This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Repeat Xmas
Plot Overview
The movie opens with a bustling scene of Christmas shoppers
in a quaint New England village. It pans across a likeness of Mr &
Mrs Santa Claus to switch to a house decoration “wasting electricity
on an electric Santa.” Inside are the father Ronald Kidder (Rick
Roberts) who is a laid off ad exec, the mother Dr. Pamela Kidder (Molly Parker) a
veterinarian, their jock of an eldest son Jake (Wesley Morgan,) their
ignorable middle boy Pete (Zachary Gordon,) and their nerdy youngest
Kenny (Peter DaCunha.) Their grumpy grandpa (Bruce Dern) will soon
arrive, too. Their lives are full of stress, Christmas adds to it,
and an electrical failure with an overloaded tree starts a
“cascading series of events” that puts Christmas “in
the toilet.”
The next day sees Pete
pelted by the neighborhood bullies when he steps out his door,
helping his team lose the traditional neighborhood football match,
and joining his family in caroling. Grandpa goes home.
Ideology
Santa plays a traditional though understated role. For that matter he's hard to find in the Bible. Let's look at his origins. Fourth century Christian prelate Saint Nicholas was renowned for his generosity and came to be celebrated throughout Europe. In Holland he was Sint Nikolaas or simply “the good saint,” which in Dutch is Sinterklaas. The British colonists in the New World mispronounced it: “Santa Claus.” We might understand the movie better if we explored this good saint as a derivative of Noah recipient of God's grace.
Santa provisions his sleigh with gifts manufactured by elves at the North Pole. Let's compare Santa's sleigh with Noah's ark. Researcher Mark DeWayne Combs working from Genesis and ancient sources tells us, “we can reasonably propose accurate proportions of the ark to be 510 feet long, 85 feet wide and 51 feet in height” (27). That would dwarf the men working on it making them seem like little elves. Furthermore, “Christ himself referenced the flood (Matthew 24:39) … that those outside of Noah's immediate family ‘knew not until the flood came and took them all away.’ … This brings a detail that would impact the choice of location — the absolute necessity of isolation” (Combs 52). In our modern Santa myth, the elves' construction takes place at the supremely isolated North Pole.
Santa's sleigh is pulled by eight reindeer harnessed in pairs. Noah's ark was filled with pairs of exotic animals. (Gen. 7:17) “And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth.” Santa's sleigh also flies up above the earth. The ark landed on (Gen. 8:5) “the tops of the mountains”, the roof of the world. The sleigh lands on the rooftops, too.
Next, Santa comes down the chimney to take
care of the families on his route. Noah himself collapsed in a drunken heap
to deal with the families in turn. Our movie covers one family with three
sons in it. (Gen. 9:18-19) “And
the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and
Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah:
and of them was the whole earth overspread.” At this point he's to
take care of all his three children and the grandkids, and so cover
all the children on earth, not violating any laws of physics.
Here's what happened. (Gen. 9:20-23) “And Noah began to be an
husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was
drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of
Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren
without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both
their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of
their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their
father's nakedness.” The song, “Santa
Claus is Coming to Town” tells us, “He's making a list,
checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty or nice.” Ham, unlike
his two respectful brothers, was the naughty one mocking Noah.
Noah sorts out his gifts according
to his naughty and nice lists. (Gen. 9:24-27) “And Noah awoke from
his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. And
he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto
his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan
shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell
in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” Shem
and his brother Japheth were a nice pair as were Ham and implicitly
his son Canaan a naughty pair.
Noah's father Lamech had (Gen. 5:29) “called his name Noah, saying,
This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands,
because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.” So after
the flood one day, Noah took some leisure time, stripped down in his
tent, and got drunk. Mrs Noah being a good wife made herself
scarce while Noah decompressed from his day's labor. She went
off to visit her youngest son Ham telling him not to bother his father.
Disobedient Ham came knocking and discovered Noah plastered. He went
and mocked him to his two older brothers (Gen. 9:20-23). Ham was perturbed that
his father had gotten naked without setting about to procreate
as God commanded. He also didn't like his father taking a recess from
rebuilding the wrecked world. Noah's rejoinder was along the lines
of, “Oy! Vey!
You want we should have children and work harder? Okay, your descendants
(Canaan) can be slaves to your brothers. Oy! Vey!” (Gen. 9:24-27).
