The Polar Express and the “Santa Paradox”

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for The Polar Express. Do not continue reading if you haven’t seen it.

The Polar Express had a large following in various Christian communities when it was released. Many saw the film as a parable for faith in God and that seems pretty obvious to anyone who’s seen it. Heck, even its main song is titled, “Believe.” But what if I told you this movie is not what it seems? What if there’s something that turns that whole theme on its head? Something that’s hidden in plain sight. I don’t blame you if you didn’t see it considering that I haven’t found anyone else who shares my view. In fact, some of you reading this will claim that I’m making it up even though all the proof is right there unambiguously laid out in the story. Ah, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We must leave our world and travel to the one in The Polar Express. It’s a lot like our universe, but there’s magic here and like all magic realms, there are rules.

Da Rules

The rules for this story are as follows:

1. Santa is a magical being who will give good children a gift on Christmas day providing they believe in him. 
2. Santa will not provide any conclusive evidence of his existence. Belief in the absence of evidence (i.e., faith) is required.
3. There are magic silver jingle bells that only people who believe in Santa can hear. 
4. Children who travel to the North Pole will be able to see Santa, but only if they believe in him.

The Ending

I’m assuming you already watched the movie and know the story, characters, and theme. It’s a prerequisite for this blog post. I’m skipping ahead to the important part instead of rehashing the whole movie. Seriously, go watch it before continuing.

The main character’s skepticism is preventing him from hearing the jingle bells on the reindeer and he cannot get a clear view of Santa himself. He finally relents and accepts Jesus... er, I mean Santa into his heart. It’s only then that he is able to meet Saint Nick. Santa gives the boy the right of choosing the first gift of Christmas. The boy goes onto the sleigh and whispers to Santa that he wants a football. He then slyly puts the jingle bell in his pocket as a souvenir of his magical trip and steps out of the sleigh. After Santa leaves, the main character realizes that he lost the jingle bell due to a hole in his pocket. He goes back home and falls asleep. When he wakes, he wonders if it was all a dream. The steam radiator makes a sound like a train whistle. Was that what triggered his hallucination about a magic train? He goes downstairs to find a gift from Santa. It’s the football he asked for. His parents are surprised because they didn’t buy him a football. Was this truly a gift from Santa or are his parents playing dumb? There’s no way for him to know for sure. It’s a matter of faith. Thus the theme of the movie is reinforced.

The End.

WHOA! WHOA! WHOA! That’s not how the movie ended! There wasn’t any football! Oh yeah. I’m confusing this story with a different Christmas story. Let’s try this again.

The Real Ending: The “Santa Paradox”

The main character asks for the magic jingle bell as his gift. The boy puts it in his pocket but the bell falls out and into the sleigh. Since the bell was the boy’s gift, Santa is duty-bound to deliver it as per “the rules.” The bell provides iron-clad evidence that he exists since it only works on people who believe in him.

At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell. But as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found, one Christmas, that she could no longer hear it’s sweet sound. Though I have grown old, the bell still rings for me. As it does for all who truly believe.

This ending completely subverts the entire theme of the movie!  The main character inadvertently causes a conflict in the rules that traps Santa into revealing himself. Belief is no longer faith. There is now evidence of the supernatural.

This isn’t the first time the film’s director, Robert Zemeckis, is involved in a story where the protagonist goes on a dreamlike adventure that leaves both them and the audience wondering if it really happened. Thankfully, he tosses in a “reality bomb” at the end to remove all doubt. The same kind of thing happens in his earlier movie, Contact. No one is sure whether or not the main character’s experiences were real or imagined until a crucial piece of evidence is revealed. You can even see similarities further back in his movie career with the ending to Back to the Future. Marty wakes up and isn’t sure if it was all a dream until he leaves his room.

Faith vs. Skepticism

Why don’t atheists believe in God? It’s a question that stumps most theists. The answer (for most atheists) is quite simple: not enough evidence. The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge by the James Randi Educational Foundation sought to find scientific evidence of the supernatural. Everyone knows the reason for the prize was to uncover frauds, and boy did it. However, there was another less publicized goal: find real evidence of the supernatural. The silver bell is that evidence. A controlled double-blind experiment could be created that would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the bell works. Assign two groups of people: believers and non-believers. Get three small covered boxes, one empty, one with the magic bell, one with a normal jingle bell. Don’t let anyone involved in administering the test know which is which. Keep track of who hears a bell when each box is shaken. BOOM! The boy wins a cool million and goes down in history as the first person in history to prove magic exists.

I can’t read Zemeckis mind, but I’ve got to believe the ending of The Polar Express was intentional. When he was asked about all the biblical parallels in the movie, he winked and said: “Nothing in a movie this big ends up in the script by accident.”