Film Analysis: Angela’s Christmas

Perhaps I should have posted my review of a film that takes place during Midnight Mass before the Christmas season officially began. Fortunately, the season, while it has begun, has not yet ended. A movie like Angela’s Christmas can still be celebrated and enjoyed–for two more full days until the Epiphany, at least–without having to rewind any liturgical clocks. Thanks to the magi, who took longer to arrive in Bethlehem than many modern nativity scenes would like to acknowledge (patient anticipation and delayed gratification are among the most foreign of concepts in twenty-first century America), I can successfully justify my procrastination.

Just as the story of salvation begins with light, so does the story of six-year-old Angela’s Christmas adventure. The short, animated film on Netflix is set in freezing-cold 1914 Limerick but contains melting-warm messages about family, courage, and childlike faith. This accurate and realistic adaptation of Pulitzer Prize winner Frank McCourt’s short story “Angela and the Baby Jesus” is a delight for children and adults alike, with enough good-old-fashioned theatrical humor to satisfy the former and good-old-fashioned Catholic humor to satisfy the latter. As a bonus, liturgy nerds everywhere can rejoice in the uppercase M wherever the word “Mass” appears in the film’s subtitles.

Movie spoilers follow.

It’s Never Too Late

I’m not the only procrastinator mentioned in this post. Angela is as late as she is motivated. She’s usually the last person to exit a building, often being chastised for keeping the rest of her family waiting or for trailing behind. She gets sidetracked. She has goals but tends to wait until the last minute to accomplish them.

Same, Angela.

Once again, it is fortunate that God’s timing is better than our own. It isn’t too late for the family to make it to Mass, or for Pat to become an admirable brother and son, or for Angela to return baby Jesus to His manger. And it’s definitely never too late to celebrate Christmas.

Protecting the Most Vulnerable

Before departing for Mass, Angela gives her coat to her little sister Aggie (who outgrew her own clothes), Pat gives his coat to Angela (at his mother’s command), Tom gives his coat to Pat (without complaint), and Mother gives her scarf to Tom (who insists she keep her own coat). Love is passed along, literally, from character to character, starting with the youngest and most vulnerable and ending with the oldest and least vulnerable, where it dances back and forth between mother and son.

Charity is imparted by the least vulnerable and inherited by the most vulnerable, but it doesn’t end there.

The instinct to protect those needing protection runs in Angela’s family. Love is a contagious act. The film’s primary conflict is getting baby Jesus warm, but Angela also goes out of her way to give her last coin to the blind pauper on the street, Pat goes out of his way to defend his family when confronted by the policeman, Tom goes out of his way to keep his family warm after Angela’s birth, and Mother goes out of her way to provide for her children as a single parent and interrupt their fighting by sharing the “heartbreaking” story, as she refers to it, of their father’s devotion to them.

Even the guard responds to the call to serve and protect. His response would seem a necessary qualification for police work, but the law enforcement officer who arrested Angela’s father proves that anyone, policemen included, can fail to defend the defenseless. Where this officer chose to arrest a desperate father and take him away from his family and newborn daughter on New Year’s Eve for stealing a few lumps of coal, the guard who discovers this same family “stealing” baby Jesus chooses to pardon their theft, saying, “There is nothing funny about taking a child, any child, away from his family on Christmas Eve.”

In Angela’s Christmas, the men protect and defend. The women protect and nurture. Men can be men, women can be women, and families can be families because of Jesus, who, at Christmas, makes Himself as vulnerable as God can be.

Keep Warm, or You’ll “Catch Your Death”

In every scene, the characters struggle to keep warm. “You’ll catch your death,” many of them say when the weather is especially threatening.

Jesus needs His family to keep warm. (And a blanket, for goodness’ sake…where are those swaddling clothes everyone is talking about?) Angela’s own family is no different. “Together,” Mother narrates, “we [are] warm. Because that is what families do. They shelter each other from the storm. They bring joy where there is sadness, warmth where there is none.”

Death and cold are relatives. Wherever and whenever the warmth of family dissipates, death, in any of its forms, follows. God prepares a human family for His Son, knowing how much He needs one and how vital families are for growth, protection, and warmth in life, which is why, in the end, baby Jesus belongs with and is returned to His parents.

The Irony of Christmas

As Pat argues, “[Jesus’] mammy will be roaring and bawling when she sees Him gone.” He says this more to get Angela in trouble than to get baby Jesus to safety, but the statement is relatively true regardless. Perhaps Pat read the following Sunday’s Gospel ahead of time:

When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”

Luke 2:48

Mary and Joseph’s goal is to keep Jesus warm and safe. Angela obviously pursues the same goal, even at six years old, fleeing from St. Joseph’s Church to her house just as he and Mary fled from Bethlehem to Egypt. One of the most baffling and ironic contradictions of every Christmas is the need to keep the Light of the World warm, to save our own Savior (Jn 8:12).

Leaving the Stable to Enter Our Homes

Jesus didn’t remain in the stable for long. His family immediately departed for Egypt where Mary and Joseph could keep Him safe and where He could begin saving the world. As important as it is for Angela to return baby Jesus to His birthplace, He cannot stay there.

Ever eager to discover problems but not offer solutions, Pat interrupts Mother to yell, “We can’t be sitting here listening to stories with the baby Jesus on the table!” Thank baby Jesus Pat becomes everyone’s favorite, fully redeemed character by the end of the film, like Edmund from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. (Brats make the best saints.) And thank baby Jesus Pat is wrong in this instance. Jesus wants to be involved in our storytelling. He wants to be in our stories, especially stories like the one Mother tells about Father. He wants to go home with us and be at the heart of every story we tell, not freezing in a stable where only Mrs. Blake and Mr. King stay to mutter prayers with heads bent and eyes closed and argue about who “Jesus” was thanking after they both responded “Bless you” to a hiding, sneezing Angela.

When we bring Jesus from the church into our homes, Tom’s hilarious suggestion that “all the angels and saints will be coming over for dinner, too” doesn’t seem so absurd. Wherever Jesus goes, the angels and saints seem to follow.

Conclusion

Although many of her lines of dialogue serve comedic purposes, one of Angela’s expressions is particularly relevant for the penitent: “You’re smiling at me,” she says to baby Jesus, “even though I hurt you.”

The audience knows Angela will grow up to be a good mother. If she hadn’t, her son wouldn’t have published a story about the maternal instincts she possessed even as a child. Yet, in our attempts to protect, defend, and nurture Jesus and welcome Him into our homes, we may find ourselves occasionally and unintentionally hurting Him like Angela does.

God knows this. And He signed up for it anyway. Angela predicts that Jesus “would never complain,” and the narrator confirms this, assuring anyone who might happen to harm the vulnerable Jesus on his or her journey home, “He smiled the way He always did and held out His arms to the world.” There is nothing we, the police, stubborn brothers, or any evil powers can do to stop Jesus from coming to us on Christmas.