“I don’t think it’s such a bad little Christmas special, Charlie Brown”
There’s lots to love about the holiday season. Each year, it gives us multiple excuses to gather with friends and family, eat delicious food, remember happy holidays past, and listen to songs about date rape.
Er . . . well, not so much to love about that last one, I suppose.
For many of us, though, the best part of the holidays is when the television networks rerun all of our favorite Christmas specials. Each year, we get to revisit classics like A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Rankin and Bass’s Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. Getting to see them again fills our heart with more warmth and joy than a million of Cousin Ethel’s world-famous fruitcakes. We might enjoy Christmas movies like A Christmas Story, A Muppet Christmas Carol, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (obviously), or even Santa Claus: The Movie, but it’s the yearly ritual of sitting down in front of the t.v. and reciting our favorite lines from a made-for-t.v. special that really gets our holiday juices flowing.
But take another look at that list of the genre’s undisputed classics. Do you notice any thing that they all have in common?
Give up? The answer is that they were all produced in the 1960s. That’s FIFTY BY-GOD YEARS AGO. Hasn’t anybody made a decent Christmas special for t.v. in the past half-century? The answer, of course, is yes. And the reason we don’t get to see them every year probably has something to due with some stupidity over broadcast rights, limited time slots, and some idiot executive’s idea of what “the kids” are into these days. Luckily for us, though, we can watch these under-appreciated masterpieces thanks to DVD releases, the time-conquering space gobbler we call the internet, or — if you’re me — the blank VHS that your Granny taped all of your favorite specials onto over the course of a decade and a half.
With that in mind, here’s what’s on my Christmas special menu, in ascending order of awesomeness.
A Garfield Christmas Special
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Garfield’s animated adventures are so much more enjoyable than his comic strips. In cartoon form (2D, that is), old lasagna breath goes down real smooth. There’s the classic Garfield and Friends (a mainstay of the waning days of the Saturday morning cartoons), the excellent Halloween special, and this Christmas gem. In comic form . . . well, let’s just say that the best thing that’s ever happened to the Garfield comic strip is when this genius photoshopped Garfield out, transforming it from a poo parade of boredom and stupid gags into a psychologically thrilling masterpiece.
In this special, forlorn life-long bachelor John Arbuckle visits his family’s farm for Christmas. Because he has exactly zero friends to feed and water his pets while he’s away, he’s forced to take his dog, Odie, and cat, our hero, along for the trip. Of course, curmudgeonly Garfield is dubious that a “good ole fashioned Christmas, down on the farm” is going to be all it’s cracked up to be. But, surprise! After some crazy Granny antics, a few killer songs, the debut of Binky the Clown, and those crazy O faces (see above), the fuzzy little jerk learns that there’s something behind this Christmas thing after all. Who could have guessed it?
That’s the thing about these Christmas specials: they’re mostly hackneyed, trope-laden clichés. But if there’s one time that a cliché is appropriate, it’s around the holidays. Because there’s nothing more clichéd than a holiday. Maybe that’s why I can handle Garfield in his animated form while I loathe the comic strip. Holiday specials, like Saturday morning cartoons, are pop culture comfort food — it doesn’t matter if the mashed potatoes are bland, just that they’re right there next to the stuffing. Comics, though? Them is art.
A Muppet Family Christmas
Because we never seem to value the things that are really the most important, I’m not sure humans will ever fully recognize how amazing Jim Henson was. Sit me in front of a t.v. and put on practically anything Henson ever produced, and my heart will fill to the brim with love for all of the people in the world. There’s no joy as pure as the absurd and frantic joy that Henson’s Muppets provide — no fictional, talking-animal characters so fully realized and seemingly real. Just look at that picture of Fozzie and the snowman. If that doesn’t make you happy, then friend . . . I feel for you.
Like most Muppet joints, the plot of this special is so mundanely absurd that it bucks any attempt at simple explanation. Fozzie’s mom wants to go to Florida for Christmas to get away from the snow, but is surprised when the world’s worst/greatest comedian and all of his crazy buddies show up at her door. In classic Henson special fashion, there are appearances by the WHOLE family of characters, including the Sesame Street crew and the Fraggles. Also, the Swedish Chef and Big Bird duet on “The Christmas Song.” It’s ok. Go watch it. You’re worth it.
