Blog 1907 – 12.14.2020

Milly And The Macy’s Parade

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Milly And The Macy’s Parade

One of my favorite holiday memories as a young boy was watching the Christmas parades on TV on Thanksgiving Day. The first of several
versions of Miracle On 34th Street first came out in 1947 and starred a little girl Natalie Wood who was a tough sell for Santa as was her mother played by the lovely Maureen O’Hara who actually hires the real Santa to drive the sleigh in the Macy’s Parade that year. Stock prices in Santa belief had gotten so low that Santa was out doing some pre-Christmas Public Relations trying to revive interest, and who better than a Santa cynical little girl and her doubting no nonsense business woman mom to make his test cases.

In 1994 a new version of the movie was released just in time for my wife and I to take our then four year old son Jonathan to see it. I’m not sure that he sat still for much of it, but Linda and I did and that adventure is one of our favorite Christmas memories together with him.

Jon will turn thirty-one this coming April and plans to wed his lovely fiancée Lauren in May. A few years hence perhaps Santa will have a new fan in the clan and Jon, Lauren, and child will add some new favorite Christmas memories to the mix.

I hope that even in this the strangest and perhaps most challenging of Christmas seasons for many of us that there will be at least one miracle we all can share, not about Jesus or Santa or a new baby in particular, but about what is behind all those and so many other wonderful stories and memories, the love that The Velveteen Rabbit story taught us more than anything else makes us all real throughout all the seasons and in all situations.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White

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The Gift