Somebody queried answers.yahoo.com whether the old Frank Capra holiday classic "It's a Wonderful Life" was a Mormon movie.
The users wrote back that the answer is obvious. The movie features smoking and drinking. Given that Latter-day Saints don't drink or smoke, the movie obviously isn't a "Mormon" movie.
All of this is true — there are no Latter-day Saint ties to the movie, unless you include the fact that years later Jimmy Stewart, the movie's lead actor, did the warm-hearted "Mr. Krueger's Christmas" for the church.
Still, I respond as most Latter-day Saints do to the message of this great movie. Values like faithfulness, work, service and community are at the heart of what it means to live the life of a Latter-day Saint and are central to movie's immortal message.
So, why not? It is a "Mormon" movie to me.
What makes it an LDS movie even more than the values of the movie, is the paradox at its soul.
Every Latter-day Saint — or Christian for that matter — sometimes wanders to the bridge overlooking the river, wondering why they haven't done more, wondering of the mistakes or challenges of their lives.
While most don't think about jumping in, sometimes we fall in, and there are icy clangs tumbling across the river, moments when failure and ashes and waves seem the main result of the years.
George Bailey sees a vision of what life would have been like without him and realizes that he had a wonderful life in spite of it all because of how he changed people. His little town would have been darker, and the snow would have never fallen.
Here's the thing. I am no George Bailey.
It's hard to imagine that if I or someone like me had never been born, that bars and pool halls would now line Main Street in Rexburg, Idaho, and that greedy capitalists would suddenly have taken advantage of hundreds of poor citizens, creating a shantytown over by the Teton River.
Imagine if we had never been born. Politicians might be corrupt — oh, wait — we were born, and they are corrupt sometimes anyway.
Christmas comes always tinged with sorrow for me.
Decades ago, when I was 10, the day after Christmas, my father returned from work early, went to bed and was soon headed to the hospital and, then, very late that night, lay dead.
For me, it was one of those bridge moments. My life fell in the river that day. Dreams died. Sorrow and worry grew. Many times I grieve, but the years progress, the lessons pile up and one thing burns most clear — wonderfully clear for me this year. Someone jumped in the river to save me, dragging me to safety, just as he has done each time I have wandered near the bridge, and when I have fallen in.
I may not have saved a town or prevented corruption or saved someone from a life of crime, but there have been times I have heard the call and answered it.
I may not have achieved each goal, but I know love and kindness.
Still, these simple gifts fail to fully explain my wonderful life.
The reason I have a wonderful life isn't because of what I have done in the end or because of the lives I might have touched, but because of what Jesus Christ did for me.
Lane Williams teaches journalism and communication at BYU-Idaho. He is a former journalist whose scholarly interests include Mormon portrayals in the media, media and religion, and religion and politics.