Every enduring story has its heroes and its villains--those in the cast we like, and those we love to hate. And the Christmas story is no exception. Most of the characters in the Nativity drama are extremely likable people--the holy family, the startled shepherds, the wise men. We would welcome the opportunity to meet them, talk with them, count them among our friends.

          Then, on the other hand, there's Herod the king--who epitomizes the most undesirable traits we can imagine--brutality, deceit, jealousy, vanity, ruthlessness. In all the Bible there are few villains as despicable as Herod the king.

          Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas have written a book, THE DISNEY VILLAIN, which is a marvelous review of the panorama of animated villainous characters that have been created by the Walt Disney studios over nearly 70 years--from Peg-Leg Pete, nemesis of Mickey Mouse and, even before that, of Oswald the Rabbit and Julius the Cat.....to Jafar, the evil presence in the animated feature, ALADDIN.

          Ollie and Frank have been friends and colleagues since their college days together at Stanford University. They were among the nine exceptionally creative artists hired by Walt Disney in the early years of the studio who became known affectionately as "the Nine Old Men". It was their distinctive talents that brought to life the most memorable moments and characters of the animated classics.

          Ollie and Frank's careers at the studio spanned forty-three years, during most of which time they have lived and raised their families in La Canada--always contributing generously to the wellbeing of our schools and our community. Their official retirement in 1978 hardly slowed them down. They have since traveled all over the world, lecturing and consulting on various aspects of the art of animation.

          And they have produced four widely-acclaimed books--the most recent of which was their response to a request they received in the form of a letter signed by fifty then-current Disney animators: "Do a book on Disney villains," it pleaded. So they did.

          It's been said that we are known by our antagonists--and this is certainly true of the Disney classics. We would have less appreciation for Snow White or Pinocchio or any of the other central characters in these stories if they were not matched by some threatening power or opposing personality that has to be taken seriously.

          As you read Ollie and Frank's book, you begin to realize that the spectrum of those villains and their motives virtually spans the human condition--from unswerving malevolence to bumbling nuisance. They begin the first chapter with this perceptive observation:

          "All of us are potential villains. In spite of ethics, morals, codes of conduct and a general respect of laws, if we are pushed far enough, pressured beyond our breaking point, our self-preservation system takes over and we are capable of terrible villainy."

          So I'd to point to three common marks of villainy--marks to which you and I remain forever susceptible--that, I think, have been captured masterfully in Disney films.

          First of all, I want to lift up a pair of my favorite Disney villains--who also happen to be creations of Frank and Ollie. They are Captain Hook and Mr. Smee from the Disney classic based on the James Barrie classic, PETER PAN. Two scurvier pirates you're unlikely to find in the annals of animation. Yet these are not the usual cartoon pirates. Captain Hook--Frank's creation--is every bit the caricature of a foppish English gentleman--flamboyantly dressed, meticulously groomed, a harpsichord player, cultured and (when necessary for his nefarious purposes) exceedingly charming and polite.

          On the other hand, Mr. Smee--Ollie's creation--is his bumbling sidekick--a roly-poly underling who lives unthinkingly to serve his master's whims, but often unintentionally compounding his master's problems. He, too, can be deceptively ingratiating, disguising his willingness to break the bounds of common decency if commanded by his superior.

          We're first introduced to this pair of villains on the deck of their ship in Pirate's Cove in Never Never Land, where Hook is hatching a plot to kidnap the Indian princess, Tiger Lily. Their thoughts are interrupted by a motley crew member up on the mast warbling a song about a pirate's life being short. As if to prove the point, Captain Hook winces at the performance, casually pulls out his firearm and dispatches the crooner. Mr. Smee makes a mock protest: "Oh dear, dear, dear, Captain. Shooting a man in the middle of his cadenza? It's not good form, you know."

          As the story progresses, the pair proceed to carry out this plan to kidnap the Indian Princess. They take her to Skull Rock. When she refuses to reveal the hideout of Peter Pan, they leave her to drown in the high tide. Fortunately, Pan arrives in time to engage the villains in a comic battle and save the day. The villainous pair's next scheme is to kidnap the fairy Tinker Bell, and play upon her jealousy to reveal the whereabouts of the hideout. Thanks to Hook's deceptive charm, this plan succeeds, and the pirates capture the lost children, leaving a bomb to destroy Peter Pan. But once again Pan eludes the worst and succeeds in saving the children, routing the villains until another day. We last see the pirates scurrying away at full pace in the open sea.

