I love this movie. It's always the first holiday film I automatically think of, come the arrival of Thanksgiving, as during my growing-up years it annually played on t.v. every Thanksgiving Day early afternoon, a while subsequent to the Macy's Parade. Such a delightful classic.

Growing up, my parents used to take my brother and I to the Santa Claus cabin thing that was in front of the main store in town. I'd go in and earnestly tell Santa what my Wish List was. The only problem was that I knew, full well, who that Santa really was (was the same man every year) as he went to my church and I could readily tell was the father of one of my classmates! I always played dumb about the realization though.

Love this movie but I also really like the 1994 version.

I'm a boomer so I have many memories of visiting 'old classic department stores' & visiting Santa. Although I was a 'cynical child, so I'm not sure when I stopped believing, probably 6 or 7?

I think probably 5-6 years old was when I figured out it was my mom who actually was the source of my holiday gifts. I continued, for 2-3 more years, playing along that I believed in Santa though, as I was afraid of hurting Mom's feelings, since I could tell she believed I still believed.

By the way, an absolute fave moment in this movie is when the little Dutch girl visits Kris and she's so happy when he speaks her language - and then they sing the song, in her native tongue, together.

@genplant29 said:

By the way, an absolute fave moment in this movie is when the little Dutch girl visits Kris and she's so happy when he speaks her language - and then they sing the song, in her native tongue, together.

The equivalent scene in the 1994 version is when Santa communicates in sign language with a little deaf girl (they sing & sign Jingle Bells).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dvqM5P6Fv4

@genplant29 said:

By the way, an absolute fave moment in this movie is when the little Dutch girl visits Kris and she's so happy when he speaks her language - and then they sing the song, in her native tongue, together.

I thought that both actors did so well, especially when speaking Dutch. Even singing the Dutch song "Sinterklaas Kapoentje".

Often when actors speak a non-native language, it is very difficult to understand what they are saying in that language. I can hear this, for example when actors pretend to be German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, French, etc., and the pronunciation and accent is so terrible that it's almost unintelligible.