1. A Merry, Merry Micklemas
Mickey Rooney comes from the vaudeville school of
total entertainment. He can dance. He can sing. He can act. The man probably
still knows how to do somersaults. In 1979, he decided that Christmas needed a
little more Mickey Rooney in it and essentially self-released A Merry, Merry
Micklemas,
a holiday collection with standards and Rooney originals performed by Rooney
himself. Not enough for you? He even posed on the cover in his underwear to
amuse you. Like we said, total entertainment. But the old Mickster isn't
perfect. On "Mickey's New Year," he pledges to be a better Mickey Rooney in
1980.
(This and countless other Christmas-music
obscurities can be found online at the invaluable A Christmas
Yuleblog.)
2. Christmas Comes To Pac-Land (1982)
In 1982, Pac-Mania had the world clasped between
its toothless, yellow gums. The runaway success of the arcade game Pac-Man led to a merchandising
bonanza, and the animation powers-that-be at Hanna-Barbera weren't shy about trying
to cash in. Ignoring the fact that Pac-Man's mindless pellet-munching didn't
make much sense as a narrative, the cartoon Pac-Man had Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man
(here called "Pepper"), their infant, and even their Pac-Dog regularly
terrorized by bumbling ghosts, only to turn the table on their tormentors,
thanks to the ever-present power-pellets. It was the thinnest excuse for a
cartoon already, so why not bring Santa into the equation? Christmas Comes
To Pac-Land
found Santa stranded in Pac-Land. Yet, somehow, Christmas is saved in the end.
Call it a Pac-Miracle.
(Saved, that is, except in this alternate,
fan-made version of the special.)
3. Christmas With Shirley And Squirrely (And
Melvin Too!)
(1976)
This one requires some history: The success of
Alvin And The Chipmunks "inspired" a group called The Nutty Squirrels, who in
1959 debuted a scat-singing, jazz-loving variation on the Chipmunks' signature
speeded-up vocals. Created by Don Elliott and Alexander "Sascha" Burland (aided
on the music end by no less than Cannonball Adderly), the Squirrels beat the 'Munks
to television, but faded from popularity. But they enjoyed a brief renaissance
in 1976 under the name Shirley And Squirrely, with the CB-themed "Hey Shirley
(This Is Squirrely)." Christmas was made for novelty records, and the Christmas
album Christmas With Shirley And Squirrely (And Melvin Too!) followed that same year.
4. The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)
The aired-once-and-never-again Star Wars
Holiday Special
has enjoyed such a healthy underground revival that it almost doesn't seem
right to mention it in this context, but, well, we don't need much of an excuse
to kick it around. An unsuccessful hybrid of Star Wars and a '70s variety show,
its two punishing hours feature Jefferson Starship, Harvey Korman in drag, a
long sequence in the Wookie language, and Diahann Carroll as a sexy hologram
who gets an old Wookie's blood pumping. The whole thing centers on Chewbacca's
attempts to get home to his family in time for "Life Day," and it's punishing
to watch all at once. But it's always fun to revisit the highlights, as in this
scene, in which Carrie Fisher appears to be on wonderful, wonderful drugs that
have taken her mind to a galaxy far, far away.
5. Christmas With Susie And Allie (1984)
The multi-talented Tammy Faye Messner (née Bakker) had gifts beyond crying on cue, bilking
the elderly, and inspiring drag queens—she also created the characters of
Susie and Allie, a pious little girl and her talking alligator friend,
respectively. On the 1984 Christmas album Christmas With Susie And Allie (still available in the
ever-desirable cassette format on the late Tammy Faye's online
store), the multi-talented celebvangelist voices both parts.
6. The Fat
Albert Christmas Special (1977)
One special December night in 1977, fans of
Saturday-morning TV favorite Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids gathered around the set
to watch their cartoon pals enact a weird combination of A Christmas Carol and the nativity story,
in which a pregnant teen gives birth in a junkyard clubhouse, melting the heart
of the local Scrooge. The show won an Emmy and is available on DVD, but it
rarely makes it into the major cable networks' retro-Christmas rotation,
presumably because the programmers there aren't sure how the America of 2007
would react to Mushmouth and Dumb Donald witnessing the virgin birth of Ghetto
Jesus.
7. The Hanson Christmas Special
The Oklahoma teen brother act Hanson had the
makings of a one-hit wonder when they debuted with the out-of-left-field hit
"MMMBop." They've since enjoyed a second life as a hardworking, oft-touring
independent act, but in their escape from the spotlight, they left some tacky
artifacts behind, like an ABC special tied to the 1997 album Snowed In. In the opening segment,
the boys riff on old, lame specials—the ones filmed on glittery sets with
Bing Crosby—before offering a cutting-edge alternative. Filmed on a
glittery set featuring Hanson.
