Any specials, marathons, binge-fests, movies that I need to make sure I don’t miss?
“A Christmas Story”, running for 24 hours on TBS.
I need nothing else from my TV.
I’m going to add a Part B to my question. Please suggest appropriate snacks to accompany the programs you name.
For A Christmas Story… something retro… popcorn balls and root beer floats, maybe? Or mini hotdogs in that chili sauce/grape jelly bath?
Anyone showing “A Wish For Wings That Work” or “Olive, The Other Reindeer”?
There’s a Doctor Who Christmas special at 9pm on Christmas Day. Unfortunately I’m at my parents’ house and I don’t think they get BBC America so I won’t see it until I get back to my apartment.
Turner Classic Movies is showing some good ones today and tomorrow:
The Shop Around the Corner (2:30pm)
Holiday Affair (4:15pm)
It Happened On Fifth Avenue (6pm)
Christmas in Connecticut (8pm)
Ben Hur (10:30am on 12/25)*
*Not really a Christmas movie, but I guess it could be considered loosely Christmas-adjacent.
If you get the EWTN channel, the new Pope’s first Christmas mass starts on Christmas Eve at 4:30 PM Eastern. Note that this is 10:30 PM local time - am I the only one who thinks he should have returned it to its traditional midnight start? (AFAIK, it always used to start at midnight, until Benedict XVI was told by his doctors that a mass that ended at 1:30 AM was too much for him, so he moved it back two hours.) NBC will air it at 11:35 PM Eastern/Pacific.
We made a point of watching that every year, but three or four years ago it seemed to just disappear off the holiday schedules. It was a fun show with some nice subtle humor. I’m going to have to look for it in a DVD.
There will be a Duck Dynasty Christmas Day marathon on A&E. :DThe channel is celebrating Christmas with a staggering 25 consecutive episodes of their No. 1 show, beginning at 3:30 p.m. on Christmas Day and running until the wee hours of Dec. 26.
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/12/24/ae-duck-dynasty-christmas-marathon-phil-robertson/
http://metvnetwork.com/monitor/christmas-eve-viewing-all-day-and-night-on-me-tv
Here’s MeTv’s list of classic Christmas episodes that they’ll be showing.
I’ll probably be watching more of these classic shows Christmas episodes than anything else the next 1.5 days. I’m really burned out on A Christmas Story.
This sounds really cool. Some of these shows go WAY back: Wanted Dead or Alive, Petticoat Junction, Donna Reed Show, Adam-12. Great suggestion.
I plan on watching the Downton Abbey Christmas special as soon as possible. 
PBS is airing Call the Midwife’s special this Sunday.
Many PBS stations are showing Christmas music programs, from high-end stuff through folk to pop.
My pick here in Chicago, on Christmas at 7:00PM on WYCC, is “The Southern Celtic Christmas Concert”.
Producers include Emory University:
and the Yeats Foundation:
http://wbyeatsfoundation.org/Yeats_Foundation/Home.html
(which presumably accounts for the interview with Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize-winning poet who died earlier this year)
If you get MHz, the international newscasts will probably feature Christmas material from their many countries of origin.
Catch The Nutcracker Suite if it’s on.
Any Rankin-Bass Christmas special, preferably all of them ( the Rudolph-themed trilogy is particularly bizarre ) - there is ~ 20. Just be sure to stock up on lots of psychoactive drugs beforehand, if you want to experience them in there true, designed* glory.
- No one will ever convince me that the writers weren’t on serious drugs.
Oh my gosh, yes. Jessica’s song by the fountain in* Santa Claus Is Coming To Town* (“My World Is Beginning Today”) HAD to be storyboarded and animated by coked-up, strung-out drug fiends. It’s so bizarre it gets cut out of most airings on TV.
As does “If You Sit On My Lap Today,” but that’s because the lyric “A kiss a toy is the price you pay” makes Kriss Kringle seem a little skeevy.
My Christmas tradition is to watch Bad Santa while drinking Woodford Reserve bourbon.
We used to run marathons on Christmas Day, with each family member choosing one film and everyone having to watch everything. It helped keep us in touch with what the kids were watching, and helped us educated them about classic old movies. We never required any sort of theme. It did take some planning in advance, of course, and visits to library and video-rental stores (back in the olden times.)