Christmas and Chicken Soup

There's nothing quite so unremittingly nasty as a headcold. Somehow, unlike other ailments, you truly believe that a a well-settled headcold is afflicting you intentionally and personally, taking perverse pleasure in your misery. There is one remedy and one only to help you get through it (short of rum-induced slumber): distraction.

When the rottenest cold in recent memory finally got me in its claws, I found myself looking through the video rack for something that would spring my mind from its stuffed-up prison. When my eyes lit upon "In Excelsis Deo", last year's West Wing holiday episode, I knew I'd found it.

It was like visiting an old friend. Poignant threads weave through the episode - Toby's quest to find someone who cares about the death of a homeless veteran, the death of the young victim of a vicious gay-bashing, Mrs. Landingham's revelation of the tragic deaths of her twin sons. When Toby finds the homeless veterans' brother - also homeless - he explains awkwardly that he was contacted because the dead man had been wearing a coat Toby had donated to Goodwill with Toby's business card still in the pocket. "Do ya want your coat back?" asks the brother anxiously. It's a wrenching moment - this man's life experience has taught him that if someone is coming to see him, it must be for only one reason - they want something, and he is in trouble again. The scene moves me to tears every time I watch it.

These threads of sadness juxtaposed with the superficial trappings of Christmas are all the more poignant by the anticipation of the episode's final scenes. Knowingly overstepping his authority, Toby arranges for a military funeral for the dead veteran. A children's choir, singing "The Little Drummer Boy" at a White House event, carries over the scenes at Arlington National Cemetary, where Toby, Mrs. Landingham and the dead man's brother lay him to rest.

Like a lot of West Wing, the final scene with its score of soaring children's voices and its funereal solemnity pushes the envelope between poignancy and bathos. For The West Wing, for a holiday season episode, it doesn't go too far. We give ourselves permission to lose some of the cynicism and be sentimental at Christmas and Hanukkah - indeed, it is the only time of the year we do give ourselves that permission.

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