# "Christmas" Specials ... that aren't Chrismassy
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [December 25, 2024, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145 "2024-12-25T07:02:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/21 "2025-12-10T17:28:24Z")
> [@SanVito](#):
>
> But, it ISN’T a Christmas movie? Who thinks it is?
It must be a reverse thing: My Favorite Things has somehow been brought into the Christmas Music folder, so maybe they’ve projected backwards and made the film now a Christmas film?
> [@Peter\_Morris](#):
>
> 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.
I don’t agree.
The Flintstones are future\* Luddites. They are all people who reject modern technology, like foodarackacycles and flying cars and sassy robot maids. But instead of becoming full on cave people, where they would have to give up things they actually like (such as TV and phones), they fool themselves and make “stone age” technology, and pretend they don’t see the “computer behind the curtain”. Everything in Bedrock is very high tech, but designed to look “stone age”. The phones are cellular, the TV has hidden circuitry and a flat screen. The cars are electric and use hidden AI (not Al, AI!) to make it appear you are driving it with your feet. The animal vacs, etc, are not mutants, but completly electronic robots. That’s how they can talk, too.
And Bedrock is set in an enclave where flying cars are not allowed, (probably in the western US) and far from spaceports. Nothing is allowed to break the illusion.
\*near future, as you remember the Jetsons were set in the FAR FUTURE of…2062. A hundred years ain’t what it used to be.
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/22 "2025-12-10T17:37:32Z")
> [@SanVito](#):
>
> But, it ISN’T a Christmas movie? Who thinks it is?
Network TV executives. There is a perpetual contract that The Sound of Music MUST run in December. If they want a heart-warming movie about evading the Nazis, they could just as easily run [To Be or Not to Be](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Be_or_Not_to_Be_(1942_film)) (either the original with Jack Benny or the remake with Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft.) No music, but funnier.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/23 "2025-12-10T18:26:35Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#):
>
> What I don’t care for is “Christmas” movies that have nothing to do with Christmas, like _The Sound of Music._ I
I dont think this is considered a Christmas film- it has one song in it ’A few of my Favorite Things” which has a lot of winter imagery.
> [@Kent\_Clark](#):
>
> Network TV executives. There is a perpetual contract that The Sound of Music MUST run in December.
Never saw it then, but TCM ran it this summer. They do run “It’s a Wonderful Life” during Christmas, which- altho not a real Christmas movie- does have a Christmas tree, etc at the end, so it sorta qualifies.
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### Author:  [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/24 "2025-12-10T18:58:16Z")
Not really a Christmas movie but a few years ago I happened upon _The Odessa Files_ which introduced me to a Perry Como holiday song I had never heard before (Christmas Dream).
It’s become a standard bit of holiday adjacent viewing ever since then.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/25 "2025-12-10T19:04:37Z")
Some supposedly Christmas songs that don’t mention anything to do with Christmas are “Winter Wonderland”, “Jingle Bells”, “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”, and “Frosty the Snowman”. They are about the weather, not Christmas. It should then be impossible to call them Christmas songs in the southern hemisphere.
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### Author:  [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/26 "2025-12-10T19:14:51Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> I dont think this is considered a Christmas film- it has one song in it ’A few of my Favorite Things” which has a lot of winter imagery.
Weirdly I feel the song “Put a little love in your heart” was the opposite. I never considered it a Christmas song. Then they feturd it in the movie “Scrooged” and they played it for years after during Christmas.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVvkj7jL-RM)
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### Author:  [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/27 "2025-12-10T20:07:44Z")
Speaking of musicals, _Annie_ should by all rights be a Christmas movie, but the producers dropped the stage version’s Christmastime setting so they could film in the summer.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/28 "2025-12-10T20:43:30Z")
> [@Coriolanus](#):
>
> 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.
Okay, now I’m having a possible Mandela moment. I thought the song ended with the lines _"But he waved goodbye, saying/“Don’t you cry, I’ll be back on Christmas Day.”_
But I just checked and the actual lyrics are _"But he waved goodbye, saying/“Don’t you cry, I’ll be back again someday.”_
Does anyone else misremember the song this way? If not, I guess I’m having a senior moment rather than a Mandela one.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/29 "2025-12-10T20:45:54Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#):
>
> If they want a heart-warming movie about evading the Nazis, they could just as easily run [To Be or Not to Be](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Be_or_Not_to_Be_(1942_film))
Or _The Greatest Escape_.
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### Author:  [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/30 "2025-12-10T20:57:13Z")
Frosty does say “I’ll be back on Christmas Day” in the TV special. That’s an alteration of the original lyric “I’ll be back again someday.”
I am also surprised to see such dislike of the Frosty special. I like it, mostly for the delightful Billy DeWolfe as Professor Hinkle, Jimmy Durante’s narration, and Paul Frees’s dictatorial and stentorian Santa Claus.
