Learning the Lessons of the Twilight Zone Christmas Special: The Night of the Meek

Hello! We’ve made it guys! It’s almost Christmas Time! I hope you have a Happy Holiday and eat lots of yummy things. Here in Learning the Lessons of the Twilight Zone, I’m bringing you the final lesson in the Christmas Special. Today’s lesson will come from The Night of the Meek (S2E11), a sweet tale of redemption, sacrifice and second chances for your warm Christmas delight.

Warning: There will always be spoilers.

Second chances don’t always come easy. Redemption is insanely hard to get sometimes and it’s hard to keep up a smile when you’re feeling at your lowest point. If you’re down and out, the only way it seems that things are going is towards the bottom. You feel like you should just sink because what else is there for you? When can this entire situation just be done. This especially stings if you’re a good person just trying to do good things. If you have a little courage and keep up the pace, those second chances and redemption might come sooner than you think. Henry Corwin had the opportunity not only to learn that lesson, but to do something great as well in the very special Twilight Zone episode, The Night of the Meek (S2E11).

Night of the Meek starts on Christmas Eve, this night is special and pretty damn hectic. Parents are hustling to get their last minute items, taking pictures with Santa Claus. Consumerism is at it’s all time high during Christmas time and the department store is just where we need to be to start our story. However, it doesn’t appear that this department store Santa is anywhere to be found. Henry Corwin, our missing Santa in question,  is over at the bar getting absolutely blasted and having a sandwich before he returns to work. Once he’s out, kids come by and they start asking him for presents, small toys at first and then it gets progressively sad, they want food, nice things for their families for the holidays, a job for their dad. It’s so heartbreaking that Henry starts to cry, holding them tight while they plead for things he just can not provide. This is when it starts to show how much of an incredible man he is. He’s drunk, completely wasted, but he feels so hard for these kids. Once back into the department store, a falling down drunk Henry is being yelled at by an angry kid, an angry mother and an even angrier store manager. Henry immediately gets fired, but once he’s barked at by the store manager, you can see just how low he is as he says, “I can either drink or I can weep.” The store manager tries to shush him up, but Henry refuses. He wants the people in his neighborhood, the kids especially, to not have to deal with the hungry, poverty and sickness that they have to put up with. He drinks to get away from those feelings. He leaves the store, but before he does, he states, “Just for one Christmas, i’d like to see the meek inherit the earth.”

Let’s talk about this episode before we get into the nitty gritty. Once you watch this episode you may notice something different about it. The production may be off, perhaps a little cheap. There are hardly any cuts, but we follow the characters from one location to the other and in a tight area. You wanna know why? This episode of Twilight Zone was filmed for broadcast, but wasn’t the first episode in Twilight Zone to do so. Throughout season 2 of the show, episodes were filmed just for broadcast, making the costs a bit sky high. They filmed six episodes until they abandoned the format later on after the episode “Long Distance Call.” It wasn’t effective in the long run because the visuals were just way off and, again, the cost of making these were double the budget. However visually off they may be, they are still very strong episodes and Night of the Meek is perhaps one of the strongest. Rod Serling does a dynamo job with these episodes and he does an incredible job taking these Christmas themes and making them something meaningful and unforgettable. As much as we see him keep a poor man when he’s down within some stories, in this one, he lets him get out of the Twilight Zone with a very sweet surprise.

What most people see in Henry is just an alcoholic, trying to make ends meet on hard times in an even harder space. Christmas time is tough on a lot of people, but in Henry’s case, he just wants to see the small stand tall and do something special for a change. Well, Henry’s wish is about to come true. Once he staggers out into the streets after getting fired, sleigh bells ring, a cat jumps over a band and out comes cans from a burlap sack. Eh, nothing special about that right? Wait. He turns around and there are presents, small and large inside of those thing. Once he sees the presents, he doesn’t keep them for himself, he goes inside the middle of the town, he yells and shouts for the kids, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and he reaching into his back to give them any present they want, their hearts desire. Henry even gets arrested and almost charged with the “stolen” goods, but when someone else touches this bag, they appear to be cans again. These presents can ONLY be given out by Henry. When the clock strikes twelve on Christmas Day, Henry has given out the last of his toys. Santa Claus has done his job. His friend sits with him, exclaiming that Henry has no gifts for himself, but Henry says all he wanted was “to be the biggest gift giver of them all.” After leaving his friend, he hears sleigh bells again and here… we see that Henry’s Christmas wish is coming true. A sleigh, some reindeer and an elf give him the granted wish to be the biggest gift giver of them all.

The Meaning & The Lesson: ”The meek shall inherit” is a phrase used in the bible (if not, my sources are way wrong), but it’s a meaning of something more than it just being in the bible. I remember hearing this first in Little Shop of Horrors with the same titled song. Context clues indicated that the meek was Seymour and he shall inherit the earth once he stops giving into a giant plant. The meek were meant to emphasise the ones who are gentle, the soft, the quiet and the nullified. The ones who you pass by. They’re the ones with cold hands and warm hearts and want to make the smallest change in the world, but isn’t sure how to do so. The meek describes children, but it also very much describes Henry as well.

Henry very much wants to make a difference so badly. Down and out, he couldn’t find a way to do it, but being a department store Santa would probably do the trick right? Nope. The consumerism of Christmas and his situation at home go hand in hand, they drag him down. They pull him lower and seeing the kids in the beginning of the story, asking him for things he wishes he could provide for them, brings him down further. He drinks to forget that his neighborhood has to deal with such things. That HE has to deal with such things. His heart is big and very heavy and he wants to make a difference, but how can you make a difference when you don’t know what to do?

Being Santa Claus was like a second chance for him to make the difference and kind of impact that he’s always wanted to make. It’s a chance for him to redeem himself for messing up kinda being Santa the first time. The heart is there, but the will is gone, but now… the both of them are aligned and he gave himself over in self-sacrifice to be bigger than what he already was.

We’ve seen second chances and redemption throughout the Twilight Zone, but they have always come at a bit of a price. In Henry’s case, they helped him become the person that he was ultimately meant to be. Second chances are rarely given, but when they are, we have to take them and make them into what WE want them to be. It may include sacrifice, but it may help someone in the long run and karma always travels back around and either bites you or lends a hand. Second chances and redemption doesn’t come with a large price over your head, but good deeds along the way are somethings to inspire yourself and others to pass along, especially around Christmas time. Don’t hop on a sleigh like Henry here and become the next Santa Claus, but think about others and be kind. As Rod Serling says, “… there’s nothing mightier than the meek.”  This sweet lesson only in… The Twilight Zone.

Learning the Lessons of the Twilight Zone will now come monthly for Rogues Portal! See you in January folks! 😀