The Christmas Shows.
These are those little movies or TV specials that the station like to play in the evening just before Christmas. The fill the airwaves as we approach the greatest day of the year, entertaining us and getting us excited for what's to come. ABC Family even devotes their entire afternoon programming block to it during the month of December.
For me, they've always been a staple of the season. Just as much as eggnog and snow, it just can't be Christmas without these shows. I grew up watching these with my parents, who in turn grew up watching them with their families. They hold great nostalgic value for me. Some of them are entertaining, some hold special meaning, some are so cheesy that I honestly have no idea why I watch them. But I do, and I love every second of it.
Originally, I had planned to do an entire list of Christmas specials in general, but after typing a few up, I came to the realization that there were far too many good specials to make a list unless it was a massive list, and would probably take far too long to write. So I've decided to narrow it down to a particular elite group of Christmas specials, those produced by Rankin and Bass.
Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass are like the kings of the Christmas special. They are the ones responsible for Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and various other Christmas classics. Their creations have been vital pieces of the holiday traditions of not just my family, but thousands of families across the country.
Most of them are stop-motion puppets, while some are animated. They all have a layer of cheesiness, but they're Christmas shows, so the cheese is pretty much expected. If you want to watch any of these, check out ABC Family. They have their 25 Days of Christmas block running all month long and most of these get shown as part of that. (There are a couple exceptions, which I'll point out.) Otherwise, most or all of the entries on the list are available on DVD and you might even be able to find them on YouTube.
Another thing to note is that this list is not all-inclusive. There are others out there which are good, these are just the best. So here are my Top 8 Rankin/Bass Christmas specials.
8. Twas the Night Before Christmas
The first entry from the masters of the Christmas Special tells the story of a family of mice that live in the house of clockmaker. Despite the cover up there, the mice are actually the prominent characters in the show, not the humans. The oldest mouse child, a geeky kid named Albert, writes an article in a magazine about how Santa isn't real a couple months before Christmas. Santa sees it, gets pissed off, and pretty much tells the whole town to go fuck themselves.
The human father, Joshua Trundle, decides to rectify the situation by building a giant clock that will play music on Christmas Eve as Santa is flying by, hopefully catching Santa's attention and making him change his mind. He builds it, but the geeky mouse kid sneaks into the clock to see how it works and busts it. The egocentric mayor refuses to let Mr. Trundle repair it because he's embarassed (and probably already had to tax the residents to death just to fund the project.) Trundle's business goes under. And Santa still won't come.
I'm not going to spoil the ending for you. It's only a half hour, and contains two musical numbers, one of which is extremely catchy. The animation style is a little weird, but it's a nice, heartwarming little tale about having faith and believing in Santa.
7. The Little Drummer Boy
Based on the song, The Little Drummer Boy is one of the few Christmas specials out there that actually focuses on the very point of Christmas: the birth of Jesus. In The Little Drummer Boy we meet Aaron, a young orphan who is part of wandering sideshow in the desert playing the drum. He works for an abusive, money-hungry swindler. The only thing poor Aaron has is his drum. His only friends are the animals in the show.
It all changes when he meets one of the wise men one the way to Bethlehem to see the newborn savior. Which, by the way, is commonly accepted as inaccurate. The Bible only briefly mentions the wise men and it's implied that it happened much later, and not actually near Jesus' birth, which in turn is accepted to have occurred in the summer rather than the winter as commonly believed, but now I'm getting off topic. Aaron decides to tag along with the wise man and go see Jesus.
It's a short story about a misfortunate kid who learns to trust humanity again after getting screwed over his whole life. Aaron's story is touching, but what really makes it stand out to me is Jesus element. There are so many specials out there that it's really both sad and surprising to see so few devoted to Christ. The ending narration is the high point of the show. The narrator, an old lady who sounds vaguely like Julia Child, talks about Jesus and recites Matthew 5:8, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," while we see a shot of the star of Bethlehem. That one moment really makes you appreciate what Christmas is all about. It gives me goosebumps every time.
6. Frosty the Snowman
Another special based on a song, this special takes several liberties with the original story. It tells of the first day of the life of the titular snow person. A bunch of kids build a snowman and put a magic hat on him that causes him to come to life. Instead of just melting with the weather, however, this time Frosty and pals make and effort to keep him alive by finding him a ride to the snowy north.
This film also has one of the most assholish villains in the history of villainy. The schoolteacher hires a magician to entertain the kids during the class Christmas party on Christmas Eve. The magician sucks, and when he fails to impress, he throws his hat away in frustration. It is this hat that the children find and use to bring Frosty to life. When the magician sees that the hat was magic enough to bring an inanimate object to life, he decides he wants it back.
