With thanks to The Friendly Atheist, which published this essay here.
I found one! I found one! I found an atheist mom on TV!
Yes, I am one of those minority types hungry for representation in mainstream entertainment, watching avidly to see how, say, Dr. House does or doesn’t ring true as an atheist. And also watching avidly just because, goodness, there he is, saying unsayable things like, “Rational arguments don’t usually work on religious people. Otherwise there would be no religious people.” Oh, House.
But of course most atheists are not genius misanthropes. Some of them are gorgeous, high-powered attorneys with perfect wardrobes. Alicia Florrick, a.k.a. The Good Wife, is an unapologetic atheist, a fact that occasionally becomes a plot point, as it has during this season’s run for State’s Attorney. In an excruciating interview with a pastor (presented as a necessary step in her campaign process), she tries neither to lie nor to confirm that she’s an atheist: “Well, I can’t say for certain that God doesn’t exist,” she says, and, “Recently, I have looked for answers outside of myself.” Oh, lawyers.
Alicia parents two children as well as she can in those form-fitting suits, but she is not an atheist mom. She shows no interest in sharing her worldview with her children; in fact, her daughter is an evangelizing young Christian. I suspect that Grace (Grace!) is a fervent believer to allow us to continue to sympathize with her mom.
It’s OK if a grown-up has doubts about God, even if she doesn’t believe. It’s not so OK if she raises her kids that way. “Bones” Brennan on Bones is a staunch atheist, too, but turns out to be “open-minded” enough to have her daughter baptized.
Sigh.
So imagine my surprise at finding an atheist mom in a classic Christmas movie.
OK, they don’t actually say she’s an atheist. But make no mistake: Miracle on 34th Street (1947) is about faith in God, not just in Santa Claus. The word “believe” occurs 35 times in the script; “faith,” 5. The mother, Doris Walker, is career woman, a divorced single parent, and a nonbeliever.
The fact that she doesn’t believe in Santa does not distinguish her from the rest of the adults. The film, as you may recall, culminates in a courtroom hearing during which (1) the State of New York concedes the existence of Santa Claus, and (2) the kindly old man we know as Kris Kringle is declared to be the real Santa. But, at least until the final moment of the movie, none of the film’s grownups believe it’s true. When they say they do, they are clearly lying—either for political reasons (the Judge) or commercial ones (Mr. Macy) or because they don’t want their children to know they lied to them (the District Attorney).
In all these cases, the characters are clearly lying, and in all these cases, it’s the right thing to do.. Ms. Walker, on the other hand, doesn’t lie to her daughter, Susan, and that’s what’s wrong with her. Her neighbor and potential love interest, Mr. Gailey, establishes this early on (yes, he’s “Gailey” and fun; she’s a no-nonsense, down-to-earth “Walker”)
MR. GAILEY: No Santa Claus, no fairy tales . . . no fantasies of any kind, is that it?
MRS. WALKER: That’s right. I think we should be realistic and completely truthful with our children and not have them growing up believing in a lot of legends and myths like . . . Santa Claus, for example.
Later, when she’s explaining to Mr. Gailey why she’s upset with him for taking her daughter to see Santa, we find out why she’s so insistent on this philosophy.
MRS. WALKER: By filling them full of fairy tales they grow up considering life a fantasy instead of a reality. They keep waiting for Prince Charming to come along. And when he does, he turns out to be a . . .
MR. GAILEY: We were talking about Susie, not about you.
Aha! Turns out it was her disillusionment with her ex-husband that turned her into an advocate for truth at all costs. Those costs, by the way, are completely trumped up. Little Susan doesn’t just not believe in fairy tales; she’s never heard them (she doesn’t know who Jack is, of Beanstalk fame). She’s so literal-minded, she can’t play with kids her own age:
SUSAN: They were in the basement playing zoo and all of them were animals. When I came down, Homer (he was supposed to be the zookeeper) he said, “What kind of an animal are you?” and I said, “I’m not an animal, I’m a girl.” And he said, “Only animals allowed here. Goodbye!” So I came upstairs.
KRIS: Why didn’t you tell him you were a lion or a bear?
SUSAN: Because I’m not a bear or a lion.
Meanwhile, her mother “hasn’t really believed in anything for years,” according to Mr. Gailey.” Well, that IS sad. No wonder kindly old Kris Kringle says, “Those two are lost souls.”
Of course, Mrs. Walker, has believed in many things—not least, in telling her daughter the truth—just nothing for which she has no evidence. Faith in something unprovable (or even patently untrue, like Santa) is in this movie equated with faith in people, faith in love, the capacity for hope.
Again and again, Mrs. Walker’s insistence on logic and evidence is portrayed as dashing her daughter’s hopes. Little Suzie overhears Santa speaking Dutch to a little immigrant orphan, which makes her think, maybe . . . But when she runs to tell her mother, Mrs. Walker replies, “Susan, I speak French, but that doesn’t make me Joan of Arc.” Ouch.
