‘The Polar Express’ is an animation film that features Tom Hanks voicing several roles on his way to making a Christmas movie that looks and feels really different, especially on IMAX.
Our unnamed hero is a little boy who’s just old enough to start doubting Santa Claus. He overhears his parents telling each other that he’s shared his doubts with his younger sister. The mother and dad say, ‘This may be the last year of the magic.’ The little boy falls asleep, and the next thing he knows, a big train pulls up in his front yard, where the conductor offers to take him to the North Pole.
He’s reluctant, but when he finally climbs on board, he sees other kids in their pajamas, also. They’re all about his age, and they’re all headed for the Artic Circle. There are adventures along the way, with a break in the tracks along an iced-over lake, and a ticket that swirls out of the window and magically returns. But the point is that our little boy gets to see the elves, and the workshop, and the sleigh, and all the presents, and finally Santa himself, who gives him a present of a little bell to signify his belief.
From the standpoint of the Christian, the film is doubly interesting. First, it has possibilities of showing safely to small children, and also because it deals with a critical aspect of Christianity: faith. Of course, it’s not quite true that Christians think there is a God just because we believe in One in the same way that people believing in Santa is what makes him real (for them). God would still exist whether people choose to believe or not. Nevertheless, believing in the unseen is an important dimension of faith. And like the conductor of the train says, the most important things are what you can’t see.
RON SALFEN is pastor of Westminster church in Dallas,Texas.
