This morning I was fulfilling one of my most loved Christmas traditions – watching the film It’s A Wonderful Life. I first discovered this film in 1996 and have watched it every year since.

For those of you who haven’t come across this movie, it was made in 1946 by Frank Capra and stars Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a frustrated man living in a small town in America called Bedford Falls. As a young man George had huge aspirations to travel the world, become an engineer and construct amazing buildings. However, one set of circumstances after another mean that George has to remain in Bedford Falls and grudgingly take over a small family run savings and loans association.

I have watched this film many times but what really struck me from this year’s viewing was the pent-up rage that George feels and his resentment at being trapped in what he calls “a crummy little town”. Over the years his peers and his brother get to leave the town and make something of themselves whereas George continues in his humble but valuable role of allowing the people of Bedford Falls to buy their own home.

The crux of the movie comes when, on Christmas Eve, a mistake causes George to have an $8,000 shortfall in the bank’s accounts and he faces being carted off to prison. Clutching a $15,000 life assurance policy he realises that financially, he is worth more dead than alive.

George is saved when a guardian angel arrives and helps him to see how his life and his continual acts of kindness have made a hugely positive contribution to his friends, family and the town in general. He is finally convinced that the value of his life is far more than dollars, cents or glamorous achievement. In his hour of need the townspeople rally to help him and the film ends with his brother Harry declaring him the richest man in Bedford Falls.

Sometimes in our own hour of need we too can overlook our true worth and focus only on the negative or what we lack. At these times we need to make remember our treasures of the heart – our capital in terms of friendship, love and humanity. Like George Bailey we can find it hard to grasp the positive contribution our life makes to our families, our places of work and our communities. We may not realise it but each one of us would leave a huge hole in the lives of those around us if we had never existed.

I can heartily recommend It’s A Wonderful Life particularly if you struggle with the Christmas season or if life is not currently panning out as you would wish.

So let’s go forth in peace, love and hope until we meet again in 2010. My best wishes of the season.