HAVE YOURSELF A SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS:

…In the same way, the greatest Christmas film of all time — It’s a Wonderful Life, directed by the Catholic Frank Capra — takes our hero George Bailey through an odyssey of terror, too. It’s interesting that fear seems to attend the story not because George is deeply wicked like Scrooge, but because it is a Christmas story; and Christmas stories, like the Easter story, properly take us from the joyful mysteries, through the sorrowful mysteries, to the glorious mysteries. George is not at all the tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, nor the squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner that Scrooge is. He is generous, kind, filled with a spirit of adventure, and willing to bear the responsibility for the Building and Loan and his family. He resists temptation to become the protégé of the Scrooge of Bedford Falls, Mr. Potter. So why does he have to undergo a baptism of fear and suffering?

the wood of the cradle is the wood of the Cross