Night of the Meek

A word to the wise to all the children of the twentieth century, whether their concern be pediatrics or geriatrics, whether they crawl on hands and knees and wear diapers or walk with a cane and comb their beards. There's a wondrous magic to Christmas, and there's a special power reserved for little people. In short, there's nothing mightier than the meek. And a Merry Christmas to each and all.

Rod Serling

The souls of the dead, the numberless masses of humanity that have perished unknown, unloved, shuffled into the yawning expanse of a cold and forgotten grave, outnumber the swirling snowflakes that fall from the snow-globe sky above, on a winter's day no more real than a television studio backlot. Our visions of yesteryear, the happy Christmases with the family now dead and cold and gone, are as "thistledown in the balance" when we find ourselves crushed by the weight of age, by the shadows of time. We can still hear the sleigh bells ringing, the children caroling, the old, warbling records sending forth the echoes of Bing Crosby and Elvis from another era, another world.

We can taste the peppermint stick of childhood's hopes and dreams, crushed under the relentless black boot heel of Father Time.

But what of Santa Claus? Does that mythical bringer of magic, that strange, fat, holly jolly costumed hero still traverse rooftops in the bitter winter snow, with a bagful of toys, and delivered hereunto by a sleigh with eight magic flying reindeer? (And what of the chimney drop? How many folks today have a chimney for Santa to climb down? I ask you.)

Art Carney, Ed Norton himself, starred in this holiday episode of the greatest of all very great science fiction television anthology shows, in a Nick at Nite chestnut whose provenance is always as fresh as the proverbial boob tube "Evergreen." (Think Lucy. Think Mayberry R.F.D. Think Father Knows Best.) Art is an alcoholic department store Santa named Herny Corwin, down on his luck (obviously); a washed-out wino whose bar tab is overextended, and whose boss (played by character actor John Fiedler, with bald 1960 aplomb) fires him most promptly after a complaint from a woman with a bratty kid who balks at sitting on the lap of the Shabby Santa.

Carney confesses, "I can either drink, or I can weep. And drinking seems far more subtle." Perhaps that's not an exact quote, but he further tells us he lives "in a shabby rooming house [...] on a street full of hungry kids and shabby people." He confesses to his unsympathetic boss that he wishes, in all his inebriated stupor, that for just one night of the week, he could actually BE Santa Claus, one night where he could ease their poverty, one night where "the meek inherit the Earth."

And already we feel some tears welling. For, deep inside, there is something in nearly ALL of us that wishes for the same. We may suppress it, we may tamp it down under the boot heel of our jaded cynicism, our scars and wounds, and the anger that drives and causes us to freeze our feelings, our emotions, and empathy, under a blanket of wintry snow—but there it is, all the same.

The rest of the episode is deceptively simple, with no major plot twists. Art finds an old sack that is a real Santa sack and begins giving out gifts, including at a homeless mission (which is curiously staffed by a woman dressed as a Victorian schoolmarm). He is promptly arrested by police, who assume he has stolen goods. Art disproves this by handing over his sack. It now contains only trash. The Mysterious Force from the "Twilight Zone" has intervened and saved this poor, meek, befuddled man.

In the end, to give a spoiler, the dream comes true. The "Night of the Meek" is realized. The viewer is profoundly moved, remembering what he or she really wanted for Christmas all those years ago. It wasn't, I assure you, a bunch of bright and shiny Japanese electronics.

It was love, all along.

Merry Christmas.

The Twilight Zone | "The Night of the Meek" (S2, E11) | Full Episode

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