{"id":203,"date":"2010-12-21T15:42:20","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T22:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/2010\/12\/21\/%e2%80%98miracle%e2%80%99-is-on-tv-%e2%80%93-it-must-be-christmas\/"},"modified":"2010-12-21T15:42:20","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T22:42:20","slug":"%e2%80%98miracle%e2%80%99-is-on-tv-%e2%80%93-it-must-be-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/2010\/%e2%80%98miracle%e2%80%99-is-on-tv-%e2%80%93-it-must-be-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Miracle\u2019 is on TV \u2013 it must be Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onclick=\"ps_imagemanager_popup(this.href,'MiracleOn34thStreet.jpg','400','250');return false\" onfocus=\"this.blur()\" href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/MiracleOn34thStreet.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"94\" title=\"MiracleOn34thStreet.jpg\" align=\"right\" alt=\"MiracleOn34thStreet.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/thumbs\/th-MiracleOn34thStreet.jpg?resize=150%2C94\" border=\"0\" vspace=\"5\" hspace=\"5\" \/><\/a>I recently re-watched the original <em>Miracle on 34th Street<\/em>. I first discovered this film one late night when I was a teenager, babysitting for a couple in the neighborhood. That was long before home entertainment systems, so every year I would look forward to the winter holiday season with my eye fixed on the TV programming schedule. To this day, the 1947 film has never disappointed me, reinforcing all those romantic feelings of wonder and hope and belief \u2014 and love \u2014 that seem to be expressed more openly during this season than any other time of year.<\/p>\n<p>Strange to imagine that, when it was released (in <em>MAY<\/em> of 1947), the studios tried to hide the Christmas aspect in their promotions and play it up simply as a feel-good movie. But then, it <em>is<\/em> a feel-good movie.<\/p>\n<p>Another now-classic Christmas fare was likewise not a Christmas release originally. <em>A Christmas Story<\/em> was first released before Thanksgiving in 1983, but public outcry over it not running weeks later for Christmas resulted in limited screenings until after New Year\u2019s. Although more slice-of-life than fantasy, it also establishes a wonderful sense of innocence \u2014 perhaps because it is an adult looking back on his childhood, but is it a coincidence that it, like <em>Miracle on 34th Street<\/em>, is set in the 1940s (the decade that gave us another Christmas icon \u2014 <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em>)? (Parents note, however, that <em>A Christmas Story<\/em>\u2019s through-line is a boy\u2019s yearning for a BB gun.)<\/p>\n<p>KIDS FIRST! names <em>Miracle on 34th Street<\/em> and <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em> on our \u201cTop 100\u201d list of films.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nChristmas is not a holiday I celebrate, but I revel in the spirit of this season and enjoy the movies built around the \u201cChristmas spirit.\u201d\u00a0 These are plentiful, and every year brings new ones to warm our hearts. Only time will tell whether some of these movies that <em>are<\/em> made for this season will become as indelibly tied to it as the ones named above that weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s to miracles. Happy Holidays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently re-watched the original Miracle on 34th Street. I first discovered this film one late night when I was a teenager, babysitting for a couple in the neighborhood. That was long before home entertainment systems, so every year I would look forward to the winter holiday season with my eye fixed on the TV [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paS5I2-3h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/kidsfirstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}