Has anyone noticed this?
I’ve noticed 2. Motown Christmas and Christmas at Graceland.
They’ll dress every one in red have Christmas decorations and do a couple of Christmas songs. Motown did very few xmas songs, and basically paid homage to Motown performers. Either the old hits were covered by other performers or the origina if still alive, able, and or willing.
Graceland was a cringe worthy worship at the temple of Elvis. It featured extremely stilted scripted dialog, all the Elvis covers you could hope for, clips of Elvis on a giant screen, and breathless, odes to Elvis. Odly, the very first performer did neither a Christmas song nor an Elvis cover, she performed Unchained Melody. Apparently Elvis liked the song a lot. I don’t blame him if true, however he would have been disapointed by the way this woman slaughtered the tune. Is this how they’re trying to keep Graceland off the auction block?
Anyway, did I miss any other so called Christmas specials? Am I the only one that noticed or is irritated by this?
Elvis did an entire album of Christmas songs, including Blue Christmas, which has remained popular. An Elvis Christmas special without that is a pretty sloppy production.
What I don’t care for is “Christmas” movies that have nothing to do with Christmas, like The Sound of Music. I also saw this year that Planes, Trains, and Automobiles was promoted as a Christmas movie, when it is clearly one of the very few Thanksgiving movies anyone ever heard of.
Yeah, all I can think of are songs like “Let it snow” and “Marshmallow World” which don’t mention Christmas - they’re like Jingle Bells.
Many “Christmas Specials” do not mention Jesus (at least much) like “A Muppet Family Christmas”
In 1965, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” there was some controversy to CBS and some sponsors. No problem with Lucy wanting “Real Estate” from Santa or Schroeder deeming “Für Elise” “Betthoven Christmas Music!”
That special could have been just about the commercialism of Christmas and aluminum trees you can knock upon. Then Charlie asks about the real meaning of Christmas and Linus knows. He recites an excerpt of the book of Luke from the King James Bible.
My wife (Russian Orthodox) and myself (ostensibly RC) went to an Anglican midnight mass last year and they read that word for word. I could not resist whispering to my wife “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown”
Oh it was played. It was one of the few actual Christmas songs played. Complete transparency: I’ve never been a huge Elvis fan. I don’t mind him, but I never did understand the “Church of Elvis” worship. The special was just so cringe inducing and awful. The Motown wasn’t a ton better, but it was a very low bar.
In 1969, following the fifth showing of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was the first airing of Rankin/Bass “Frosty the Snowman” featuring the first sentient snowman, voiced by the NYC comedian Jackie Vernon in his very merry New York accent. And a policeman character with a grand aul Irish accent.
I do not reckon there’s anything “Christmassy” about the story till it starts getting hotter and they play the Santa ex machina card who raises Frosty from a puddle back to life.
Winter’s a good time to stay in and cuddle
But put me in summer and I’ll be a…happy snowman!
Olaf the second sentient Snowman who was backed by Disney magic
Yes, it’s based on the song, which is one of those songs that has nothing to do with Christmas but is often considered a Christmas song because it’s about snow or winter.
Frosty is the only good example I can think of of a widely-known fictional character whose origin was a popular song. I suspected Rudolph of also falling into that category, but in that case, the song was preceded by a storybook.
I had the misfortune of watching Frosty this year. I hadn’t seen it in a long time. I was not missing much.
I guess I’m being pretty negative in this thread, but that is one of the worst Christmas cartoons ever. Bad acting, horrible animation. However, from the beginning in the cartoon story, part of the reason Frosty came to life was the magic of Christmas snow. Weak I guess, but they tried. Too bad they didn’t try harder with animators, writers, and acting. All inmo.
Sorry about being a bit off-topic with the notion of “sentient snowmen” yet besides Frosty and Olaf, I thought of “The Snowman” - British animated from 1982 based on Raymond Briggs book. I mistakenly thought that had been a dream. What I wish had been a dream was the frightening (uncanny valley) Michael Keaton film “Jack Frost” where he comes back to life as a snowman.
Dunno if Burl Ives narrating and singing snowman in Rudolph would count yet anyways even if we were trying to count sentient snowmen those are all I can think of.
The Flintstones makes a lot more sense if you treat it as post-apocalypse. People remember technology such vacuum cleaners, but no longer know how to make them So they train animals to reproduce the function. And the animals are themselves mutants.
And the Jetsons live in the sky at about the same time.
There is a “Jetson Christmas Carol” too. In a strange cameo, Fred and Wilma Flintstone appear as characters on a movie screen in that one. And there’s at least one other Flintstone episode where Fred plays Santa at Macyrock and then is recruited by elves to replace Santa who has become ill. These are just regular season episodes and not specials and in any case, “Christmas is all around” to use the song title from “Love, Actually”