          What is the driving motive of the villainous Captain Hook? He is fixated on revenge! We learn early in the story that--in some childish skirmish--Peter had cut off Hook's hand and thrown it to a crocodile.....a crocodile who enjoyed the taste of the pirate so much that he's followed him ever since, licking his chops for the rest of him. Hook--with Smee at his bidding--has allowed his career as a pirate--indeed his whole life--to be consumed by his twisted vendetta against the boy who had perpetrated that prank.

          Hook is a comic effigy of the tragic figure from Herman Melville's American classic, MOBY DICK. It was a leg rather than an arm that Captain Ahab lost, but his whole life thereafter became a single-minded quest for vengeance against the mammoth white whale who had been responsible for the loss of that leg.

          We should acknowledge that Peter Pan himself is not a model of virtue. Not only did he cut off the pirate's hand, but at times he exhibits traits of selfishness and vanity. Nevertheless, it is in their showdowns with one another that their true characters are revealed. Hook and Smee will stop at nothing--kidnapping, lying, deceit--to blindly execute revenge. But Peter Pan, whose agility and ability to fly often put the Captain at his mercy, forever appears ready to offer the olive branch, and let bygones be bygones if Hook will just call himself a codfish.

          Revenge is one of the villainous spirits at loose in the world--ready to claim any heart that despises mercy. But in the ultimate moral scheme of things, vengeance is suicide. If we can't live together, we can't live at all.

          I remind you again of that man who was reported to have struck his wife in the course of an argument. A friend of his asked him about it later. "Did you really hit her?" "Yes, I did," said the fellow. "I got tired of her screaming at me, so I popped her a good one. It taught her a lesson, too. I didn't see her for five days. Then, on the sixth day, I could see her a little out of the corner of this eye."

          In reality, of course, it's no laughing matter whenever violence erupts in human relationships and becomes a chain of retaliation. That's what continues to happen in so many troubled areas of the world today--ancient rivalries kept alive by new acts of recrimination, igniting further retaliation and more violence.

          I was reading recently about the Jivaro tribe in Ecuador--and how, every night when their children go to bed, the parents linger by their bedsides and whisper into their ears the names of all the people they must hate when they are older. It's the tribal way of keeping its feuds and enmities alive from generation to generation. In our society we do the same thing around the dinner table or the coffee pot or the office cooler.

          Yet when our concern for vengeance overshadows every other concern, we're ultimately participating in our own destruction. I remind you again of that line from the movie GHANDI: "In a world that forever retaliates an eye for an eye, eventually everyone will be blind." The villainous cycle of evil endlessly retaliating against evil can never be broken unless, somewhere, somebody refuses to go on with it.

          This is the central message of Shakespeare's drama, ROMEO AND JULIET. More than just a play about a romance, it's a play about the antagonism between the house of Capulet and the house of Montague. Each family hates the other, and retaliates wrong for wrong, violence for violence, and the spirit of vengeance grows by what it feeds upon. Then comes the final scene--the climax of the drama--where Capulet and Montague stand together. Their children, Romeo and Juliet, have died--and their tragic love has finally broken the vicious cycle of retaliation. In that final moment of the drama, Capulet says, "O brother Montague, give me thy hand."

          What Shakespeare teaches us in his play is the very promise Christmas brings to us with a holy birth. It is a life that will go even unto a Cross to reveal the truth that the world's feuds can never end, and the villainous cycle of violence retaliating against violence will never stop until, somewhere, somebody refuses to respond to hate with hate, and chooses instead to respond to hate with love.

          But now, let me go on to a second set of Disney villains--also created by Frank and Ollie--villains whose villainy is driven by an entirely different motive. These are the Stepmother and the Stepsisters of the Disney classic, CINDERELLA.

          The story begins with the narrator telling us that Cinderella's father--a widower--decided to take a second wife, thinking that his daughter needed a mother's care. He chose a woman of good family by the name of Lady Tremaine (animated by Frank) with two daughters named Anastasia and Drizella (animated by Ollie)--girls who were the same age as Cinderella.

          Alas--as the narrator goes on to tell us--"It was upon the untimely death of this good man that the stepmother's true nature was revealed--cold, cruel, bitterly jealous of Cinderella's charm and beauty, she was grimly determined to forward the interests of her own two awkward daughters." It was not long before the family fortunes were squandered upon the vain and selfish stepsisters while Cinderella was abused, humiliated, and finally forced to become a servant in her own house.

