Of course, virtually all of us love the classics, like Rudolph, the Grinch, and the Peanuts specials. Feel free to bring those up if you like, but what I’m really talking about are the “lost” specials–the ones you never see on TV anymore.
For example, one of my all time faves is “The Year Without a Santa Claus”, featuring the unforgettable characters, Snow-Miser and Heat-Miser (“I’m Mr. Green Christmas, I’m Mr. Sun!..”). Santa decides to skip out on Christmas, and a couple of elves go out looking for him.
Don’t limit it to Christmas either, I can think of a lot of old holiday specials that don’t get shown anymore (Whatever happened to, “It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown!”? I haven’t seen that on network TV in years.)
For me, no question, can’t miss special every year is Charlie Brown. My brother, however, spends much of December singing “I’m Mr. Heat Miser…” Fred Astair is the narrator for the Year Without a Santa Clause is he not?
The Christmas specials I haven’t seen in years, but liked when I was a kid are The Little Drummer Boy, The Littlest Angel (a real tearjerker as I recall), and Ahmal and the Night Visitors.
Do they still run Frosty the Snowman?
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
–Einstein
Hands down, The Year Without a Santa Claus is one of the best, most underrated Christmas shows out there. I went for over 10 years without watching it, and every Christmas, I would look for it on TV, and never saw it. I kept asking people about it: “Hey, why dodn’t they show that one anymore, you know, the Heat Miser one?” People thought I was nuts. None of my friends remembered it. Then I saw it, I think two years ago, on the Fox Family channel. I was yelling at my husband and pointing at the TV, shouting with glee “This is it! This is the one! Look! ‘He’s Mr. Heat Miser…’”
Okay, so I like Christmas TV a little too much. The Rankin/Bass stuff rocks, though!
All time greatest Christmas special ever, though, is (in my perfectly correct opinion) How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I will brook no argument on this one. The sky is blue, grass is green, and HTGSC is the best. I particularly enjoy the TNT version, with Phil Hartman as host.
Ironically enough, as ZenBeam mentioned, just after I posted this I saw an ad for “The Year Without a Santa Claus” after all these years :D. I thought it said tomorrow (Friday) night, one of the two nights, anyway, on CBS.
Yankee Blue,
Yeah, I remember The Little Drummer Boy, that’s another one I haven’t seen in a long time! I think they do still show Frosty every year.
I love all the Rankin/Bass puppet ones I can remember, there’s a few Easter ones they used to show that I haven’t seen on TV in a long time, like “Easter Bunny is Comin’ to Town!” (with Gadzooks the Bear) and another of my favorites “Here Comes Peter Cottontail”, where our hero is in some kind of easter egg contest (don’t remember the details) with an evil mechanical bunny. Mr. Cottontail loses his eggs (or something like that) and has to get on a time machine, going through the different holidays, to retrieve them. Remember those?
I just switched on the Fox Family channel, and there’s one on now that I’ve never seen–The Leprechaun’s Christmas Gold. It’s a Rankin/Bass show, so I’m watching it.
And The Year Without a Santa Claus is on tonight! Yippee!
I was wrong–it wasn’t TYWASC that was on tonight. It was Santa Claus is Coming to Town, another perennial favorite. Jack Frost was on right after. that one is kinda neat, too.
The voice of the Cossack King in Jack Frost is the same as the Burgermeister Meisterburger from SCICTT (I get tired of typing & italicizing everything). Is Maury Laws the guy that did those voices? And is there a name for that particular type of puppet animation that Rankin/Bass did?
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I was wrong–it wasn’t TYWASC that was on tonight. It was Santa Claus is Coming to Town, another perennial favorite.
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This is weird. I watched YWASC last (Thursday) night. On Channel 62, Detroit (CBS). Was SCiCtT on some other channel, or are different CBS statins showing them in different order. What channel did you see SCiCtT on, Cristi?