5 To Watch: Vintage Christmas specials for an old-fashioned holiday
These TV specials had an undeniable charm you just can’t find in the holiday programming of today
TV Lists These Boots Are Made For Walkin
Christmas sure has changed a lot in the modern era, hasn’t it? Instead of going out shopping, you probably just point and click on Black Friday; you may send out an email greeting instead of a holiday card; and you can hook up your tree lights at home to your Alexa. All pretty convenient, but there’s something about the season that makes us a bit nostalgic for a less tech-focused time.
After all, those looking for modern blockbuster holiday programming can find splashy, showstopping concerts and Broadway-worthy productions right on their small screen. But several decades ago, your big-ticket holiday TV events were more likely to involve cheesy-looking sets, a lot of fake snow, random guest stars, and corny Christmas skits in a variety-show setup familiar to TV viewers of the ’60s and ’70s.
And yet, the best of these had an undeniable Christmas charm you just can’t find in the holiday programming of today. So here are a handful of our favorites, featuring some beloved Christmas performers and the songs we’ve grown accustomed to hearing year after year. We recommend taking a break during this hectic season by curling up with one or more of these and some hot chocolate (put some some schnapps in it, it’s Christmas), and appreciate at least one thing about modern technology: These decades-old specials are now available for streaming on YouTube.
33 Comments
Glad the Muppets made the cut! The special isn’t exactly the greatest (too much solo John Denver stuff). And they had the chance to give us the Electric Mayhem’s great cover of “Little Saint Nick” but instead gave us John Denver in a lengthy tin soldier dance number.
The superior-in-every-way A Muppet Family Christmas is available on Youtube, though don’t tell too many people lest we attract the attention of The Mouse.
Heartily seconding A Muppet Family Christmas! By ‘87 I was in high school & thus too old/too cool for Muppets (I have since, of course, seen the error of my ways), so I didn’t see it till many years later.
On the last day before Christmas Break, I always let my students vote for a Christmas special to watch. I limit the choices to the 8 or so videos I own (once on VHS, now on DVD), but one year a kid asked if she could bring A Muppet Family Christmas, so I said OK. She had a copy her family had taped from TV, & that’s how I first discovered it. (For years they didn’t release A Muppet Family Christmas in any home video format.)Happily, it is finally available on DVD, so I now have my own copy. Nothing wrong with streaming/online sources, but with a DVD you know you’re getting decent fidelity, & you don’t have to worry about it disappearing with the fickleness of streaming services.
Is the DVD complete? A lot of home video releases of the past 25 years or so cut material that used to be presented, because of rights or licensing issues. Even on Disney+, some episodes of “The Muppet Show” are incomplete.
Good questions–I honestly don’t know. I’ll still take an edited version over nothing, though.
I don’t think you can find it anywhere anymore but goddamn is Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas Celebration fucking awesome.
I don’t know whether it’s available in streaming or on the internet, but it’s on a reasonably-priced DVD with two other Claymation holiday specials.
Animated/puppet-ish suggestions (if you can find them) – Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, A Cosmic Christmas, The Gift of Winter (on Tubi I think), and of course the incredibly stunning Star Wars Holiday Special.[edit] Also an eighties Christmas special that I cannot remember the name of that starred an evil Ed O’Neill versus puppet elves.And since I am here does anyone know if the BBC is doing a new “A Ghost Story for Christmas” this year? Thanks.
Also an eighties Christmas special that I cannot remember the name of that starred an evil Ed O’Neill versus puppet elves.Could it be “A Very Retail Christmas”, from ALF creator Paul Fusco?
Yes! Going by the title* that is it (and thank you).*The embedded video is not showing up for me, probably due to the latest Kinja glitch – on the slideshow posts now I have to reload the page, then shrink it and restore it (?!?!) to load comments (many times to see all the threads).
If I try to post the address, Kinja automatically embeds the video, so I’m going to have to mangle it slightly. It’s on Dailymotion, and if you copy daily/x55znro into your address bar and add a period between “dai” and “ly” it should work.
Speaking of ALF, that show did an hour long Christmas special that was bonkers. A guy has to be talked down from a bridge before he commits suicide, ALF helps a little girl enjoy her last holiday before she dies of cancer. Suicide and cancer, two things everyone wants to see in a holiday special.
Dark subject matter in Christmas media is nothing new:
Nor is mawkish subject matter — remember this ditty, appropriately taken apart by Patton Oswalt?
Georgia Engel’s sanpaku has always freaked me out.
Fiiiiiive goooooolden riiiiiiiiiings!!BADUM BUM BUM!!
The TV special is decent—and some parts are very good—but the album Denver & the Muppets put out before the special is solid throughout. I can’t recommend the TV special unreservedly, but that Christmas album is a stone classic.
I just listened to it. It’s sooo treacly. I’m fully on board. My childhood is oozing out of the walls. I like Janis doing a Mike Love impression.
Garfield Christmas!Yeah, its hokey, but I watch it once every year.
Jim Davis gets a lot of well-deserved flack for how lazy the strip is, but I think he deserves some credit for the run of pretty-good-to-very-good Garfield TV specials in the ‘80s. For this one in particular, he wanted it to show just a typical, low-key family Christmas gathering, no big life-changing lessons or saving the city from the unscrupulous banker or some such.The voice work is top notch, too, as is the case with most Garfield cartoons of this era; Pat Carroll is particularly delightful as Grandma Arbuckle.
The Garfield Halloween special with those pirate ghosts is legitimately one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. I’d make the argument that you shouldn’t be showing that to kids.
All the pussy grabbing, abusive, chauvinistic, alcoholic, Christmas fun you can handle!
Not a special, but still special…
I haven’t seen this, but my dad always enjoyed reading the book out loud (It’s often published as a book, but is really more like a short story). I don’t know why — we aren’t even Welsh!
Garland does not look well in her show. “To see if Rainbows really know how to fly.”
I noticed her voice sounded a bit forced and harsh, and neither even blinked when she sang Rainbows, you never know if she meant it or not, she would change the words now and again. Liza sounded good and Judy looked like she loved doing those specials..
I love animated/kids specials, but this whole genre (outside of the Muppets/John Denver one and a handful of others) is a huge gap for me. Thanks so much for writing this! I’ll check a few of these out!
My pleasure, Anthony!
The Dean Martin ones are a riot, there’s a bunch of them on Youtube.
Current news makes one wonder how much very shady stuff went on before and after some of those Christmas specials, given who and when they were made.
The Pee Wee Herman Christmas special is a time capsule and surprisingly funny.
Thanks for the list, a little of this and that; loved seeing young Liza holding her own with Judy, and the old commercials were fun to watch. Those Carpenter shows—so old school, but her talent is still impressive.
Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas is on Amazon Prime. It’s held up. There’s also a short blooper reel on YouTube that’s hilarious.Christmas Eve on Sesame Street is one of our family traditions. Our teenagers will sit and watch it all the way through still. We do tend to MST3K it a bit, but it’s sweet.And while it’s not exactly vintage, Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation is really, really fun, with amazing musical numbers.