I basically want one of two things from my Christmas specials: they need to make me so happy that I get sad or so sad that I get happy. Henson’s magic was that he so often managed to do both at that same time. That mastery is on full display in A Muppet Family Christmas. Sadly, the Muppet family is divorced. Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, and the rest of the The Muppet Show clan are owned by Disney, while the Sesame Street characters belong to Sesame Workshop, and the Fraggles to The Jim Henson Company. So just because it would be sort of tricky to sort out the money among those companies, we’re robbed of the chance to watch this classic every year on ABC. But, of course, that’s why Al Gore invented YouTube.
Christmas at PeeWee’s Playhouse
Speaking of absurd and frantic Christmas specials with easy-to-understand reasons for not being an annual event . . .
If you were lucky enough to be a kid (or, actually, a grown-up too) when PeeWee’s Playhouse was on the air, then you know that it was one of the most fresh, aesthetically engaging children’s shows in television history. You also know, however, that Paul Reubens put his career in a cryogenic freezer for about twenty years after a little trip to a movie theater. As a result, no network executive would touch Christmas at PeeWee’s Playhouse with a ten-foot pole (not a pun, I promise). And it’s a shame, because the kitschy charm of PeeWee never ascended the levels it reached in his Christmas special.
Like Garfield, PeeWee spends his special learning the lesson that it’s better to give to receive. But instead of working it out on a farm, he does so with the help of a cast of thousands, including Cher, Charo, Grace Jones, Little Richard, k.d. lang, Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Whoopi Goldberg, and Magic Johnson. Like the rest of the Playhouse oeuvre, the kitsch here is pitched at adults who are cynical enough to recognize crap when they see it, but still idealistic enough to revel in how crappy it is. Sort of like all of the awful presents those of us who celebrate Christmas have come to expect from our families. PeeWee’s Christmas special is like that terrible sweater your aunt and uncle give you each year. You cringe and laugh and show it to your hipster friends when you get together for your after-holiday debriefing.
A Claymation Christmas Celebration
Will Vinton is probably best known as the stop-motion animator who gave the world the California Raisins. If you weren’t alive in the late 1980s, that probably means nothing to you. However, if you were around then, you know that the California Raisins were the hottest thing on the planet for about two years there. They were — get this — a bunch of animated raisins who played and sang 1960s soul music. Makes perfect sense, right? Well, American freaking loved it. Starting with commercials where they sang “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” for the California Raisin Advisory Board, the raisins had a t.v. special, four albums, and were immortalized in small, non-posable figurines that depicted the anthropomorphous raisins in various states of rocking out. You could get the figurines at Hardee’s, and my Granny collected every single one. That’s how much America loved the California Raisins.
But to my mind, Vinton’s masterpiece is A Claymation Christmas. It’s a series of shorts, set to classic Christmas carols (some of which are modernized), and framed by host segments featuring a talking T Rex and Triceratops trying to figure out the meaning of the word “wassail.” A Claymation Christmas has everything you could want from a Christmas special: intriguing characters, good animation, excellent songs, ice-skating hippos . . . everything.
Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas
Except that everything you could ever want from a Christmas special is already embodied in Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. I could live the rest of my life with only this to watch during the holidays and be perfectly happy.
Based on the 1969 book written by Russell Hoban and illustrated by his wife Lillian Hoban, Emmet Otter is a pitch-perfect take on the O. Henry classic “Gift of the Magi.” Emmet and his Ma are among the poorest of the talking critters living along the river valley. Even when Pa Otter was around, things were pretty rough, but since he passed away, life has gotten extremely hard for the Otter clan. Ma takes on laundry, washing it in her wash tub, and Emmet does odd jobs, using the tools in Pa’s old tool chest, just to scrape together enough money to get by. When a talent show in nearby Waterville offers each of them the opportunity to win some cash to buy the other a real nice Christmas present, they pull a classically tragic switcheroo and end up learning what the holidays are really all about.
Of course, this shining jewel of human achievement is a Jim Henson production, so the aforementioned fragmentation of the Henson properties probably has a lot to do with why we don’t see it on t.v. every year (there are actually different versions of Emmet Otter available on VHS and DVD, one with and one without Kermit, as well as a few mismatching scenes), and it’s really the biggest shame in the history of holiday specials. I could write a million words about how amazing Emmet Otter is; from the incredible songs to the amazing set pieces to the hilarious dialogue and heartwarming message, it is perfect. But really, all that needs to be said about why Emmet Otter deserves a permanent spot in the network rotation of Christmas Specials is that it has one thing that no other special has . . .
These dudes:
All I need to get ready for the holidays is a little River Bottom Nightmare Band. Really, how could anyone ask for anything more?