Frank Capra’s 1946 film “It’s a Wonderful Life” has become, alongside Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, a staple of the holiday season. And while a certain oh-so-modern mindset is ready to sneer at the film as a “terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams,” most Americans recognize in the film a set of values whose absence in contemporary society hurts.

As A Christmas Carol was written not for children but as a gift book that adults shared and pondered; neither is “It’s a Wonderful Life,” just for children. Art and literature were once thought to be as much for edification as education: as you watch the film for the umpteenth time this December, here’s my David Letterman top five list of “It’s a Wonderful Life” values worth recovering this Christmas season: