Not much to go on, but you’ve come through for me before with much less:
It was a single episode TV special. CBC, I believe, but it might have been CTV. It ran every Christmas (or was it Thanksgiving?).
It was a puppet-based movie - kind of like Fraggle Rock, but I’m pretty sure had nothing to do with the Muppets.
The story was about a poor family of (rat? mouse?) that didn’t have enough money for the Christmas (Thanksgiving?) turkey. So they wanted to enter a talent contest. The dilemma is their act required a bass. They didn’t have one. They’d have to poke a hole in the family wash tub to fashion a wash tub bass. This would wreck some catastrophe on the family (mom didn’t approve?). Young rat did it anyways.
To make matters worse, the song they were going to perform (I think the title was “Barbecue”??) was performed by an act that took the stage earlier. This was a bummer.
In the end, all worked out (or at least it must’ve, being CBC and all).
This has been bugging me for years. This yuletide I want to [del]torture[/del] entertain my kids with this unforgettable classic.