Home Alone and Keeping a Good Advent

When people ask what my favorite movie is, I always answer that I have two favorites, one of which is Home Alone.  Some people think it’s kind of weird to have a Christmas movie as one of my absolute favorites, but I think it’s the best; I will watch it several times during this season. And the more I watch it, the more I see how this movie thoughtfully compares an Advent that is defined by overindulgence and materialism with an Advent characterized by penitence and reconciliation. 

I will assume that my reader has seen this movie and is familiar with the circumstances and antics that 8-year-old Kevin McCallister gets into as he is left home alone by his family for three days. I will therefore not go too much into the plot recap, but instead highlight a few points that are relevant to my posting. 

The movie opens with the McCallister family busy with their preparations to fly to Paris for Christmas the next morning. This first act shows that this family is dysfunctional. People call each other names, and no one is nice to each other as tension builds. Each character is an inconvenience to the other. At a certain moment, the tension blows up; 8-year-old Kevin is blamed for being the only one in the house who has to make trouble. Kevin and his mother      double-down on their inability to apologize. As he is being sent to bed without supper, Kevin tells his mother that he hopes his family disappears. His mom says, “say it again, maybe it will happen.” This is their last conversation until the end of the movie and signifies a deeply wounded relationship between mother and son. 

Over the night, a storm hits, and the house loses power. No one’s alarm goes off, and the family sleeps in too late. When the adults discover that they have less than an hour to get to the airport, they rush out and mistakenly leave Kevin behind. Kevin wakes up and discovers his family is gone, and that his wish has come true. This is the point in the movie where I would suggest Kevin’s Advent has begun. 

Kevin’s first attempt at Advent is one of overindulgence. Kevin does what any 8-year-old without adult supervision would do. He goes wild with ice cream and junk food. He breaks into his older brother’s room and steals all his money. He jumps on the bed and even goes sledding down his staircase. He shoots BB-guns and sets off firecrackers inside the house. He is completely out of control. Kevin’s mother, meanwhile, is sipping champagne, relaxing in first class while the kids ride in coach to Paris. This image of excess and abundance is synonymous with our culture’s definition of Advent. Weeks of sweets and gifts give way to Christmas, which leads to weeks of recovering from the mistreatment to which we subjected ourselves.

Over the course of the movie, Kevin realizes that he also must go grocery shopping, clean up his messes, and start to take care of himself, by himself. He is home alone and there is no one else to look after him. His wild and crazy ways are replaced by the development of disciplines, as is our goal in a penitential season. He grows and matures in a way that is surprising for an 8-year-old. You can see where I am going with this: his Advent has turned penitential as he realizes he needs to work on himself. In Paris, his mother is also going through a crisis. Her dialogue is concerned with her neglecting her motherly duties. She is penitent as she desperately tries to get back home to her son. This is by no means a season of celebration, but a slow, painful walk-through of sorrow as she strengthens her faith that all will be reconciled and she will be forgiven if she can just get back…, but she must wait. 

Amongst all this, another figure begins to haunt Kevin - Old Man Marley. Marley is introduced as Kevin’s older brother repeats wild rumors of how Marley is a serial murderer. Marley walks the neighborhood with a snow shovel and a large bin of salt, salting the sidewalks. Kevin encounters Marley several times and each time Kevin flees Marley’s presence, scared. 

It is now Christmas Eve, Kevin realizes that he has been a jerk to his family and starts to feel contrite about his behavior towards them. He, like many others in this season, turns to Santa Claus to set all things right. Kevin arrives as the photo booth is closing and finds the man dressed up as Santa trying to get into his beat-up, broken-down car. What Kevin finds is a disappointment. “Santa” is smoking a cigarette, swearing under his breath about a parking ticket he gets. His beard is pulled down so you can see the man’s full face. Santa, as it turns out, is a fraud. 

Leaving unfulfilled, sad and lonely, Kevin wanders to his local parish church. It is empty save for the choir who are practicing for their Christmas Eve Service, beginning in a few hours. As Kevin enters, the camera pans to show the choir, the eight-day candle passes through the foreground signifying the presence of Christ in the church. Kevin sits and listens to “O Holy Night.” As he is listening, Old Man Marley comes and sits next to Kevin, and they talk. Marley explains to Kevin that he is not the man he is rumored to be. Through their conversation, Kevin asks if one is welcome in Church, to which Marley replied, “Everyone’s welcome in Church.” Kevin opens up about how poorly he has treated his family and how sorry he is. Kevin makes a good confession at church. The two then shake hands and the camera closes in on Marley’s hand. It has a bandage on it. The viewer realizes that in many of the scenes with Marley, they close in on his wounded palms. Symbolically, Marley has the stigmata. Marley is not a perfect one-to-one representation of Christ, but he is a Christ-figure. The constant presence of the robbers trying to break into the house reminds the viewer of the Gospel reading of Lent 3, where the devil, compared to a robber, seeks to enter one’s house, making the last state of their soul worse than the first. In the end it is not Kevin who saves himself from the robbers, but the Christ-figure, Old Man Marley. 

This symbolism serves to show the viewer that Kevin has ultimately received his forgiveness from Christ through the sacrament of Confession. This confession was only possible through this season of penitence that has taken place throughout the “boring” middle parts of the movie. This leads to a real forgiveness of his mother when she finally returns home on Christmas Day. The lesson of this movie is found through the hard work of penitence, confession, and forgiveness and culminates in the hard-won emotional moment of the reunion Kevin has with his mother on Christmas as they apologize and embrace. 

If Kevin had made it on that plane to Paris, the family’s Christmas would have been just like their preparations for their trip. Kevin and his siblings would have felt entitled to their gifts, and the family’s relationships would be just as dysfunctional as it was on the night they left. For me, the takeaway from Home Alone is that penitence, confession, and forgiveness are what is important to Advent. This season prepares us for the coming grace of Christmas. As seen through Kevin McCallister’s character arc, a penitential Advent draws us closer to God and helps to repair relationships and builds community in a way that the over-indulgent, glutenous version of Advent cannot do.