Too bad the hat is the key to Frosty's life. without the hat, he's just a pile of snow. But the magician doesn't give a shit. He doesn't care that getting the hat back is essentially murder. He is such a jerk that he decides to take the hat back anyway. When Frosty starts to melt, one of the children, a little girl named Karen, decides that they should hop a train and get Frosty up north where it's still cold.
Karen starts to freeze, so they have to jump off the train and find shelter. Meanwhile, the magician has also stowed away and chases them all through the mountains. Frosty has to not only run for his life, but also protect Karen, whose health is rapidly deteriorating due to what we presume is hypothermia. The magician eventually outsmarts the duo and gets his revenge by locking them in a greenhouse.
The magician pretty much signs Frosty's death warrant. The heat inside is too much for the snowman to handle, as he slowly and agonizingly melts into a puddle while his best friend is forced to watch him die, all while the magician's maniacal laughter echoes through the woods at the thought of the wicked deed he has just committed.
This special also spawned two equally crappy sequels. One, another Rankin/Bass called Frosty's Winter Wonderland in which Frosty gets married, is common on ABC Family. The other, the ultra politically-correct Frosty Returns (which is more of a spin-off) was produced by CBS after they secured the rights to the original but not Winter Wonderland. As thus, you can catch the original Frosty the Snowman on CBS along with Frosty Returns. You can only find Frosty's Winter Wonderland on ABC Family. However, both of the sequels pretty much suck. So you should definitely track down the original, but avoid the other two like the plague.
5. Jack Frost
Jack Frost is kind of unique among the Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials. It's not really about Christmas. Christmas plays a very minor role. It's only mentioned in passing a couple times. There's a short musical number about Christmas presents, but that's pretty much it. If anything, it's a Groundhog Day special, or a Springtime special.
It's also unique in that since it doesn't make Christmas the focus of it, it's free to tell it's own story. It's an original tale, not based on any kind of pre-existing parameters. It's not the first time Rankin/Bass has done this, but it's one of the most entertaining efforts.
Jack is a snow spirit of sorts. He and his pals live on a cloud, and they are the ones responsible for cold weather in the winter. Jack's job is a freeze everything on earth so that when snow falls, it won't melt. One day, when he's out lolligagging around, he sees a young dame in the wilderness named Elisa, who claims, out loud, that she loves jack frost. Of course, she means it in the metaphorical frost-on-the-window sense, but Jack mistakes her for having a crush on him and decides he wants to shag her.
He convinces his boss to turn him into a human, where he will undergo some trials and if he manages to get Elisa to fall in love with him, he can become human forever, similar to the little mermaid. Once he starts his trial membership, however, he not only finds that he sucks at being a human (seeing as how he was previously a magical snow fairy), but that the town he decided to live in just so happens to be ruled by a Hagrid's evil Russian cousin and a bunch of robots. To make matters worse, Elisa is in love with a literal knight in shining armor, who proposes to her before Jack has the chance to capture her heart.
Then Kubla Kraus (the Russian guy) kidnaps Elisa, so Jack and company have to go rescue her. Jack decides to play like Solid Snake and sneak in the back way, while Fabio the Knight takes a more direct approach. Jack gets himself captured, and is forced to give up his humanity in order to use his snow powers to save the town.
There's actually a lot more to it, but I don't want to ramble or spoil it. The plot has all the makings of a classic Disney movie. It's a little romance, a little adventure. It's stop-motion puppets, so obviously the action scenes are pretty stupid (yes, they actually put some action scenes in this.) It's kind of cheesy, but it really is a creative film. If you like fairytales, definitely check this out.
Also, the whole thing is narrated by a singing ground hog meteorologist. That's pretty awesome.
Here's a clip:
Maybe he would be there, if your fiance hadn't left him in the freaking dungeon.
4. The Year Without a Santa Claus
Now we're getting into the cream of the crop. This was a hard decision to make. So close, that I'm tempted to call it a tie with the next one. So this entry isn't set in stone at number four, it could be switched with three, as they are extremely close to each other in my book.
The Year Without a Santa Claus is a Rankin/Bass classic. It's a requirement for the Chrismtas season for me, as essential as the tree and snow. I watch this pretty much every time it comes on, and it comes on a lot. It's one of, if not THE most played R/B special during the holidays, and I'm always sure to catch it at least three or four times.
