Although airing multiple times during the Christmas season with much of the film taking place then as well, and although featuring a story about a man named Kris Kringle, and even despite being the only film so far to earn an actor an Oscar for playing a character legally recognized as the real Santa Claus, Miracle on 34th Street is not really a “Christmas movie.” Instead, it is that rarest of Hollywood holiday treats: a Thanksgiving movie.
More screen time takes place on Thanksgiving Day than Christmas Day by far. In fact, Thanksgiving is given double the attention that Christmas Day gets and half of the Christmas scenes take place inside a car or empty house.
The key to understanding why Miracle on 34th Street should be considered a Thanksgiving movie rather than a Christmas is actually the character of Santa Claus. His character is officially listed as Kris Kringle and throughout the movie he is referred to Kris or Mr. Kringle. He is never revealed as possessing preternatural or supernatural powers although it is ambiguously hinted at. For the most part, Kris Kringle is presented as a very sweet, kind and caring old man whose very first act is outrage at the drunken state of the man originally hired to play Santa in the Macy’s parade. That outrage transforms into opportunity and that opportunity in turn is twisted by external forces into that second rarest of Hollywood holiday treats: a movie about Santa Claus that climaxes inside a courtroom.
Kris is never presented as actually being Santa Claus. The film features no scenes taking place at the North Pole nor of his sleigh flying through the air led by eight tiny reindeer. Santa crawls down no chimneys and has discussions no elves. In fact, the biggest night of the Christmas season—Christmas Eve—shows Santa in that courtroom, but never delivering presents around the world.
The truth is that there is not a single scene in Miracle on 34th Street that officially confirms for the audience that Kris really is Santa Claus. The audience must be satisfied with the same evidence that the characters in the film must accept: that Kris must be Santa because the post office has delivered letters address to him to Kris by the thousands. Which would be fine, except that the audience is privy to information that everybody else in the movie is not. The audience gets to see the origin of the idea to forward those letters to Santa to Kris Kringle. In that scene, it is revealed that only one of the letters carried in bundles into the courtroom was actually addressed to Kris in New York. The others were addressed to Santa in the North Pole and the only reason they wind up being forward to Kris is to clear up all the space they are taking up in the post office’s “dead letter office.”
In other words, if this is a Christmas movie, it is a Christmas movie that, facing the same dilemma as Judge Harper, ultimately decides to remain indecisive: that Kris is actually Santa Claus is neither confirmed nor denied. Such ambivalence cuts against the very foundation of a Christmas movie and stands in defiance of the one thing that is always true about them: if there is a Santa character, it is clear whether he is the real thing or just an actor playing a role.
On the other hand, if Miracle on 34th Street is a Thanksgiving movie, then it celebrates all the iconic images of that holiday and confirms that we all have something to be thankful about, no matter how cynical or ironic a front we may put on. Christmas is a day of magic; Thanksgiving is a day of hard work and relaxation. Take away the magic from Santa and what’s left is Kris Kringle. This movie is about Kris Kringle, not Santa Claus. And, specifically, it is a movie that situates Thanksgiving Day as the center of Santa’s ambiguously presented special powers. And even more specifically, it is about the serendipitous appearance of a man calling himself Kris Kringle is given the “part” of Santa Claus. And most specifically of all, is a movie not about the mythology of Santa Claus, but about a man named Kris Kringle whose accidental casting as Santa Claus stimulates what Miracle on 34th Street is really about.
The redemption of a divorcee whose bitterness over the failure of her marriage has resulted in her young daughter growing up with no illusions about a blurry line separating reality and fantasy. Or, in other words, it is a movie about the danger of raising a kid to have no imagination. If it is a Christmas movie, then Miracle on 34th Street remains the strangest mainstream “Christmas movie” ever made.
