Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. This is my annual reminder to watch It's a Wonderful Life, the movie. Go watch it right now this weekend. Don't wait till Christmas. You don't have to watch it on Christmas Eve. I feel like you miss it. You miss the whole month. You should watch it now so it informs the whole month of Christmas, not after Christmas, and then you forget

about it by the new year. I watched it last year for the very first time. It's my favorite movie. Now, if you asked me two years ago, have I ever seen It's a Wonderful Life? I would have said, yeah, like most of it probably I've seen bits and pieces. So yeah, I get the gist of it, Bell, Angel Wings, I get it here.

That was two years ago.

Last year, it was the gist of it, Bell, Angel Wings. I get it here.

That was two years ago. Last year, it was the first year. My wife and I sat down and watched the whole thing. I loved every second of it. So we just watched it again the other day with the kids this time. And it's amazing. The whole movie is perfect. Now, if you're going to watch it with your kids, a warning.

There's a lot of drinking in it.

And there's a lot of drinking in it. And there's a couple, a couple like sexually inappropriate kind of things, but it's like 1940. So it's okay. Like, there's a scene where Violet is wearing a dress and all the men are oogling. And they say, nice dress. And she says, oh, this old thing, I only wear it when I don't care how I look. And then she walks away. She's like, all right. Like, we can handle this. Whatever Frank Capra in 1946 thought was risque, I think we could handle in the 2025. So don't let that stop you. Interesting.

It's a wonderful life fact when he came out in 1940.

Actually, let me go back.

It started with this guy wrote the story and he tried to pitch it to,

this is in the 30s, and he tried to pitch it to a bunch of magazines and they wouldn't take it.

So he sent it out to friends and a Christmas card.

And somehow it made it to Frank Capra.

Frank Capra loved the story.

They bought it.

Made the movie.

Flopped.

Lost $500,000.

The reason it became a Christmas classic is because at 1974, the production company made some clerical mistake or something.

And the movie ended up in the public domain. They lost the copyright to it. So the TV stations

could air it without paying any royalties. So they just played it over and over and over again.

It's just to fill time. And that's how it became a tradition. that's how people saw it and loved it

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