If you haven't seen this one at least once, then you probably haven't seen any of these. As Christmas approaches, Santa gets discouraged with the lack of Christmas spirit in the world and decides to just say f it and cancel Christmas. Mrs. Claus decides to send out a couple elves to find some good will somewhere in the world to get Santa's morale up. In a massive oversight, she sends the two most incompetent elves in the whole pole, who end up causing all sorts of problems down south which Santa has to come bail them out of.
It explores some themes about childhood innocence and believing in Santa, and also about having hope. There are constantly characters popping up who have no Christmas spirit at all, which Mrs. Claus and the two idiot elves (and eventually a little boy) have to face down. It basically becomes one massive fetch quest as they repeatedly have to earn favor from somebody in order to for that person to help earn favor from somebody else and so on.
There are a couple of touching musical numbers. When Santa visits the little boy and sings a duet with the boy's father about believing in Santa, it gives me goosebumps. Especially Mickey Rooney's crescendo at the line "Wipe that question from your mind, yes he does exist!" The whole thing has little moments like that, and I think it's this special that makes me want to believe in Santa even as an adult.
But as cool as all that is, the thing that makes this special so incredibly awesome is this:
These guys are quite possibly two of the greatest characters ever. If I made a Top 100 Fictional Characters of All Time list, the Miser Brothers would be on it somewhere. They aren't even in it that much. Most of their screentime consists of that little musical number up there. In fact, the reason they're so remembered is probably BECAUSE of that musical number. It's catchy, it's fun, it's too much!
The Year Without a Santa Claus is classic. If you haven't seen it, tune in to ABC Family sometime in the next couple days and watch it. It's a legend among Christmas specials. It also spawned a live action remake, which I haven't seen, and a sequel called The Miser Brothers' Christmas, which absolutely sucks. But the original is grand. Don't miss it.
3. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
The oldest and most well known of Rankin/Bass's work. Even if you've never seen any of the other ones on this list, you've probably at least heard of Rudolph. It is THE Christmas special. I mean think about it. When you hear the words "Christmas special," is this not the first one that comes to mind? Yes? No? Maybe?
It's based on the song of the same name, though like Frosty/Drummer Boy/Night Before, R&B took a lot of liberties with the story. There are a lot of sub-plots about Rudolph falling in love, an elf who wants to be a dentist, a mountain man looking for gold, an island of misfit toys, a giant snow monster, some elves trying to write a song, and Santa being complete dickwad. In the second half of the special, after Rudolph runs away from home, the original story takes a back seat to all this other stuff (especially the toy island and the snow monster) and doesn't resume again until the last couple minutes.
I almost had this one tied with Year Without a Santa Claus. I think the reason it beat it out is because Rudolph is just more enjoyable to watch. Year Without is on again and again and again from Thanksgiving until Christmas. Rudolph isn't owned by ABC, it's owned by CBS, who only show it once or twice a year as opposed to spamming it across their network for a month straight. As a result, I'm a lot less jaded to Rudolph than to Santa. It alos has more sentimental value. While Year Without is on so much that I pretty much put it on as background noise, watching Rudolph is more a family tradition. My whole house (minus mom) makes a point to get together and watch it.
My mom doesn't really like, though, mainly because of its portrayal of Santa and rest of Christmas Land. In Rudolph, everyone in the north pole, especially Santa, is a complete asshole. The fact that these people are supposed to be the embodiment of Christmas cheer and they're portrayed like Desperate Housewives is kind of slap in the face to what Santa is supposed to be about. I could go into details, but I think I'll let this guy explain it:
At one point I said I didn't like it for the same reason, but I think I just wanted to be cool. In spite of it, it's still a great flick. A charming story. Really fun, memorable songs. What's not to love? Unfortunately, CBS only shows it once or twice a year, so if you haven't caught it yet, you're probably out of luck until next Christmas. You can get it on DVD, though, if you're that interested.
2. Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey
One of the lesser-known of the R/B Christmas classics, Nestor has held a special place in my heart since the very first time I saw it. It's similar to the Little Drummer Boy in that it's about the birth of Jesus, but it focuses on a different character whose path intertwines with the Nativity story.
The thing that makes it so great is that its an incredibly sad story that ultimately changes into an awe-inspiring tale of redemption. The titular Nestor is a baby donkey living in a stable with his mother somewhere in the snowy reaches of the Roman Empire's grasp. He also has really long ears, so he gets made fun of by the other animals and abused by the farm owner.
Eventually he and his mother get thrown out into a blizzard by the farm owner, where his mother freezes to death. Then an angel pops up and takes him on a journey to another stable in the Arabian desert, where the whole cycle starts up again. This poor donkey just can not catch a break. He's abused, mocked, his mother dies, his whole life just plain sucks. He's a very sweet little donkey, too, so it's not like he deserves it. Every moment if his existence is filled with nothing but misery.
