The Christmas Eve showing of “It’s a Wonderful Life” may be intended to make you believe in the importance of even an ordinary person’s life, but underneath that, what are the film’s secret hidden messages, the ones that become apparent only after two or three eggnogs? Let’s mull over some of the wackier possibilities.

It’s a salute to atheism. It’s “the least religious but most humanist film you could ever see,” said David Wilson in The Guardian, because it suggests people should fix their problems on Earth rather than waiting for God to help out. Regarding Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey, Wilson notes: “Even if he does at one point pray to God, [Bailey] is not religious at all, but simply a man trying to find transcendence in the routine of his life and in his duties to his family, friends and community . . . [director] Frank Capra . . . had a lifelong apathy towards his Catholic upbringing, and the movie’s religious characters and references seem superficial and insubstantial, or simply whimsical in comparison to the action and characters that dominate the central narrative of the film.”

It’s Commie propaganda. A 1947 memo by the FBI containing interviews with Hollywood types, which became of interest to the House Un-American Activities Committee, stated, “With regard to the picture ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, [REDACTED] stated in substance that the film represented a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.” This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists. The pressure eased up when a witness liked by the HUAC, ex-Communist screenwriter John Charles Moffitt, testified, “I would right now like to defend one picture that I think has been unjustly accused of Communism. That picture is Frank Capra’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ The banker in that picture, played by Lionel Barrymore, was most certainly . . . a snarling, unsympathetic character. But the hero and his father, played by James Stewart and Samuel S. Hinds, were businessmen, in the building and loan business, and they were shown as using money as a benevolent influence.”

It should be classified as a horror flick. It’s “the most terrifying film Hollywood ever made,” Rich Cohen argued in Salon. The film, he says, “is about hunger. It’s about greed. It’s about the many ways a good man is stymied,” about how George Bailey is “broken on the wheel of capitalism,” a “good man driven insane.” The picture is Capra wailing, “Help, help, America is in trouble!”

It’s a craptacular life. Sure, George Bailey is out of immediate financial danger in the end, but he still had to give up on all his dreams. “George’s despair at the outset of the film is caused by the fact that he has had to abandon his heartfelt ambitions and live a humdrum life in a humdrum town,” wrote Mark Butler at Wow 24/7 UK. “Yeah, so an angel has reminded him of the good things he’s achieved, and he’s free from financial ruin for now. But how long will that last? And is it really such a good thing that he’s sacrificed his own hopes and dreams for everybody else around him?”

Mr. Potter is the real hero. A New York Post crank (me) argued in 2007 that the growling banker Henry Potter is a “canny businessman who tried (and, alas, failed) to turn boring, repressed Bedford Falls — a town full of drunks, child beaters, vandals and racial and sexual harassers — into an exciting new destination nightspot called Pottersville.” Drab Bedford Falls “lacks most of the bars, pool halls, bowling alleys and dance clubs that make Pottersville a lively city instead of a drab hamlet where the only entertainment is to see ‘The Bells of St. Mary’s’ at the local monoplex.”