusal to be impressed: "Tomorrow it will be yesterday's newspaper, and you can wrap a fish in it. Nothing that you, or I, or anybody else writes for a newspaper has a lifespan of more than 24 hours."

Cornelius approaches Andrea and offers her a job to work at his uncle's paper The Chronicle in order to expose Frank as a fraud (in real life Church actually once worked at The Chronicle, which was published by his father). But as a woman of principle she coldly rejects him, and honestly, I love her. Frank has been nothing but dismissive and patronising towards her, so it's clear it's not solely about protecting him (and perhaps the ideal she had of him) but more about who she is and what she believes. Underrated character in an underrated movie.

James foils a robbery, and the police arrive with accents of the diddly dee potatoes variety. When he arrives home he's greeted by his Jewish neighbor Mrs Goldstein. It's interesting that this is a very similar setting to Mrs Santa Claus - New York at the turn of the century and has some thematic similarities - the immigrant experience and the importance of community in particular.

James reads aloud The Shame of Greatness article to the family:

"We have become a great nation, but at what cost? Ask the red man, the black man, the immigrant, the elderly, the ill. We have built a railroad across the 45 states and bridges across rivers but there is no bridge of brotherhood. Why? Because there is no profit in that bridge. Ask the captains of industry, ask the robber barons, ask the politicians about that bridge."

Unfortunate racial wording aside, it's a sentiment that wouldn't be out of place now, 31 years after this film was made, and 125 years after the film is set. I like a little activism in my Christmas movies.

It's also worth noting that most of the above passage were parts written by Frank, so Andrea's suggestion that they were his ideas is given credence - we don't know what the rest of the article went on to say but it's implied Andrea is a great writer able to match Frank's voice.

James speaks to the frustration of America not being the promised land: "It's hard to believe that fifty years ago our people came to this country because they were starving in Ireland. Potato famine indeed! High rents ha! It's no different over here."

As a child watching this movie was the first time I'd heard of the potato famine, and it's only this rewatch I noticed that Virginia is reading a book about Oliver Cromwell! Yikes. I don't know if that was deliberate, but certainly an interesting touch.

Evie however, takes the other side of the argument, telling James to stop feeling sorry for himself, and to be grateful for what they have - family, a place to live, and food (and God - this is certainly the most religious movie of this rewatch). Evie: "You can be poor if you want to James O'Hanlon, but I'm rich. And I grow richer every day of my life."

Virginia asks her father if Santa Claus is real, and he is the envy of every parent in quickly thinking to deflect and encourage her to write to The Sun for an answer instead.

Frank is back at the bar, where Cornelius goads him about Andrea, implying there are other things she is taking care of for him. Finally Frank is moved to respond, and when Cornelius warns him that he was "Captain of the Yale boxing team" Frank punches him square in the face, knocking him to the floor.

"I've done some fighting myself, Captain," Frank says, "around Hell's Kitchen." When I was a kid I didn't realise this referred to a gritty part of New York and thought it was a metaphor and an allusion to his roving reporter life - I think it works either way.

At the postbox, Virginia is gifted a stamp by the kindly German postman Hans Schuller, in another example of this community of immigrants helping each other through the hard times.

At The Sun, Frank looks at his wife's picture in the watch, and Teddy remarks that one day he'll have a watch like that ("a real himdinger!" - an annoying catchphrase, but it's meant to be annoying). Frank takes the picture out and puts the watch in an envelope with Teddy's name on it, then goes home where he turns off the fire but leaves the gas on, in the grand tradition of family Christmas movies including attempted suicide!

I admit this went right over my head when I first watched this as a kid, I think subtle enough not to be too dark for younger viewers. There's also a nice bit of production design comparing Frank's warm and furnished apartment with the O'Hanlan's grey and bare abode.

Mitchell arrives to give Frank the assignment of answering Virginia's letter, and we get to the core of Frank's depression - that he was a man who lived for his work, never even spending one Christmas dinner with his wife because he was away on assignment, and the irony that he was in Panama writing about yellow fever while she was dying of pneumonia - guilt and longing and regret. It's pretty complex stuff for a family film, and something I never really appreciated until I was older.