He's such an underdog, so that when he finally gets his moment, it makes it that much happier. He's eventually bought by Joseph to carry Mary on the way to Bethlehem. During their trek, a sandstorm blocks out the star which they were using for navigation. Because of Nestor's long ears, which are what caused him all the trouble to begin with, he's able to hear the angels giving him directions on how to get to Bethlehem.
He goes from being the most misfortunate person to ever walk to earth to playing pivotal role in one of the most important events in the history of the universe. It's a beautiful, beautiful irony. Such a grand triumph for such a humble creature that it gives me a lump in my throat every time I watch it.
I also liked how the whole thing is narrated by a donkey who lives with Santa Claus. It gives off the vibe of, "Santa is cool, but he wouldn't even be around if it weren't for Jesus." Which is something I agree with. Rankin/Bass always seem to inject a little bit of spirituality into their work to balance out the emphasis on Santa. I've always liked that, and Nestor is the best example.
And finally,
1. Santa Claus is Coming to Town
I don't know how I could begin heaping praise upon this work without repeating what I've already said. This Christmas special is just good. Had I made a Top # Christmas Specials in general and not limitted it to just Rankin and Bass, this would probably be in the top three. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about it. It's still a cheesy stop-motion puppet cartoon with choppy animation. In the production quality is even relatively low compared to some of the others on this list.
What makes it so great is the story itself. It's basically an origin tale of Santa Claus. Not the literal origin, like the legends of Saint Nicholas, but story about the modern mythological version of Santa Claus and how he might have come to be if he were, in fact, real.
For starters, it's the only one on this list that actually portrays Santa properly. If you look at the rest of the Santas on this list, he goes from offended (Twas the Night), to grumpy (Year Without), to downright mean (Rudolph.) That's simply not how Santa should be. This shows how the real Santa is. He's just a carefree guy who wants to make people happy. There's not a mean cell in his body. This Santa, Kris Kringle, is the real Santa Claus.
The other thing that makes it good is how well it ties everything together. Back in the Jack Frost entry I said that the thing that was good about Jack Frost was that it didn't tie itself down with pre-existing Christmas lore and just told an original story. Santa Claus is Coming to Town does pretty much the exact opposite. It takes every detail of the modern Santa mythos, even as insignificant as "why is his suit red?", and explains it in a way that makes perfect sense.
As somebody who writes a lot, I can say from experience that writing an original story that has to contain specific events but has no pre-determined path to link them is not an easy task. Take a look at the Star Wars movies. If George Lucas, a cinematic genius, couldn't do it to his own creation without pissing people off, that's saying something. The fact that Rankin/Bass not only did it, but made everything fit together so well, is astonishing.
I know that establishing why Santa goes down chimneys is far less important than showing how the greatest interplanetary warlord in the galaxy rose to power, but try doing either one of those things without copying what's already done or sounding completely stupid. Every other Santa origin story relies on convoluted tales of magic and nonsensical lapses in logic that could rival a Harry Potter movie. They include everything from journeys across teh ocean to having Santa be raised by a sabre-toothed tiger.
Santa Claus is Coming to Town has a little bit of that, but when you take into account that the other Santa origin tale contains this:
a grumpy hermit with magic corn doesn't seem so bad.
The actual story is pretty simple. A young Kris Kringle was raised by toy-making little people in the woods. When he grows up, he decides to carry their toys through the mountains to deliver them to the town on the other side. When he gets to said town, he finds that it's being ruled by the 18th century version of Jack Thompson. Instead of raising a fuss about it, he decides to just outwit the governor and soldiers. It sets into action a chain of events that are not only completely logical, but also entertaining. They eventually lead to him living in a castle on the North Pole while using flying reindeer to deliver presents on Christmas Eve.
Santa Claus is Coming to Town is shown on ABC Family a lot. It sometimes gets a spot on plain ol' ABC, but it gets some cuts to make room for commercials, so the Family showings are more complete.
I've tossed around the word "classic" a lot in this list. I think all of these specials deserve it. Sure, they're all a little corny. A little cheesy. But who can blame them? It's Christmas, a time when we put trees in our houses and eat enough candy to make the Wonka factory raise its prises from supply and demand. They have the right to goofy, and that's why we love them.
These aren't the only good Christmas specials out there, by any means. So in the next couple days, while you're waiting for the big day, grab the remote and your suspension of disbelief, and let some Christmas spirit blaze across your TV.
Thanks for reading! God bless, and have a Merry Christmas!
"Some like it hot, but I like it REALLY hot!"
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