I also like when Hocus Pocus, the rabbit, talks to Santa, and Durante says that Santa “as you know, speaks a fluent rabbit.” The “as you know” tickles me. Sure, Santa Claus can talk to rabbits. We all know that about him, right?
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/31 "2025-12-10T21:03:39Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#):
>
> Frosty does say “I’ll be back on Christmas Day” in the TV special. That’s an alteration of the original lyric “I’ll be back again someday.”
Glad to hear this. If I have to make a choice between being old and being Mandelaesque, I’d prefer to be the latter.
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### Author:  [@Coriolanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coriolanus)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/32 "2025-12-10T22:14:31Z")
Firstly, “Christmas Day” sounds better than “someday” so good on them and not “forced” on them to change it up.
Four years earlier we had Linus read from the King James Bible, Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 8-14
“That’s the last time you’re going to hear the Bible in a Christmas show, Charlie Brown”
I don’t know if “Davey and Goliath” ever did a Christmas Show and had any church-going in it.
I do remember the episode where Davey poured paint down a well (yes, he did this) and God struck him down with a bolt of lightning (God _should_ have)
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### Author:  [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/33 "2025-12-11T01:08:00Z")
I’m going to give a hot take: Christmas is not about Jesus. “Christmas” is the Christian skin of the common midwinter holiday, featuring dark nights, lots of human generated lights, food, drink, and other festivities.
Yule, Saturnalia, and Hanukkah all fill the same slot. (Yes, there’s real history references in the Hanukkah story. And also, Jews around the Northern hemisphere are lighting a rack of candles on the night of the new moon closest to the winter solstice, which is too say, the darkest night of the year.
So Frosty, Rudolf, and the Muppet Christmas special are all “Christmas” themed.
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### Author:  [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/34 "2025-12-11T04:14:04Z")
I’ve posted this elsewhere, but since we’re discussing Frosty here.. There was something strange I saw on the 2025 NBC airing of _Frosty the Snowman_. At about three minutes in, the kids have built the snowman and discuss what to call him. “Harold? Bruce?” And then a little girl mouths something that looks like it’s censored; there’s no voice or words. Turning on captions shows nothing being said by her.
It’s also running on Freeform (and maybe other platforms). In it, the little girl says “Christopher Columbus!” in a voice like a toothless girl might have. Captions confirm that she indeed says Christopher Columbus.
So, why did NBC censor Christopher Columbus? Isn’t he allowed on network tv? Strange indeed.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/35 "2025-12-11T11:50:44Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#):
>
> I’m going to give a hot take: Christmas is not about Jesus. “Christmas” is the Christian skin of the common midwinter holiday
Why can’t it be both (like the late Earl Warren)?
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### Author:  [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/36 "2025-12-11T14:03:55Z")
Well sure, it can be both. It is both. But a show doesn’t have to _be_ both to be a legit “Christmas show”.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/37 "2025-12-11T19:53:44Z")
In the USA- and in Western Europe, Christmas is now 90% a secular holiday. However, it has no connection at all with Saturnalia, etc. All those ancient pagan holidays were gone gone gone by the time Christmas was a time of merrymaking and not just another “Feast Day” (you dont actually have a Big Feast on a feast day). It was Charlemagne, who was crowned on Christmas that started the whole merrymaking Gift giving thing. That was 800 AD. And it wasnt even a big Holiday in America until like the 1800s or so- the Puritans banned it
[https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/discover/moments-in-history/colonial-controversies/the-twelve-myths-of-christmas-in-early-america/](https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/discover/moments-in-history/colonial-controversies/the-twelve-myths-of-christmas-in-early-america/)
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### Author:  [@Zoobi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoobi)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/38 "2025-12-11T20:12:13Z")
I’m sorry and I might have missed it, but nothing in that link to colonial Williamsburg supports your claims above.
Was there a different reason you posted it?
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/39 "2025-12-11T20:24:18Z")
> [@Zoobi](#):
>
> I’m sorry and I might have missed it, but nothing in that link to colonial Williamsburg supports your claims above.
>
> Was there a different reason you posted it?
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> And it wasnt even a big Holiday in America until like the 1800s or so- the Puritans banned it
_Many early Puritan New Englanders saw Christmas as an un-Biblical excuse for laziness and disorder. In 1659, the Massachusetts General Court made it a criminal offense to celebrate Christmas._
## Myth 6: Lavish Christmas decorations adorned homes.
## Myth 12: Eighteenth-century Americans celebrated Christmas with Santa Claus and Christmas trees.
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-specials-that-arent-chrismassy/1012145/40 "2025-12-11T20:27:59Z")
We don’t watch Christmas “specials” because they’re neither, and are jammed full of commercials. We have nine movies that we watch each year. It would be ten, but the wife won’t watch “Bad Santa”.
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