In biblical wisdom terms it's like, (Prov. 30:17) “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” There's a biblical alternative to mutilation in, (Exodus 21:26) “And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake.” Ham's offspring went into servitude rather than his having an eye put out or whatever. The animals were in pairs, and Noah dealt with two of his sons, Shem and Japheth, as a pair. There is no fourth son to pair with Ham the youngest, so Ham gets paired with his youngest son Canaan who will inherit Ham's deal anyway. The lines of Noah's other two sons Shem and Japheth would be the masters and Ham's line represented here by Canaan would be the slaves. Writer Bodie Hodge holds forth that: “Generally, from the Middle East in the land of Shinar (modern-day Iraq, where Babel was), Japheth's descendants went north toward Europe and Asia, Ham's went toward Africa, and Shem's remained in the Middle East” (183). The servitude of Ham as passing to his youngest son Canaan also encompassed his eldest son Cush, see Gen. 10:6. Cush is Hebrew for black, whose descendants settled in Africa. Canaan is the youngest son of Ham carrying the curse on the whole family by a figure of speech called a synecdoche whereby a part stands for the whole. (Jasher 73:35) “For the Lord our God gave Ham the son of Noah, and his children and all his seed, as slaves to the children of Shem and to the children of Japheth, and unto their seed after them for slaves, forever.”
This punishment may seem excessive until we look at the one similar incident in the Bible of mocking exposure (of a bald head) concerning the prophet Elisha, (2Kings 2:23-24) “And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.” The kids liked hair rather than baldness; they got a hairy bear. Ham got a better deal than that, servitude rather than destruction. Ham touted hard work and procreation, so his children would be under servitude.
The Canaanites were due for destruction in conflict with Israel, but the Gibeonite branch did a deal with Joshua (Joshua 9:24-27) to have their lives spared in favor of being bondmen, which was more to their liking. A lot of wicked people were wiped out in the Flood, but Ham got the better deal.
In “Pete's Christmas” the
grandpa had wanted the dad to study law, but he became an ad exec
instead, and then he got laid off, but it was only temporary. As Noah
showed us sometimes a man needs a breather. There was tension
in the family, and Pete was a hard kid to shop for, so he didn't get
what he wanted. He was cynical about it to his parents, mocking his
father, as it were. He'd already been disobedient to his mother the
time he ran away from home. Come the morning after Christmas, his
eye opens not on another day, but at the same day to live
over again … and again and again. He no longer has an eye for
a new day. It's only when he sets himself to work at making the Christmas
better for everybody that he can fulfill the curse.
Production Values
“”
(2013) was directed by Nisha Ganatra. The story credit goes to Peter
McKay. The teleplay was written by Gregg Rossen and Brian Sawyer.
It stars Zachary Gordon, Molly Parker and Rick Roberts. Its prominent
adult actors were Bruce Dern, Molly Parker, and Rick Roberts. The
cast was talented and likable.
MPAA rated it PG for some mild language. While grandpa was cast as a grumpy old man, the father was spared any cheap shots at his expense. Even though he was (temporarily) out of work, he received no aspersions to his character—save for grandpa's long standing feud.
The mother is positively
saintly. She's festively decorated her home. She cooks a homemade
meal for Christmas even though she has to go to work. She'd knitted
sweaters for all her brood. She doesn't harp on her husband's
shortcomings. She treats him with affection. She invites over
socially isolated neighbors.
Oddly at the football game there was a black
fan cheering like crazy off by himself. He didn't have any kids
in the game. He was wearing a patch decal so he might have been with
the park service. He is reminiscent of a Gospel event. Christ on the
way to his crucifixion needed someone to help him carry the cross,
so (Matt. 27:32) “as they
came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled
to bear his cross.” Cyrene a city of northern Africa (modern
day Iran) was where dwelt descendants of Ham, one of whom was compelled
to involuntary servitude by the Romans, descendants of Japheth, to
bear the cross of Christ a Semite. We are fortunate this servitude
lasted to then and there.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This is a flagrantly derivative but very likeable Christmas TV flick. It's sweet. If it matters to you, baby Jesus was upstaged by Santa Claus, but you can't have it all in a single movie. It's seasonal.
Movie Ratings
Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability for children: Suitable for children with guidance. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Christmas offering. Suspense: Predictable. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Print. Software.
The Book of Jasher. Translated from the Hebrew into English (1840). Photo lithographic reprint of exact edition published by J.H. Parry & Co., Salt Lake City: 1887. Muskogee, OK: Artisan Pub., 1988. Print.
Combs, Mark DeWayne. End the Beginning. USA: Splinter in the Mind's Eye Pub., 2014. Print.
Hodge, Bodie. Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2013. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org