Most law students probably want to avoid thinking about the law over winter break, so a holiday-themed legal movie might not sound all that appealing. I was in the same boat, but after giving it a watch, I can see why Miracle on 34th Street is considered a Christmas classic.
Released in 1947, Miracle on 34th Street received great critical acclaim and went on to win three Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor. While the technical aspects of the 76-year-old film are certainly dated, the story’s underlying message is timeless.
The movie follows Doris Walker (Maureen O’Hara), the event director of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, who encounters a man calling himself Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn). Doris asks Kringle to fill in for their Santa Claus actor, who they discovered was getting drunk shortly before the parade was scheduled to begin. Kringle agrees, and everyone watching the parade is impressed by his performance and likeness – so much so that Macy’s subsequently hires him to play Santa at their department store for the holiday season. For Kringle, however, the job is not merely a performance – he genuinely believes himself to be Santa Claus.
The question of whether Kringle is actually Santa Claus or certifiably insane is the main premise of the movie. Doris, who is such a realist that she doesn’t even want her daughter reading fairy tales much less believing in Santa, thinks Kringle is crazy and tries to fire him. However, business is booming at Macy’s with Kringle as the department store Santa, so the CEO insists they keep him on no matter what.
Despite Doris’s beliefs, she and her daughter grow quite fond of Kringle, in part thanks to the Christmas spirit of Doris’s new boyfriend, Attorney Fred Gailey (John Payne). However, Mr. Sawyer (Porter Hall), the “psychologist” at Macy’s who evaluates employees for mental fitness, is less sympathetic to Kringle’s delusions, and tries to have him committed to a mental institution. Gailey intervenes and threatens to file a writ of habeas corpus unless Kringle is given a hearing. The judge agrees, and the remainder of the movie is mostly set in the courtroom, where Gailey argues that Kringle is not insane because he truly is Santa Claus.
While some of Gailey’s tactics – like subpoenaing the prosecutor’s child to testify that he believes Santa is real – would likely be questionable in the real world, the hearing was not quite as farcical as I expected. After all, many of us read the case Stambovsky v. Ackley in our 1L contracts course, where the court famously said, “as a matter of law, the house is haunted.” If a court is willing to hear a case about ghosts, it isn’t so far-fetched that a court would entertain a case about Santa Claus, either. The movie also highlights that the judge has political pressure not to dismiss the case because he will soon be up for reelection – sending Santa to an insane asylum isn’t exactly the best campaign strategy.
Ultimately, Gailey gets the evidence he needs when the U.S. Postal Service decides to drop off thousands of letters addressed to Santa at the courthouse and give them to Kringle. Gailey spins this as proof that a government agency has acknowledged that Kringle is Santa Claus. Of course, the audience knows from an earlier scene that the postal service only did this because all the children’s letters to Santa were taking up too much space at the New York Post Office, but it’s still a clever argument, and the judge rules in Kringle’s favor.
Miracle on 34th Street may be dated, cheesy, and not terribly realistic from a legal standpoint, but it has a lot of heart, and the movie’s message about the commercialization of Christmas remains relevant in the modern day. If you find yourself still in the holiday spirit a few days after Christmas, I would say it’s worth a watch.
Eddie Godino is a second-year law student at BC Law. Contact him at godinoe@bc.edu.
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