Miracle on 34th Street by Valentine Davies is a great story, adapted for the big screen twice, the 1947 version is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies of All Time – if you are interested, you find notes on films from this NYT 1,000 and other sites, reviews on books from The GOAT and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html Santa Claus vs The Orange Grinch

 

Miracle on 34th Street by Valentine Davies is a great story, adapted for the big screen twice, the 1947 version is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies of All Time – if you are interested, you find notes on films from this NYT 1,000 and other sites, reviews on books from The GOAT and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Santa Claus vs The Orange Grinch

 

9 out of 10

 

I see this as the clash between Santa Claus and The Orange Grinch, only the original Grinch changes and becomes generous, magnanimous, the one we see at work (as in destroying part of the White House, NATO and more) will not get better, we can only try to be optimistic - a rule of happiness from the magnificent:

 

The How of Happiness https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html by Sonja Lyubomirsky - ‘Happiness Activity No 2: Cultivating Optimism - you can keep a journal where you write about the best possible scenario for you coming into being’ let us pray that the Orange Grinch loses the game

Kris Kringle is the hero -maybe anti-hero for the MAGA types – of this narrative, Father Christmas, oh, by the way, those fundamentalists and their lunatic (a word he likes so much, only he does not look in the mirror with earnest coldness) leader are the ones insisting they bring back ‘Merry Christmas’, when they are just killing the spirit

 

The main character starts by looking into a shop and telling the man arranging the decorations about the fact that ‘he keeps his reindeer on the left’ something to that effect, then he shares a detail about their feet, and we get that this is peculiar, and the shop keeper is left puzzled, and thinking this man is bizarre or crazy

When the parade is missing its would be Father Christmas, because the hired hand is drunk, Kris Kringle talks to Doris Walker, she is the one organizing the event for Macy, the biggest shop in New York at the time – we are talking about the middle of the past century – and left in dire straits with her key personage absent

 

However, our protagonist has a white beard and looks like Santa Klaus – he even thinks he is, we will soon see – and eventually agrees to take the job, he is throughout dedicated, indeed, let us put in a spoiler alert and say that this is about ‘The Spirit of Christmas’ and he is the epitome, the paradigm of munificence

For the hilarious take on paradigm I invite you to read the glorious Vernon God Little or at least my review https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/vernon-god-little-by-dbc-pierre.html DBC Pierre has won The Booker Prize for it- When Kingsley Amis won the Booker prize for The Old Devils in 1986, he said that ‘he had previously thought of the Booker as a rather trivial, showbiz sort of caper, but now considered it a very serious, reliable indication of literary merit.’

When Kris Kringle insists that he is Santa Klaus they have a trial, and we are invited to think about morality, munificence, and the opposite – I see the Orange Grinch as a symbol of what is wrong with the world today, after all, you have a multitude of monsters like him, the problem is that such astounding numbers identify with Evil

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

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