Seven years ago The Family Man became my favorite Christmas movie. I have had a lot of favorite Christmas movies -- White Christmas, A Christmas Carol -- including some that I'm a little ashamed to admit: Home Alone (the first, NOT the sequel) and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation....it's SO stupid and yet I laugh!
At first glance, The Family Man doesn't seem like a Christmas movie in the traditional sense. Aside from the story beginning on Christmas Eve, there's not a whole lot of "festive" going on. But it has many of the plot characteristics of A Christmas Carol. The main character, played by Nicolas Cage, makes a wonderful modern-day Scrooge. He is slightly less Scrooge-y in the financial sense, but every bit as Scrooge-y in the emotional and relationship sense. The story, in a nutshell, is that he finds out what his life would be like if he had put a relationship as a priority instead of his career development. He comes to realize that his life would have been so much better, so much more satisfying if he had.
Ok, so why does this movie beat out the amazingly wonderful George C. Scott Christmas Carol? It was released at a time in my life when I was very unhappy in my relationship. I hadn't been able to quite put a finger on exactly what was bothering me -- there were lots of little things but none of them were really IT. After watching this movie, I knew with certainty that the person I was with was actually quite scrooge-y when it came to the emotional and relationship world (ours, specifically), and that I would not, repeat NOT, have the kind of emotional union, nor the life partnership, not to mention the basic, everyday collaboration, that I longed for and believe I was designed for.
It's amazing to me that a movie could bring such focus and clarity, but it did. Six months later, after clearly communicating my goals and needs for our relationship (something I had previously been unable to do) and getting rebuffed, I was single again. It wasn't long after that that I meant DH, my ONO, and my life has been so much better, so much more satisfying. I don't know about the other guy.
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