YOU may feel it is still too early to be mentioning Christmas, but the television adverts, the snow-clad shop windows and the weekend fairs are all in the festive swing, while the night-time frosts are biting into the country fields.

Harrogate Theatre’s pantomime, Sleeping Beauty, opens in a fortnight, beaten by a furlong, however, by New Earswick Musical Society to be the first Christmas show of 2013.

You may know either of the two film versions of Miracle On 34th Street. In between came Meredith Wilson’s 1963 conversion into a stage musical, originally under the name of Here’s Love when it made its Broadway bow.

A heartwarming show to counter the wintry chill, Wilson’s Christmas musical relates the tale of how six-year-old Susan (Zoe Blenkiron) discovers Santa Claus working in New York, but has to convince her cynical, divorced single mother Doris (Jo Pears) that he exists and has found him in the heavily white-bearded shape of Kris Kringle (Stephen Tearle), a Santa hired by Macy’s department store.

Into the story come the likes of Paul Blenkiron’s love-struck Fred Gailey, with whom Pears’s Doris spars in the production’s best scenes, Steve Padfield’s amusing Marvin Shellhammer and Chris Haygard’s larger-than-life R H Macy.

Directed and choreographed as ever by Ann McCreadie, with scenery by Robert Readman that looks a Christmas picture, this is New Earswick’s best show in a while. Tearle is on top form as generous-spirited, upstanding superhero Kris Kringle; Pears is always a class act on the York stage; Blenkiron senior builds a rapport with the audience; and daughter Zoe, from Huntington School, shows plenty of promise in her first principal role.

McCreadie’s ensemble and the young children add to the festive merriment, as do musical director Don Pears and his orchestra.

Miracle on 34th Street runs until Saturday with performances at 7.30pm, plus a Saturday matinee at 2.30pm. Phone the box office on 07759 260852 or visit newearswickmusicalsociety.co.uk