          Ironically enough, Cinderella's stepmother would seem to be the least threatening of Disney villains. After all, she had no magic on her side, no spells to cast, no witch's brews, no demonic henchmen. Yet, as Frank and Ollie point out in their book, "More people actually hated the stepmother than any other villain we ever created." Why? Perhaps because she IS no mythological demon--no stranger--but a part of our own extended family--someone who is willing to distort and take advantage of a relationship that has already been established--someone who should provide comfort and support, not pain and suffering.

          This stepmother's eyes tell the story of her soul. Squinting from the darkness of her bed, she barks her orders to the child entrusted to her care. Her gaze is not that of a parent nurturing possibilities, but that of a hawk searching for vulnerabilities.

          The story turns when an invitation arrives from the King inviting eligible maidens to attend a ball to meet the Prince. Drizella and Anastasia are delighted with the invitation, but are at first annoyed when their mother says Cinderella may also attend, IF she finishes her chores and has something proper to wear. Then they see that their mother has no intention of allowing that to happen. I said, "IF," she repeats with a cruel smile. Sure enough, Cinderella's chores are doubled and tripled, so that she hasn't a moment to prepare a dress.

          But a surprise is at hand. Cinderella's animal friends have crafted a beautiful dress--some of it from remnants that the stepsisters have cast off from their own wardrobes. When Cinderella appears in her dress ready for the ball, her stepmother recognizes those remnants and points them out to her daughters. Anastasia and Drizella, in turn, begin ripping at the dress until it's completely destroyed.

          Well, you know the story. Thanks to a fairy godmother, Cinderella does get to attend the ball, where she captures the heart of the prince. She slips away before he can determine her identity, leaving behind one of the glass slippers she had been wearing. The Prince immediately vows to marry the maiden whose foot will fit that slipper.

          When the Grand Duke comes to their house with the slipper to measure the feet, Lady remaine observes Cinderella in a romantic trance and concludes that she may indeed be the maiden of the Prince's dream. Instead of rejoicing in this, she locks Cinderella in the tower room where she can be neither seen nor heard. Once again, Cinderella's animal friends come to her rescue--and she runs down the stairs just as the Grand Duke is leaving. When he insists that she, too, be allowed to try on the slipper, the stepmother succeeds in tripping his servant and smashing the slipper to pieces. When all seems lost, Cinderella produces the mate to the slipper, which she has kept and which fits perfectly--to the horror of her stepmother and stepsisters.

          The villainous motive at work in this story is another common one: jealousy.....a resentful envy, on the part of her less charming sisters, of everything good that Cinderella represents.....and a cruel bigotry, on the part of the stepmother, to favor the interests of her own two daughters. And jealousy, envy, and bigotry are hardly uncommon snarls in the fabric of human relationships. Wherever they exist, they distort personalities and spoil the possibilities of life.

          An elderly lady was having her portrait painted, and she asked the artist to add two diamond rings, an elaborate jeweled necklace, expensive earrings, an elegant diamond and ruby bracelet. "Yes, I can do that," the artist assured her. "But may I ask why?" "Well," she said, with her teeth clenched, "My husband is running around with a cheap young chick, and I don't have long to live. I want him to have my picture, of course, but most of all, I want to drive that young tramp wild looking for the jewelry."

          Ralph Waldo Emerson was writing to you and me when he said: "Let a person know his own worth...There is a time in every one's education when he arrives at the conviction that (jealousy and) envy (are) ignorance...that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion."

          Christopher Wren, who rebuilt St. Paul's Cathedral and much of London after the Great Fire of 1666, was invited to design a new town hall in Windsor. When he submitted his plans, a rival architect--jealous of Wren's reputation--argued before the town council that the roof required better support and extra pillars needed to be added. Wren argued that his planned structure was perfectly safe. But his rival was adamant, and managed to create sufficient alarm throughout the community that Wren was pressured into adding the supports.

          Many years later, when both the artist and his rival were dead, some repairs and cleaning were performed on the hall. The workmen were surprised to find that, invisible from the floor below, the extra columns Wren put in were two inches short of touching the roof. Wren put in the columns as his jealous critic insisted. But he knew his building would stand. So the columns he erected were no more than decoration.

