Christmas is about generosity, of course, and friendship and family and jolly old Saint Nick. But in its truest, most Christian sense, the holiday is about hope, and hope not in the midst of success and triumph, but hope in the midst of darkness and despair. It offers what has been termed a "sign of contradiction" to the world--a messiah who takes on the form of a weak, helpless infant and who brings light to the dark of the year.

The spirit that animates our University, by contrast, has little time for infant messiahs. We don't need them here: we bow at the altars of worldly success. Our idols are Law School, or Goldman Sachs or a dot-com windfall. Forty percent of our classmates will be millionaires, campus legend has it, and no one wants to be left out.

And our administration's priorities, in the Age of Rudenstine, reflect this fixation with the world's bottom line. If Christ were born in Cambridge today, I suspect, Harvard would convince the Magi to donate their gold and frankincense and myrrh to the alumni giving fund instead.

Harvard's credo is similar to that of George Bailey in the classic Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life, who says to his friends in sleepy Bedford Falls, "I'm going to shake the dust of this crummy little town off my feet, and I'm gonna see the world!" Harvard, for most of us, is the place where the last of that dust finally shakes loose and wider vistas open before us. Who needs Christmas when you can retire at 30?

But in the film, George Bailey never gets out of Bedford Falls. His brother Harry goes off to war and wins the Medal of Honor and his friend Sam Wainwright becomes a business tycoon. But George struggles to support his wife and children. And when the debts pile up and things look black, George finds himself on the railing of a bridge, ready to leap.

Harvard, of course, aspires to make us all like Harry Bailey and Sam Wainwright--or even, God help us, like Mr. Potter, the wealthy, grasping banker of Bedford Falls. And no one here, no gov jock or pre-med or final club frequenter wants to be George Bailey. No one wants to suffer and sweat and barely scrape by, to give up youthful potential in favor of adult burdens, to sacrifice dreams on the altar of necessity. No one wants to be at the end of their rope on Christmas Eve, staring down into dark water and needing a little bit of divine intervention.

Maybe no one has to. Maybe all the promises that Harvard makes to us will come true. But maybe there's a little George Bailey in all of us. And if there is, it might be a good thing for Harvard to remember Christmas after all.