Even weirder is the fact that the movie equates belief with imagination, with playing pretend. When Kris Kringle teaches Suzie to use her imagination and pretend to be a monkey, we are meant to think he’s opening up a whole world in which a child could believe in Santa Claus. Starting her sleigh down that slippery slope. But when you imagine things, you know they’re not true. That’s the fun of it. Believing Santa (or God, for that matter) is real is entirely different from pretending he’s real.
The arguments may be illogical, and Mrs. Walker may be a bit of a straw mom (she doesn’t even sing to her child, for goodness sake), but Miracle on 34th Street has a lot to recommend it. Kris Kringle is willing to work as a Macy’s Santa because he’s fed up with the commercialism of the holiday, and although the solution is in itself laughably commercial (the big department stores help shoppers find the right presents even if it’s at another store), the characterization of competing retail giants and their marketing departments still has a nice satirical kick. So too the political calculations on display in the courtroom scene.
Mrs. Walker, for all her tragic flaws, loves her child and excels at her job. Remarkably, the movie’s happy ending does not require her to quit that job, or imply (as does the 1994 remake) that she should have more kids.
It does, however, require that she see the light. That she renounce her “silly common sense” (her words), for herself and for her daughter.
SUSAN: Mommy said if things don’t turn out just the way you want them to the first time, you’ve still got to believe and I kept believing. You were right, Mommy! Mr. Kringle is Santa Claus!
Susan runs off, leaving Mr. Gailey to ask, wonderingly, “You told her that?” And when Mrs. Walker nods, he gives her a grand, 1940s Hollywood kiss. Just like that—just by reversing her position on the truth and teaching her daughter to believe—Mrs. Walker becomes lovable.
It comforts me to imagine what House might say about this. And I say that knowing perfectly well he’s not real.
Wonderful. House is both a good set up and a great finish. Thanks.
Sent from my iPhone
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Dear Kate,
Thank you for an incisive and thoughtful analysis on “Miracle on 34th St.” and congratulations on getting your essay published.
Recently, I gave a talk to a group of poets about the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai who became an atheist but found that religious language served as metaphors for concepts understood from a historical, cultural, and imaginative perspective. Here is a quote from an interview he gave: “..And I remember my religiousness as good—I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world. The world of religion isn’t a logical world; that’s why children like it. It’s a world of worked-out fantasies, very similar to children’s stories or fairy tales.”
Here is his poem about dealing with his atheism and his father:
A Song of Lies on Sabbath Eve
On a Sabbath eve, at dusk on a summer day
when I was a child,
when the odors of food and prayer drifted up from all the houses
and the wings of the Sabbath angels rustled in the air,
I began to lie to my father:
“I went to another synagogue.”
I don’t know if he believed me or not
But the lie was very sweet in my mouth.
And in all the houses at night
hymns and lies drifted up together,
O taste and see
And in all the houses at night
Sabbath angels died like flies in the lamp,
and lovers put mouth to mouth
and inflated one another till they floated in the air
or burst.
Since then, lying has tasted very sweet to me,
and since then I’ve always gone to another synagogue.
And my father returned the lie when he died:
“I’ve gone to another life.”
You may know that as an atheist, I am an identified Jew. I keep kosher and I am involved in my synagogue, basically for educational purposes. As a retiree, I volunteer at the Hebrew Academy and the afternoon Hebrew school of the Albany synagogues.
I sent my kids to the Hebrew Academy so they could learn their cultural heritage. They always knew I was an atheist. Chanukah especially is a holiday that is skewed in educational settings, and I always set the record straight. We still lit a chanukiah to commemorate freedom of the few against the many. Sort of like the Minutemen during the American Revolutionary War.
I didn’t have angst about the kids being indoctrinated because I think they are more influenced by their parents and their own logic.
I hope, but don’t expect, the general public to embrace atheism. It’s one thing for the Supreme Court to declare Christmas “an American holiday.” I’m waiting for the time when a politician can declare him/herself to be gay, to have smoked marijuana, and to be an atheist. I choke whenever I hear “May god bless the United States of America.” For me, it’s an issue of separation of church and state. However, I realize that this country was based on manifest destiny, which is still very alive today, and which subject is another issue for another email.
Thanks again for your column.
Kate, we gave Ursula a dvd of Miracle on 34th Street for her Hanukkah gift on the second night this year. I’d never seen the movie until we watched it together. It struck me that Mrs. Walker and Susan are slowly learning to believe in the great miracle of the good husband. There is a lot of father and husband anxiety all over the place (the prosecuting attorney, the neurotic store psychologist, etc.). Here, I edit the script:
SUSAN: Mommy said if marriages don’t turn out just the way you want them to the first
time, you’ve still got to believe and I kept believing. You were right, Mommy! Mr. Gailey
is real!
Avi, I love it! There really is so much in that movie, and, yes, the gender politics are fascinating given the film’s emergence right after the war. I thought I’d just kind of use it for my evil purposes, and yet, I found it to be richer than that.