Wondrous magic: Christmas in ‘The Twilight Zone’

OPINION:

“There’s a wondrous magic to Christmas,” a wise man once observed, “a special power reserved for little people.”

The author of those words was neither Dickens nor Dr. Seuss, nor any Christian, Catholic or Protestant clergyman. They were written, rather, by Rod Serling, a Jewish man born 100 years ago on Christmas Day, and later the creator, and host, of the greatest television series of all time.

In the 156 episodes of “The Twilight Zone” (1959-1964), only one, “The Night of the Meek,” broadcast on CBS on Dec. 23, 1960, featured a Christmas theme. Though Serling was “fiercely proud of his heritage,” according to “As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling“ (2013), a memoir by his daughter Anne, the future TV icon was like a lot of American Jews: an annual sufferer of Christmas envy who celebrated the day more as a secular, cultural event, like Thanksgiving, and to tap into what “Meek” termed the “wondrous magic” surrounding Jesus’ birthday.

As a radio writer in early 1950s Cincinnati, Serling had already penned a number of Yuletide-themed dramas, including an unproduced piece titled “No Christmas This Year.” It was a black comedy about a society that stops celebrating the holiday, with Santa besieged by striking elves and strafed by anti-aircraft fire.

Some of the characters in “No Christmas” were recycled for “Meek.” Art Carney, who played Ed Norton on “The Honeymooners,” starred as Henry Corwin, a down-on-his-luck department-store Santa suffering from alcohol addiction. At one point, fired by the store, Corwin looks up from his shot of booze and stares not at the bartender but straight into the camera, asking the viewer: “Why isn’t there a real Santa Claus?” He soon finds a mysterious bag that enables him to lavish Christmas gifts on the less fortunate — and on himself the opportunity for redemption at the heart of Christianity.

By episode’s end, Corwin is adopted by a sleigh-bound elf and happily whisked away to an unspecified future; the implication is that he will never again be separated from the seasonal gift-giving enterprise. “Meek” thus inverted the conceit of ”Miracle on 34th Street” (1947): Instead of Santa becoming real, a real person becomes Santa.

A key image in “Meek” appears when Serling, conflating Santa with Christ, frames Corwin’s seedy figure, seen distributing his newfound Christmas booty to fellow ne’er-do-wells in the church mission, before a sign reading “Love Thy Neighbor.” Such touches lent “Meek” a gravitas not normally associated with holiday-themed television episodes. This seriousness of purpose was steeped in Serling’s Judeo-Christian perspective and the ecumenical social concerns of the time, such as early nuclear activism and the Civil Rights Movement.

Indeed, in the episode’s opening scene, set in the department store, the first person visible is a child, the lone Black person amid an all-White crowd of shoppers and kids. “One Christmas,” Corwin’s burnt-out Santa declares, “I’d like to see the meek inherit the earth.” Just then, the camera cuts to a close-up of the Black child.

At a time when “Negroes” were largely invisible on network television, Serling was a pioneer. Earlier that year, his casting of Ivan Dixon (later of “Hogan’s Heroes“) in the show’s 27th episode, “The Big Tall Wish,” about an aging boxer haunted by a stinging loss, had made Dixon the first Black actor in a starring dramatic role on television. That kind of generosity represents the essence of the season.

Two other “Twilight Zone” episodes touched on Christmas. In “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” aired on Dec. 22, 1961, a clown, hobo, ballet dancer, bagpiper and Army major find themselves trapped in a dark pit, unaware that they are, in reality, inanimate dolls languishing in a barrel of Christmas toys. Six months later, in “The Changing of the Guard,” a disillusioned boys’ prep-school teacher nearing retirement, played by Donald Pleasance (later of the “Halloween“ franchise), contemplates suicide one Christmas Eve, until former students recount his influence on their lives.

That the broad themes and haunting details of “The Twilight Zone“ still resonate in popular culture, scaring and challenging successive generations nearly seven decades after its debut, is affirmed by back-to-back episodes shown annually on the Syfy channel, usually on New Year’s Eve — the holidays’ last gasp — over the last three decades.

In virtually every episode, Serling’s characters experienced scorn, marginalization or imprisonment in some form; often, though not always, they hung in long enough to witness, through interventions equal parts divine and supernatural, some fantastical reversal of fortune with their tormentors.

That ”special power reserved for little people” — the endurance of trials, the capacity for reinvention, the profound difference a gift can make — was a recurring theme of ”The Twilight Zone,” and provides, in this and every Christmas season, a valuable reminder, best expressed when Henry Corwin is asked what he would want for himself. “I’d wish,” he replies, “I could do this every year.”

• Arlen Schumer is the author and designer of “Visions From the Twilight Zone” (Chronicle Books, 1990), a coffee-table art book, and a volume of essays, “The Five Themes of the Twilight Zone” (Bear Manor Media, 2024).