George Seaton’s “Miracle on 34th Street” is a miracle on its own, and we’re talking about it today because this is Thanksgiving Day’s special review, as there will be no newspaper on Thanksgiving.

Here, at the end of November, when hundreds of Christmas movies are opening or streaming on our living room screens as turkey dinners are set on American tables, the old 20th Century Fox’s “Miracle on 34th Street” edges back into our lives.

Of course it is, and it’s been hiding in plain sight on seven streaming venues. (Check the list at the end of this review.)

Yes, I know, you all have a favorite movie to watch, while sitting on the couch during the long Christmas week full of ancient, old, and brand new Christmas movies in this troubled December.

But the “Miracle” that’s really about Thanksgiving and keeps popping up on everyone’s list has generally been accepted as part of the Christmas movie tradition.

Oh yes, moms, wives, sisters and grandmas will insist on Cary Grant’s “The Bishop’s Wife” (1947) as, yes, another younger handsomer angel trying to help David Niven save his dream and maybe fall in love with Loretta Young. But that, and a flock of other classics are for another holiday.

“Miracle on 34th Street” is a Thanksgiving 1947 gift. (It actually opened in June, far from Thanksgiving and ran into Christmas Day. Edmund Gwenn (Hitchcock’s “The Trouble With Harry” 1955) won an Academy Award in 1948 for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

Its funniest line, for my money, comes during the opening credits, on the streets of New York City on that Thanksgiving Day, when Kris Kringle (Gwenn) peers into a storefront window, where a clerk adjusts a Christmas display of Santa’s reindeer, and tells the clerk: “You’ve got them mixed up … You’re making a mistake with the reindeer … You’ve got Cupid where Blitzen should be. And Dasher, oh Dasher, should be on my right-hand side … And another thing, Donder’s antlers have four points instead of three.”

You will love the expression on the clerk’s face.

But today, decades later, “Miracle on 34th Street” is spending Thanksgiving on my living room set in Waterville.

We see actress Maureen O’Hara, as a bitter, divorced, cynical mother (who caused a fuss when the nasty old National Legion of Decency objected because O’Hara’s character was a divorcee) who taught her little girl to reject “Fairy Tale” folks like Santa.

Then love comes along with John Payne, (“The Razor’s Edge” 1946) and the tiny little daughter played by Natalie Wood, who stole the picture, of course, and who would grow up to be one of filmdom’s biggest stars, and die tragically in dark water.

And there, inside Macy’s, O’Hara meets the great, late Gwenn as the “real” Kris Kringle aka “the real Santa Claus.”

Did you know that Gwenn is the only actor ever to win an Oscar for playing Santa Claus? True.

In the movie, Kringle advises mothers to shop elsewhere if they can’t find what they want at Macy’s.

“You can get those fire engines at Schoenfeld’s on Lexington Avenue. Only $8.50. A wonderful bargain.” Macy’s is stunned at why he would direct customers to other stores.

“The only important thing is to make the children happy,” Kris explains.

In the finale at the big court trial, old Kringle is subjected to psychological evaluation and endless harassment.

Wait a minute, I can’t divulge the ending — no matter how important — because somewhere out there in Maine, there are thousands of folks too young to have seen the “Miracle” finale.

To them we will just say “Happy Thanksgiving” and when your kids visit “Santa” in your town, don’t let them pull his beard.

“Miracle on 34th Street” streams on Hulu, Amazon and Vudu, among others.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

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