Earlier this week I shared with you ten essential Christmas specials and movies. Those were beloved classics that viewers can find on television year after year. They’re traditions and institutions for so many families during the holidays, and they’re easy to come across on broadcast television or video.
Today I’m going to dig a little deeper. There are a few Christmas shows that I like to call “forgotten specials.” They’re lesser known to the general public, though each one has its own fans. Sometimes you can find these specials on video, but often these forgotten specials are lost to the past when it comes to television broadcasting.
Here’s a list of five lesser known holiday programs. Four of them are legitimate classics, while the fifth is a notorious flop. Three of them are available on official video releases, while the other two take some effort to find.
We’ll start with a group of beloved characters who make two appearances on this list…
There aren’t many characters who debuted in the ‘50s and ‘60s, had their heyday in the ‘70s and ‘80s and still inspire enough love to make a comeback in 2011. Jim Henson’s Muppets are among the few characters to have had that kind of staying power. Just a few years after The Muppet Show ended its run, the Muppets were back on television with A Muppet Family Christmas, an hour-long special that originally ran on ABC in 1987.
Fozzie Bear and his Muppet Show friends decide to surprise his mother Emily for Christmas by visiting her at her farmhouse. She has to cancel her holiday vacation plans because of the unexpected guests, and Doc (Gerard Parkes) from Fraggle Rock, who intends to rent the house for Christmas, joins all the guests staying there. Kermit and his nephew Robin find a portal to Fraggle Rock in the basement, and carolers from Sesame Street pay a visit. A snowstorm rolls in, stranding everyone at the farmhouse, except for Miss Piggy, who arrives just in time for Christmas.
Like any other Muppet program, A Muppet Family Christmas is full of musical numbers. In the opening sequence The Muppet Show gang sings a version of “We Need A Little Christmas.” The Swedish Chef performs “The Christmas Song” with Big Bird, while Fozzie duets with a snowman on “Sleigh Ride.” When Miss Piggy arrives at the farmhouse, the entire cast joins in a medley of Christmas carols, and there are plenty of other musical moments in the special.
One of the most interesting bits of trivia about A Muppet Family Christmas is that it features characters from all four major Muppet series: The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and Muppet Babies. The special was the first Henson production to use Muppets from all four shows. Henson himself makes a cameo appearance washing dishes in the kitchen.
A Muppet Family Christmas saw VHS releases in 1994 and 1998, and debuted on DVD in 2001. American and Canadian video releases had to be edited severely due to US copyright laws, but European versions were unedited. Nickelodeon has broadcast the special occasionally, but the show remains among the more obscure holiday specials. It’s a shame, especially with this year’s Muppet renaissance, for this cute program to languish in semi-obscurity.
People in search of a pleasant Christmas surprise should track down the world’s most unlikely holiday show, Charles Bronson in “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus” from 1991. Very loosely based on reality, it is still a pleasure to see epic tough guy Bronson in a heartwarming Yuletide treat.
And who could forget “A Matter of Principal” with Alan Arkin. It should be a classic too.
Everyone did the Star Wars special cuz the film wasn’t beatified at the time. Now it is a schism and should it reappear there will be a crusade in the courts led by Pope Lucas.
I cannot find and did really love the animated “Good King Wenceslaus”
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is one of the sweetest holiday stories ever. Anyone who has ever been in a pageant will recognize the milieu. Anyone else, the writing is crisp enough to convey what it’s like. It’s one of my favorite holiday books. I had no idea there was a video. Thanks! I’ll go find it.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was a great play that I had the privilege of having 2 son’s perform in. We do have a video somewhere. They were the 2 brothers.
Regarding the Best Christmas Pageant Ever, really should be read aloud rather than viewing the movie. The book’s much better, and the bit about the cat at Show and Tell simply can’t be recreated by play or movie.
cheers and merry christmas all!
For some bizarre reason, one of my kids loves Amahl and the Night Visitors. It’s an operetta.
I believe “Amahl and the Night Visitors” was the first full length operetta created just for television. I remember it well.
I have a bootleg copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special I bought a few years ago at a convention before Youtube came along. I have only watched it one time. I’m a fan of the Star Wars movies (yes, even episodes 1-3)but even I won’t defend this one. It’s too…painful.
I’d like to throw “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” the 1974 Rankin/Bass animated special into the mix. IMO it never got the same attention as the other R/B stop motion Christmas specials.
One of the best animated versions of “A Christmas Carol” is “Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol”. In addition to being extremely well done, with some great songs (It was cleverly done as a stage production musical taking place inside the TV program), it has the distinction of being the first animated holiday special, first broadcast in 1962.
This was one of my favorites as well! Too bad they don’t show it anymore.
wot about Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol?
What about The Little Drummer Boy?
If you really have the time for it this holiday season, watch the Roger Rees version of Nicholas Nickleby. It’s long, but you won’t notice it and worth every minute. The very end of the play where Rees sees a young kid on the ground in the snow and they are playing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is bound to get you. Really a treat for the whole family.
You can catch “Hogfather” on Netflicks. There’s nothing better than a send-up of the season by Terry Pratchett! Just watched it the other night with the kiddies.
Ive read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, great book, but have never seen the Television Production. Thanks.
Also, a couple I forgot to mention in the previous thread.
