Obviously in It’s a Wonderful Life–which I watch every year–Mary Hatch’s wish counteracts George Bailey’s and causes him to wind up staying in Bedford Falls, but something much darker never occurred to me before tonight.

As anyone who has seen it likely recalls, the two young people are coming home from the school dance and stop at the Old Granville House to break out window panes. Supposedly the house is haunted, but if you can successfully break one of its window panes with a rock, you will be granted a wish. George succeeds:

Well, not just one wish. A whole hatful, Mary. I know what I’m gonna do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year, and the year after that. I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, I’m comin’ back here and go to college and see what they know… And then I’m gonna build things. I’m gonna build airfields, I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I’m gonna build bridges a mile long…

Traditionally in stories that grant wishes, you lose the wish by greedily exceeding your allotment, so perhaps George’s is inherently doomed simply because of how he makes it. When Mary hears it, however, she too throws a stone and breaks a pane. She refuses to reveal her wish because she knows the rules: if she tells, the wish might not come true. Only later, when she and George are married and are going to live together in the Granville House, she tells George that this is what she wished for that night.

Consider that the house is haunted and that the method of extracting wishes from it is by breaking out window panes. Yet Mary expresses pity toward the house, as opposed to George’s callousness. Consider also that Mary receives her wish and consequently the house “lives again”: the Baileys move in and raise their family in its confines. The house’s ghosts have a vested interest in seeing Mary’s wish come true. The house goes from being a dark, haunted place to one of mirth and life — as though a curse has been broken.

At the moment when George and Mary are making their wishes, it is not yet his destiny to stay in Bedford Falls. Rather, George is ready to leave for college. He and his father have had a heart-to-heart talk and concluded that George must get an education and escape the fiefdom of Old Man Potter. It is only because his father has a stroke that George must stay behind and oversee the settling of his father’s estate and the bank transition.

Because his brother Harry tells George of the stroke while George and Mary (accidentally naked) are flirting at the hydrangea bush, it’s easy to overlook the propitious timing. Nevertheless, another motif of curses is that to lift them a sacrifice must be made.

George was walking Mary home before walking to his own house, which we know is close by because George walked there earlier. It is highly likely, therefore, that when George’s brother arrives, it is soon after their father’s stroke — the precipitating event of George’s remaining in Bedford Falls, marrying Mary Hatch, and lifting the Granville curse.

When Mary Hatch made her wish using the dark magic of the haunted Granville house, Peter Bailey — in “Monkey’s Paw” fashion — suffered a stroke and died. And that’s how her wish was granted.

(Hat tip  to Nick Spurlock for sparking the idea for this post.)