Now, it's certainly wholesale fiction - Francis Church married Elizabeth in 1871, so not merely married for "more than three years" as in the film. In fact, her birthdate on the grave is 1860, which puts a bit of a different spin on things with Frank significantly older rather than being her contemporary as in real life. This is alluded to in their conversation as Frank says he took many more years than most men to find a wife, adding to his guilt for not being there for her and appreciating what he had.

There's also nothing I could find that indicated he was an alcoholic - allegedly he was an atheist and hated writing the famous editorial.

But Ed Asner and Charles Bronson are both great actors, and play so well off each other. I do give credit for this scene not being too overwritten - if you actually pay attention to the grave at the beginning you see that Elizabeth and Eleanor died on 24 December the previous year - which is on the nose, but it remains subtext rather than Frank giving exposition of the "They died on Christmas and that's why I hate it!" variety.

The next day at the paper we get a cameo from screenwriter Andrew J Fenady as the reporter who tells Mitchell things are "heating up" in Cuba, referring to the Cuban War of Independence and a precursor to the Spanish-America War. I do enjoy these small historical touches.

Meanwhile, James and Dominic find jobs for the day but have another run in with the dock workers and get to thoroughly beat them up in a nice bit of karma. There's really no point to this scene other than to see the bigots get punched, but hey, I'm here for that, and it also keeps James' story parallel to Frank's.

Frank wanders around the city and is inspired by what he sees - the poor being fed by a soup kitchen, a policeman helping an elderly homeless man, people donating to toy drives, and a scene in a park complete with brass band, sleigh rides, ice skating, and general seasonal joy. He finds a baby's rattle that inspires part of the editorial, and sees a young couple with their child, sending him back to visit his wife's grave. He buys flowers but decides to throw them away rather than placing them on the grave - along with his bottle of whiskey.

I actually think this is a great example of show-not-tell writing - a lesser piece would have had Frank talk to his wife at her grave, saying how sorry he was he never appreciated her enough when she was alive, asking how he was going to answer Virginia's question when he himself doesn't believe in anything anymore, and then make a breakthrough. But not a word is uttered - we have Bronson's performance, we see him start to experience life again and decide to stop wallowing in his grief and return to his passion for writing. It's actually very deftly done.

Mrs Goldstein appears again to give the O'Hanlan's some brisket because she "made too much." It's very sweet but James gets in his feelings about it because he's not the one providing for his family.

The police arrive to take James down to the station for questioning about the robbery, and while he's gone Virginia uses a penny she found on the street earlier to buy a paper - wanting to give her father the gift of The Sun on the day it's printed rather than the next.

Back at the paper, Frank puts his wife's picture back in his gold watch, and instead gives Teddy another: "it's not gold, and it doesn't play a tune, but it was my first watch and it helped me start the day for many years." He also tells Mitchell he will come to Christmas dinner after all, and Andrea asks him to follow her somewhere, repeating his earlier words back to him: "there has to be a finish to every story."

James arrives back at home with a tree and laden with gifts, including a pet kitten (that he befriended earlier on). Turns out he was given a reward for his part in the robbery, and that both he and Dominic were offered jobs on the police force. Something could be said about James and Dominic becoming cops on the basis of punching people really well, but perhaps this isn’t the place for it.

Virginia gives her father the paper, and of course sees the editorial and reads it aloud, as all our friends arrive, including Andrea and Frank. It's actually a rather moving scene, the community that has supported each other, and who all played a part in the letter being written, delivered, and finally answered.

I honestly think this movie holds up despite the nostalgia goggles - there is some cringe, but through fictionalising the story behind the editorial, it becomes it's own metaphor - the weaving together of these disparate lives and their various struggles, united by hope and faith. Bronson gives a great performance that really grounds the film (and the part must have been particularly resonant for him, as his wife Jill Ireland had died the year before the film was made). I really recommend this movie, and think it's a shame that it isn't as enduring or well known as the original editorial.

"Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. 

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. 

Not believe In Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. 

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.