Twas the Night Before Christmas 1974 Rankin/Bass
The Nutcracker Pick your favorite.
One I did mention on the previous thread that doesnt get a lot of talk is The Little Drummer Boy 1968 Rankin/Bass
U.S. and U.N. Join War on Christmas and Christianity
It’s long been the feeling that opponents of Christmas festivities and observances were just anti-Christian, anti-traditionalists, anti-everythings, with a fringe that was just plain insane.
Now it seems the lunatics have seized total control in the annual War on Christmas and the inmates are calling the shots.
Things were bad enough when atheists throughout America staged mindless, envious, wars against community Nativity scenes, when naked homosexual Santas pranced through San Francisco, when North Korea threatened war with South Korea over Christmas trees, when the USPS ordered a Bellevue, Washington mailman to stop dressing as Santa Claus, and when Rhode Island Governor Chafee refused to call a Providence Christmas tree a Christmas tree.
Now, the anti-Christmasers have entered the realm of the truly bizarre.
And, no, I’m not referring to the Saugus, Massachusetts school system banning a half-century-old tradition of firefighters visiting elementary schools and distributing coloring books because school Superintendent Richard Langlois felt “there is a conflict between the church and the state in that regard.” Supt. Langlois must have gotten coal in his stocking as a kid or bats in his belfry as an adult.
Nor am I referring to the thousands of drunken Santas who overflowed Manhattan’s South Street Seaport area with beer and urine earlier this month during their annual Santacon pub crawl, a spectacle Santacon organizers promised to clean up next year, assuming the drunken Santas aren’t too inebriated.
And, I’m certainly not alluding to the certified fruitcake Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez who, to his temporal credit, did allow a Caracas Nativity display but to his eternal discredit had himself depicted standing next to it “hugging a child” along with scenes of his “flagship socialist projects.”
Allowing for the sources, all those inanities are forgivable. Unforgivable are the actions of the government of the United States and the waste of space on the East River, the United Nations. Both our government and the U.N. are waging active campaigns against both Christmas and Christianity.
As HumanEvents.com reported, thanks to the Barack Hussein Obama administration, bibles are now prohibited at the Walter Reed National Military Center.
That prohibition follows an Air Force Academy apology for Operation Christmas Child, a “Christian-based charity and relief program designed to send holiday gifts to impoverished children around the world” and was preceded by pressures to remove a Camp Pendleton cross meant to honor fallen heroes and the cessation of the Air Force’s 20 year old religious curriculum on “just wars.”
When Obamians gets rolling on an anti-Christian tear, they leave no irreverent stone unturned. Of course, Islamic stones are sacrosanct.
When the last, best hope for mankind gets rolling on tradition revisionism, it leaves even Obamians in its dust.
UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=11520.)
“Stubbby Pringle’s Christmas” was Hallmark Hall of Fame special that was broadcast in 1978. It starred Beau Bridges as a lonesome cowboy whose personal Christmas wishes are sacrificed one by one as he does the “right thing” for others in greater need. It was everything a Christmas movie should be, and I keeping hoping to see it again, but I don’t think it has ever been rebroadcast. A shame. It was a lovely show that could easily become a classic if given the chance.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122272/
“Muppet Family Christmas” is a classic! We have an old, home-recorded VHS version that we play every year while decorating the Christmas tree. The DVD version sold here in the US has so much material edited out that we returned it and got our money back. “The Christmas Song”, as sung by the Swedish Chef, is priceless!
My family’s Christmas Special tradition from when I was 10 years old and spanning at least two decades was “Rich Little’s Christmas Carol”. Imagine Ebeneezer Scrooge as portrayed by W.C. Fields, Bob Cratchett as portrayed by Paul Lynde, Jacob Marley as portrayed by Richard Nixon (wrapped in tapes instead of chains… hey it was 1978
), Fezziweg as played by Groucho Marx, the Ghost of Christmas Past as played by Humphrey Bogart, the Ghost of Christmas Present as played by Peter Falk as Columbo, the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as played by Peter Sellers as Inspector Cluseau, and Freddy, Scrooge’s nephew, as played by Johnny Carson. There’s lots of others I’m sure I’m forgetting. I may have to ask my mom if she still has it. My kids will not get most of the references, but my siblings sure will 
.
I have a vague memory of a cartoon from the late 70′s. My dad and I were trying to recall it last Christmas but couldn’t. The ONLY detail I clearly remember is that there is a little toy train that repeats, “he’s a meanie, he’s a meanie, he’s a meanie.” I don’t remember who was a meanie or what they were talking about.
I’ve tried to google the phrase but can’t find anything. Does that strike a bell with anyone? I would love to find that cartoon. I’m fairly certain it is a Christmas-themed cartoon.
A Family Circus Christmas is an over-looked special that used to play on ABC Family. Jeffy, Grandpa and the Christmas Star are an especially sweet ending. There also was a tv movie, Smudge, about a girl with Down Syndrome in a group home trying to keep a puppy that put a smile on our faces.
“A snowstorm rolls in, stranding everyone at the farmhouse, except for Miss Piggy, who arrives just in time for Christmas.”
As the main course?
Our family’s favorite is “Claymation Christmas”, especially the “Carol of the Bells” segment. Merry Christmas!
What no ones mentioned “Santa Claus vs the Martians”? With the eloquent acting skills of Pia Zadora.
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