We don't have a lot of Christmas traditions in our house, but one thing I try to do every year is watch "It's a Wonderful Life" on Christmas Eve. Unless the boy convinces me to tune to "Phineas and Ferb's Christmas Vacation."

Holiday classics ain't what they used to be.

"It's a Wonderful Life" means more to me since I had kids. And it's hard not to compare our current, turbulent circumstances with the idealized Bedford Falls of Frank Capra's imagination. Or was it imagination? Was America ever really like this?

SMART REMARKS: Cultural smokescreens

A brief piece I read the other day about baseball great Stan Musial suggests it was. Back in 1960 — 14 years after "It's a Wonderful Life" premiered — Hall of Famer Musial went to his employer, the St. Louis Cardinals, and asked for a pay cut. He was earning the princely sum of $100,000, but insisted on a 20 percent reduction for the 1960 season because he hadn't played well the previous year.

Pause and let that sink in for a moment. I didn't do a good job, Mr. Boss Man — here's some of your money back.

Obviously the sentiment was less than universal, let's say. But consider the inherent selflessness. It's the same sense of selflessness that permeates "It's a Wonderful Life"; both Musial's act, and Capra's movie, were products of their time, now long gone.

Yet even then, "It's a Wonderful Life" was considered suspect. The FBI, in a 1947 memo, called the film "a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers" with Lionel Barrymore's portrayal of Mr. Potter. It was, the memo asserted, "a common trick used by communists."

Communists! I think we can safely say that had he been around at the time, Glenn Beck would have included "It's a Wonderful Life" on his little blackboard of foolishness.

For the message of the film is socialistic — if you define socialism as concern for the broader society, rather than an insistence that's what's best for the individual is necessarily best for all. Frankly, Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey could have just packed it in and let Potter have his way. Maybe Potter was right — maybe the building and loan shouldn't give money to "the riffraff you [Bailey] love so much," people who might have a hard time paying the money back.

But Capra's Bailey saw nobility and worth in helping those who might have a better life as a result. He was willing to endure personal sacrifice so that others might pursue those aspirations. And the message of the film is that this didn't merely make Bailey "the richest man in town" — but it made the town itself a better place.

Now, were it not so wrapped up in tradition and sentiment, I think most Americans would laugh at such an outdated sentiment.

That's not the way our world works anymore, is it?

We come now at the end of a year marked by incredible hardship. Unemployment and want stalk the land, quietly though never too deep beneath the surface. As I've said before, I had hoped this nation would respond with compassion and a spirit of shared sacrifice — perhaps as George Bailey might have.

But we've instead taken Potter's tack, rejecting even the notion of shared sacrifice. Let the burden be borne by the "riffraff." Worse, a nation of people who see themselves as George Bailey incarnate now identifies with Potter, believing — tragically, wrongly so — that our interests are somehow aligned with his; he is our benefactor.

And yet, the mere existence of "It's a Wonderful Life" — this cultural document — says to me it wasn't always so. And gives me hope that it doesn't always have to remain that way, either.

Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817.