The 1994 version of Miracle On 34th Street is a Christmas fave. But there’s also a religious message among the tinsel and Santa hats. For many, both versions of Miracle On 34th Street are on regular Christmas rotation every year, be it the Maureen O’Hara-fronted 1947 classic or the now better-known 1994 remake with Sir ... Miracle On 34th Street | A Christmas film less about Santa, more about God
The 1994 version of Miracle On 34th Street is a Christmas fave. But there’s also a religious message among the tinsel and Santa hats.
For many, both versions of Miracle On 34th Street are on regular Christmas rotation every year, be it the Maureen O’Hara-fronted 1947 classic or the now better-known 1994 remake with Sir Richard Attenborough as Kriss Kringle, a kindly old man in modern New York City.
The Les Mayfield-directed 90s take is a sweet natured slice of festive fare, epitomising Attenborough in his late acting career era (following his iconic role in Jurassic Park the previous year). Certainly, for me growing up, he was exactly what Santa Claus (or Father Christmas if you’re from the UK) was supposed to look like.
Yet observing Miracle On 34th Street with a few decades distance, where Christmas movies outside of the Hallmark stable just aren’t made with this open, innocent sense of sentimentality (in everything from the visuals to the script to even the music), you begin to see what the story is really about. It’s not about our relationship with Santa. It’s about our relationship with God.
The Judeo-Christian God, to be clear. The one represented in The Ten Commandments, in Monty Python And The Holy Grail, even in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The old man with the white beard. Less the smiting Old Testament version who unleashed all manner of mayhem on the world, but the more benevolent ‘God the White’ of the New Testament. There’s no monotheistic pantheon here. There is one God, and his name is Kriss.
The film isn’t trying to hide this. Aside from the visual representation, and the casting of a grand statesman like Attenborough in the role, the story tells us early on this is about faith. It differs in that regard from the similar Santa Claus: The Movie a decade earlier, in which sinister corporate forces also looked to exploit the image and representation of Santa for their own ends. Miracle On 34th Street is a bit less camp and extravagant. It’s also about belief in a different way.
As with that earlier movie, the story’s focus is a child, Susan (Mara Wilson), the daughter of Elizabeth Perkins’ emotionally distant Dorey, a corporate executive at a department store close to either going under or being bought by Joss Ackland’s unscrupulous rival. If Cole’s is the traditional, patrician example of ‘fireside’ American capitalism, the Ackland’s Shopper’s Express are Walmart – the cheaper but soulless precursor to Amazon and online shopping. (In the 1947 version, the store was a branch of Macy’s; the company wanted nothing to do with the remake. More on this shortly.)
The corporate factor underlines the core ideas of belief and faith in Miracle On 34th Street, because Attenborough’s Kriss represents that same old patrician sense of order. His is a Christmas, and a world, where respect, tolerance and kindness go hand in hand. He represents the values of Cole’s but wants nothing to do with Shopper’s Express. As an elderly avatar of Edwardian gentility and moral rectitude, he represents the past Mayfield’s film so desperately wants to preserve in the face of a rapidly changing, individualist American society driven by market forces.
If we’re to have faith in him, we should have faith in Cole’s. But the only person who consistently has faith in him is Susan, even if she has been conditioned by Dorey – who has lost faith completely – into not believing in the magic of Santa Claus. The film’s key scene has Kriss explain to Dorey what he means as a symbol.
“I’m not just a whimsical figure who wears a charming suit and affects a jolly demeanour, you know,” he says. “I’m a symbol. I’m a symbol of the human ability to be able to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the major part of our lives. If you can’t believe, if you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.”
This is clearly a specific Judeo-Christian message, one people of that faith would argue is nestled at the heart of Christmas. Miracle On 34th Street represents the conflict between those values and how the meaning of the holiday has, across the 20th century, become corrupted by the corporate values of companies such as Shopper’s Express. It’s the kind of company that hires a boozy, gruff guy to play Santa Claus – someone who represents their avarice as opposed to Kriss’ genuine virtue. Oddly enough, it also represents why Macy’s refused to be involved with the film.
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While the high street chain had been a core component of the 1947 version, in battle with the also real but by 1994 defunct Gimball’s department store, Macy’s refused to lend its name to the 90s film. The company feared it would compromise its branding, which suggests that its Santa is the ‘one true Santa’ who people visit in their store. One of its employees even remarked that “the original cannot be bettered” as they refused support, hence the name change to Cole’s.
Yet Kriss represents that one true Santa, or rather ‘one true God’, which is why he ends up tricked, persecuted and essentially placed on trial. Macy’s refusal if anything speaks to a coded anxiety that its own corporate branding – and thereby profit – could be compromised. This places the company less in the sphere of Christian virtue and more within a capitalist mindset.
At any rate, once Kriss is on trial, the underlying parallel to the Christian God becomes intertwined with the belief in Santa that children are wildly encouraged engage in. Susan’s belief in Santa, and Kriss, contrasts with the cynicism of her mother, and ultimately helps pave the way for her heart being opened by Dylan McDermott’s handsome, charming lawyer Brian and the creation of a traditional family unit. It is Susan who presents the fait accompli to Robert Prosky’s kindly old lawyer (Prosky frankly could have played Kriss himself in another version) – the American dollar bill which reads “In God We Trust.” How much clearer can the message be at this point?
Kriss – and by extension Christmas – is saved by both the belief of a child, and the belief inherent in the American way of life in Judeo-Christian values. If we can’t prove the existence of God, then by extension we can’t disprove the existence of Santa, and Mayfield’s film drops in some nice little suggestions that Kriss might genuinely be the guy from the North Pole (such as his final moment with the great JT Walsh’s corporate lawyer).
If there remains ambiguity about the character, there is no ambiguity in the message. Believe in God this holiday season, and Christmas will be truly magical.
Whether you believe that or not is, well, between you and your god.
You can find AJ on social media, including links to his podcasts and books, via Linktr.ee here. For more on Miracle on 34th Street, seek out his Film Stories Podcast Network show, At the Movies in the 90s.
