During A Shiftworker's Christmas In Wales, A Provocative Thought About It's A Wonderful Life

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well I spent the morning/early afternoon of Christmas Day at work. Personally have no problems with that. However on returning to the apartment needed to quickly freshen up and join the rest of the family at brother-in-law's and partner's house who had kindly invited us (amongst others I should stress) to have Christmas dinner there.

(And before any of you query why I, a man who could not call himself Mr Christmas, was happy to go there. The answer's simple. Whatever my belief I wasn't going to spoil the day for daughter, wife and mother)

But during the dinner (which was excellent by the way), as I knew it would, the long day took it's toil and found myself being half asleep at the table. Not completely enough for everyone else to notice, but enough for wife/mother to jolt me up.

The thing though is this. Sometimes in this twilight zone between sleep and the life and soul of whatever party a book lover can have my brain sometimes can have some out of the way thoughts. It did that moment. It concerned the movie It's A Wonderful Life, recently voted Britain's number one Christmas film.

Thing is...breathe in.....it's not really a Christmas film...….and breathe out again.

Now I'm not saying it's not great and of course it's set at Christmas. So it does of course have the trimmings of tinsel. But just like the debate on the original Die Hard it fails when put to one simple test.

Could the story be set at any other time of the year? And the answer is yes.

After all James Stewart is about to commit suicide because of the troubles in his savings business and the person sent to show what life would have been like without him is not Santa, oh no ho ho. It's an angel.

If you think of the film which came I think second in the poll, Love Actually, now that is a Christmas movie. Personally I don't like it. I think of it as a piece of well packaged nothing. But it is cleverly made. The reason probably why the writer set most of it around Christmas is that he knew whether for good or bad it's a time of year when our emotions are heightened as we take stock of the year that's gone and where your life is now.

Sometimes you know my brain works in mysterious ways.

Until the next time.