Natalie Wood was by all rights a child raised in the Hollywood system. Though she made her break out appearance in Miracle on 34th Street at the tender age of nine, she’d already been taking steady work in Hollywood from the age of four. By sixteen she was already the subject of salacious rumors involving her Rebel Without A Cause director, Nicholas Ray.

The connection between Airport and Miracle on 34th Street may be tenuous at best, though both films are the career highights from the oeuvre of director George Seaton. The film has become relatively obscure with age, though it may be best recognized by the popular spoof from directors Jim Abrahams and David Zucker spawned nearly a decade later, Airplane!

Where would Macy’s be without artist and puppeteer Tony Sarg? Indeed, would we even have Miracle on 34th Street? Sarg appears to be nearly single-handedly responsible for the enduring Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas traditions Americans all know and love.

Miracle on 34th Street simply described: a film about a charming Santa Claus who brings happiness and a renewal of belief to the city of New York. A more complex description involves themes of developing a secular value system, faith without evidence, and commercialism.

I’ll be honest with you, we haven’t seen the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street. It has less to do with the involvement of John Hughes or Encino Man director Les Mayfield then it has to do with the freakishly wall-eyed sight of young Mara Wilson paired with Richard Attenborough’s Kris Kringle.

20th Century Fox’s fabled studio boss, Darryl F. Zanuck, allegedly balked at the idea of a film like Miracle on 34th Street being released during the cold holiday months during which the film takes place. Though the rigors of test marketing would prove him right in the ensuing decades, Zanuck claimed simply that more people saw “pictures” in fair weather.

Sifting through the myriad of holiday films to settle on Miracle on 34th Street, was no easy decision. In the end, we were drawn to the films optimism, in a plot that essentially pits fantasy against bureaucracy, imaginative thought against the status quo. It’s a film that shakes us. The film subverts our sense of belief, loyalty and faith, and asks us to trust the instincts of our youth. To be wild, thoughtful and just naive enough to allow adventure into our lives.