          In his book entitled THE RESPONSIBLE MURDERERS, Paul Furfey concludes that the greatest crimes in history have been committed, not by disreputable dissenters, but by essentially respectable people.....driven by motives such as jealousy, envy, and bigotry.

          Matthew's gospel in the New Testament even says that jealousy and bigotry were the motive that delivered Jesus into the hands of his crucifiers--jealousy and bigotry on the part of those in the religious and political establishment who couldn't abide his honesty and his innocence. They couldn't abide the very promise that Christmas represents: that a life has come into this world that has the power to dissolve jealousy and bigotry into compassion if we but open our souls to the birth of his grace.

          The third and final Disney villain I'd like to lift up is The Beast in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. The Beast was created by Glen Keane, one of Ollie Johnston's proteges, and a leading animator at the studio today. The prologue to the story tells us that the Beast was once a handsome prince, who had everything his heart desired. But he was spoiled, selfish and unkind. One winter's night an old beggar woman came to the castle and offered him a single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold. Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the prince sneered at the gift and turned the old woman away. But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within. And when he dismissed her again, the old woman's ugliness melted away to reveal a beautiful enchantress. The prince tried to apologize, but it was too late. For she had seen that there was no love in his heart--and as punishment, she transformed him into a hideous beast and placed a powerful spell on the castle and all who lived there. The rose she had offered would bloom until his twenty-first year. Only if the Beast could learn to love another and earn her love in return before the last petal fell, would the spell be broken.

          Of course, this is exactly what happens. The coarse and selfish Beast imprisons the father of a young lady named Belle. When Belle discovers what has happened, she unselfishly offers to take her father's place. At first, the Beast tries to control his captive Beauty with anger and threats and rudeness. But she, in her strong and quiet resilience, slowly begins to transform his character from a selfish monster into a caring companion.....thereby turning him from villainy to nobility. By the end of the film the Beast is a prince once again--not a selfish prince, but a prince who has learned the lesson of love.

          Ironically, the character who turns out to be the true villain in the story--Gaston--is the handsomest, most popular man in town--admired by all for his physical prowess and his outward appearance. Yet as we begin to look inside his character, we see that his vanity, his egotism, has left no room in his heart for anyone but himself. He descends from self-indulgence to self-worship, and his soul begins to shrivel. He rallies the villagers with his own hatred to try to destroy the Beast, but finally succeeds only in destroying himself.

          BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is a parable about the possibility of change--and, in particular, about the possibility of redemption for a villain as vile as a selfish Beast.

          And didn't Charles Dickens also suggest this possibility, when he told the tale of Ebeneezer Scrooge, a selfish miser who cared for no one but himself.....whose confrontation with his own past and present and future forces him to glimpse, for the first time, the whole panorama of life.....thereby raising in his soul, also for the first time, the spectre of life's meaning and leaving him hungry for hope? And finally he finds that hope through the giving of himself in the joy of love and commitment to the possibilities in other people.

          A CHRISTMAS CAROL is the title of Dickens' tale--and it is Christmas that forever holds out this promise.....the promise that into a world of darkness and sin has come a saving grace: the promise that even the hatred of a Herod is no match for the love of God.

          One of my good friends in the ministry--and a member of the church I served in Sebastopol, California--was Byron Eshelman. Byron was prison chaplain at Alcatraz before it was closed, then for a number of years the chaplain at San Quentin until his retirement.

          I remember Byron telling about a Christmas play that took place in one of our country's maximum security prisons. Here were those whom society considered the vilest of villains--murderers, armed robbers, rapists. Yet a group of them wanted to act out the Nativity story before their fellow prisoners. Since they were in a maximum security prison, nothing was allowed to be brought in for the play. All the costumes and props had to come from within the walls of the prison.

          So "Mary" wore a mop for hair. Cotton balls were glued on socks and a ski mask to make a lamb. The socks came from four different prisoners, because new were issued only twice a year. No one wanted to give up a whole pair of socks, so four prisoners gave up one sock each. These worn, holey socks became "holy" socks in the play. A old cardboard box became the manger. As the day of the pageant approached, the prisoners demonstrated an unusual degree of excitement.

          Someone wondered about the baby. What could they use for the Holy Infant? Naturally there was no question of using a real baby. The suggestion was made that Mary might simply hold a blanket and pretend like there was an infant inside it. But that was not a popular solution.