By August Ewert-Harpold

Miracle on 34^th Street

This 1947 Christmas classic is just a heart-warming, feel-good movie. In the movie, Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) is at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade when he is asked to fill in for the original Santa who was drunk. Everyone ends up loving him and saying that he is the perfect “Santa” which gets him a job at Macy’s Department Store in Manhattan. Problems for Kringle begin when he tells a kid he’s the real Santa Claus. This has the manger thinking he has mental health problems and that Kringle is imagining it all…thus leaving the manager no choice but to fire Kringle. The movie also stars Natalie Wood as Susan Walker who doesn’t believe in Santa since her mother told Walker at a young age that Santa wasn’t real. In a twist of complete irony, her mom ends up being the Lawyer who defends Kringle in court saying that he really is Santa Claus. 

Spoiler Alert:
The court ends up deciding that he’s Santa because the United States Postal Service comes to court and gives him all of the letters kids have written to Santa. “I have three letters addressed simply ‘Santa Claus.’ No other address whatsoever. Yet these were just now delivered to Mr. Kringle by bona fide employees of the Post Office.” 

The Grinch (2018)

The improved 2018 version of the loved story of the Grinch stars Benedict Cumberbatch (let’s face it, the one with Jim Carrey was pretty petrifying). The Grinch is an animated film in which the title character, the Grinch, hates Christmas and decides that he wants to steal Christmas from nearby Whoville. The Grinch takes Christmas trees and presents while posing as Santa. He even dresses his dog Max as a reindeer and gets a sleigh. 

Spoiler Alert:
A little girl named Cindy-Lou causes him to have a change of heart which made him want to help out and make the town have the biggest Christmas party ever. 

A Christmas Prince 

This very popular 2017 romantic comedy is about a young journalist named Amber Moore (Rose Mclver) who is assigned to go to the nation of Aldovia where Prince Richard (Ben Lamb) lives. She is instructed to get all of the inner gossip about what is going on in the palace since the king had recently just died. She somehow ends up inside and palace employees think that she is Princess Emily’s new American tutor (whose name is Martha.) Princess Emily (Honor Kneafsey) realizes that Amber is not really the tutor and they decide just to have fun. Since it was the holidays, they set up decorations and they end up going sledding (which is something that Princess Emily had never been able to do since she has Spina Bifida.) When Amber’s boss finds out that she is inside the palace she is told to keep researching and find out everything there is to know about the prince. Amber on the other hand becomes best friends with Prince Richard and decides to write in the blog about how kind he, is which makes her editor angry. Unfortunately, she finds out a family secret about who can be the next king and who Prince Richard’s father really was. 

Spoiler Alert:
It ends out ok with Prince Richard becoming the king, flying out to New York, and marries Amber. Oh yeah, and then there are two sequels.