Edward Scissorhands is a great Christmas movie. Now I don't mean that it's a great movie set at Christmas time (enter the Die Hard debate), though indeed there is a Christmas party and snow, I mean that it is a movie that brings the meaning of Christmas to the screen.
On the exterior, the suburbian neighborhood where the movie primarily takes place is clean, well ordered, regular as clockwork, as evidenced by the smooth ballet of cars as the husbands leave for work. Everything seems, at least, pleasant. But there are hints that all is not well; bored housewives seduce the handyman, there is a preoccupation with looking good rather than being good, absentee parents deny their children a reasonable share in their goods, justice outweighs mercy, gossip runs rapant, and the only evidence of religion is a judgmental, neurotic religion. Frankly, this is a lot like the world in general
Enter Edward. Peg Boggs, an Avon salesperson, the personification of obsession with appearance and in search of new customers, finds and brings Edward from his "father's" house on the high hill above the neighborhood into the neighborhood ennui. Edward, who is an innocent soul, brings to this stale community of peccadillos and vices new life. He is a garderner who shapes the unkempt bushes in the suburban yards into beautiful topiaries. He brings this same creative energy to the bored housewives directly when he begins styling their hair into more and more elaborate styles.
This creativity acts as a type of grace in the community, bringing a certain joi de vivre to the cul de sac. Peg finds meaning in her cosmetics work as she tries to help Edward's scarred face. The seductress, though still pretty libido driven, tries to help Edward start a new busniness outside of the bedroom community. But Kim, Peg's daughter is most transformed by Edward's presence, as she goes from being a stereotypical cheerleader, dating the jock, jaded and surly, to finding real magic in Edward's gifts and gentle soul, and shows him gentleness and mercy, and finally love. This love is most beautifully shown when Edward is carving an enormous ice sculpture of an angel with his scissors so rapidly that the ice chips fall like snow, and Kim dances in it as it falls gently upon her.
These transformations of grace are what make Edward Scissorhands a real Christmas movie, emphasized again, by its setting in time at Christmas. Like Edward, Jesus comes from on high into our lives. Edward was created by the inventor rather than born and brought into the community by Peg, who acts as mother to him. Jesus is born of a Human Mother, but of Divine Paternity, Both Edward and Jesus are outsiders, though both human (though Edward is not fully human, represented most dramatically by the titular hands, as Jesus was). The grace Jesus brings is far more transformative than the creativity that Edward injects, but one could see in Edward, like the Old Testament figures of Moses and David, a type of Jesus whose creative actions that transforms shrubbery and hairdos are symbols or foretaste of true transforming Grace that trnsforms the spirit.
Like Jesus, Edward is also unjustly accused and faces persecution by a mob that once adored him, and in the end ascends again to his father's house, removed from immediate interaction with the neighbors. But in a place where there had never been snow before now each following Christmas snow descends from the mountain upon the neighborhood, blanketing it with purity and magic, as Edward carves new statues of ice. The grace Edward brings is not limited to his direct presence, but because of the event that brought him into the neighborhood, there is a continued grace that descends, renewing by memory the grace he brought before.
This is the Christmas story: that the Word of God entered into history as one of us, bringing to us his transforming grace. To fix a broken world, he was himself broken on the cross, and after rising from the dead, ascended to his father, from whence he continues to infuse his transforming grace on his church through the sacraments. Edward Scissorhands doesn't mention Jesus once, the only scenes of religion are the neurotic expressions of a spinster, while Christmas in the burbs is a purely secular affair. And Edward at the end murders, rather than transforms Kim's bullying boyfriend. But with its overall story of transforming grace from a transcendent realm that brings new life and love, Edward Scissorhands is definitely a Christmas movie a cut above most.
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