Miracle on 34th St.

As much as I respect his opinion, I must disagree with Dr. Worm. Nobody does it better than the Muppets, you say? Au contraire, Mahatma. “Does it best” is covered by James Stewert, but Jimmy had his day in the sun with Wicked Little Critta’s review of It’s a Wonderful Life, so I’ll leave that alone. Doing it second best is Edmund Gwenn, as the saintly Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34^th St. Turn in your beards and hats, Salvation Army; this guy blows all you fake Santas away.

Miracle on 34^th St. is the very first movie I remember seeing when I was a kid, and is probably the actual first movie I ever saw. My first memory of it was when I was 5 years old, watching it with my 9-year-old sister on Thanksgiving night. There were probably earlier incidents of me watching it, but they are lost to the mists of time. But every year at Thanksgiving (the official start of the Christmas season in my mind), my sister and I watch this movie. Needless to say, this is a yearly tradition that has only been broken by events such as marriage and terrible illness.

The story starts off with a man strolling down the Manhattan streets on Thanksgiving morning, an old man with a long white beard (Edmund Gwenn). He comes to where the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is gearing up for to get going, and sees Macy’s Santa Claus having some trouble with the whip. When the man goes to help him, he notices that Santa is drunk, and the man is outraged. Finding the organizer of the parade, Doris (Maureen O’Hara), he is asked by her to stand in for Santa, to which he reluctantly agrees. The next day, he’s hired as the regular Santa for the toy department of Macy’s, the one where the kids line up to sit on his knee and tell him what they want for Christmas. Wackiness ensues when it’s revealed that he thinks he’s the real Santa Claus. His name, by the way, is Kris Kringle. When asked what is real name is, he matter-of-factly states, “that is my real name.” What’s more, he starts telling the parents of the kids he sees to shop at stores other than Macy’s. Mr. Macy loves it, because many customers have expressed gratitude to Macy’s for putting good-will ahead of commercialism. But a devious amateur psychologist plots to have Kris institutionalized for his “delusion,” but he turns to his lawyer roommate, Fred Gaily (John Payne), to get him out of the nuthouse. Fred takes a very unorthodox stance for Kris’s defense, however: he tries to legally prove that Kris is in fact Santa Claus. Also, there is Doris’s level-headed daughter, Susan (Natalie Wood), who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. Kris opens up a world for her that she didn’t even know existed.

The main feature of this film is that you don’t know if Kris is actually Santa Claus, or if he’s just deluded. Not even at the end do you really have a definitive answer. Everything in the movie could just be coincidence, and Kris could just be an unaware catalyst to huge events. Maybe there really is no Santa Claus, as all the adults in the movie save Kris believe. On the other hand, maybe there is, and everything that Kris was saying was true. It could go either way. The great thing about this movie is its ambiguity. It doesn’t try to make you believe one thing or another; it allows you the space to make up your own mind.

My mother suggests that a belief in Santa Claus is essential to children, because it is that same belief that allows us to believe in God. Belief in something that we can’t see and have no evidence of is a very important trait, and if children can learn it early on, all the better. There is not a shred of evidence in Miracle on 34^th St. that Kris really is Santa Claus, and never does the movie say definitively whether it’s one way or the other. So it’s up to you, the viewer, to decide; not only for the purposes of watching the movie, but in real life, too. Is there, or is there not, a Santa Claus?

Well?

Iconic lines:
“Christmas isn’t just a day; it’s a frame of mind.”
“Faith is believing in something when common sense tells you not to.”
“HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOO?????????"

22 Rating: 16

Particle Man