
"Miracle on 34th Street" is one of those distinctive holiday classics that also happens to be a good movie. The film is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2022 and is remembered today for its obvious sentimentality and its half-hearted critique of the over-commercialization of Christmas. But one of the film's subplots reflected real anxieties about an issue that is just salient 75 years later – home ownership.
The film was a bright spot in an otherwise dismal period for Hollywood.