8. Miracle On 34th Street (1973)
In the years before colorization returned the
classic 1947 version of Miracle On 34th Street to television—in
hues resembling a crumbling picture postcard—UHF channels across the
country programmed the more modern-seeming 1973 made-for-TV version, starring a
host of '70s C-listers. Sebastian Cabot as Kris Kringle! Roddy McDowall as the
prissy lawyer who has him committed! Future Good Morning America host David Hartman as the
lawyer who fights for Santa! Tom Bosley as the sitting judge at the trial!
David Doyle as the owner of Macy's! (Wait a minute…is it prudent to have Tom
Bosley and the guy who played Charlie's Angels' "Bosley" in the same
movie?) Ever since the terrible 1994 Miracle On 34th Street entered the picture, TV
stations have shown either that or the original, and the '73 take has fallen off
the map. But a generation of '70s kids remembers "their" version just as fondly
as the one that started it all. In which case, maybe it's best that no one
shows it anymore. It'd be terrible to spoil a good holiday memory.
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9. It Happened One Christmas (1977)
Miracle On 34th Street wasn't the only Christmas
classic to get the TV-movie treatment in the '70s. Frank Capra's It's A
Wonderful Life
got a gender-reversed remake in the form of It Happened One Christmas, starring Marlo Thomas as
Mary Bailey Hatch, a suicidal woman whose guardian angel Clara (Cloris
Leachman) shows what her small town would be like without her. For one, the
risible Mr. Potter (Orson Welles) would exert a lot more power. Wayne Rogers,
Christopher Guest, Doris Roberts, and a young C. Thomas Howell round out a
weirdly all-star cast.
10. A
Christmas Without Snow (1980)
Another now-obscure TV movie that used to get a
yearly airing, A Christmas Without Snow stars John Houseman as a San Francisco
choir director trying to whip his hapless crew into shape for a performance of
Handel's Messiah.
Though it first aired in 1980, the film is one long wallow in '70s malaise,
from the after-effects of divorce to the era's ambivalence toward religion.
There is
a happy ending of sorts, but only after an hour-plus of one calamity after
another. Nowadays, schmaltz like this comes with a "Hallmark Hall Of Fame" logo
on the front, but A Christmas Without Snow lacked the prestige label, and so has been
consigned to the public-domain DVD bins of drugstores everywhere.
11. Jim Reeves, "An Old Christmas Card" (1963)
Nearly every aspect of the yuletide has been
celebrated in song, but it took country singer Jim Reeves (and songwriter
Vaughn Horton) to give old Christmas cards their due. And not just any cards.
This is the card the singer's wife gave him on the first Christmas they spent
together. "I thrill with every word, every line," Reeves sings, before adding,
"Pardon me if a tear falls among my Christmas cheer." The song breaks in the
middle for a spoken-word section in which Reeves supposes that his young bride
"must have looked through thousands of cards, to find that wonderful poem that
still brings a tear to my eye." Just imagine if she'd given him a fruitcake!
12. Santa Vs. The Snowman/The Online Adventures of Ozzie The Elf (1997)
Remember 1997? That blissful period of infinite
possibilities but limited expertise between Toy Story and Toy Story 2? When all you had to do
to draw millions of slack-jawed consumers was put "online" or "internet" or "web"
in the name of your product? That's when ABC proudly rolled out two new animated
holiday specials in an hourlong combo package. The Steve Oedekirk-produced,
computer-animated Santa Vs. The Snowman had wit (a climatic battle in which hot
gingerbread men defeated their snowy foes by hugging them) and staying power (a
3D version played in IMAX theaters in 2005). Not so for Ozzie, the unattractive
protagonist of the bottom half of the double bill. Since nothing says "information
age" like Will Vinton claymation, the show involved a proactive plasticine elf
with a totally outrageous paradigm failing to improve Christmas by adding a
bunch of computers to Santa's toyshop. Ozzie, who came into being as the mascot
for Santa's homepage, hasn't been seen since the Clinton years—he doesn't
even have a Wikipedia entry, which just seems cruel—but maybe some
dot.com whiz kid without a paradox detector could make him the spokes-elf for
Cyber Monday.
13. Raggedy Ann And Andy In The
Great Santa Claus Caper (1978)
And speaking of modernizations that
don't improve Christmas, this chipper little half-hour TV special pitted
classic dolls Raggedy Ann and Andy (and their little dog Raggedy Arthur, too)
against a big bad wolf with a plot to encase all Santa's toys in an
invulnerable transparent substance called "Gloopstick," to ensure they could
never fade or be damaged. (Somehow this was also a scheme to turn Santa's
workshop into a profitable business.) With cartoon stalwarts June Foray and
Daws Butler voicing Raggedy Ann and Andy, and cartoon great Chuck Jones
designing and directing, "Great Santa Claus Caper" had the talent base to
become an animated-special perennial, like Jones' How The Grinch Stole
Christmas!, but somehow its anti-commercial message and unusually schmaltzy
message didn't catch on. (Know what melts invulnerable plasticine? That's
right. Love.)
14. The Gift Of Winter (1974)
One of the weirder holiday specials
that reran throughout the '80s was Witch's Night Out, a 1978 John
Leach oddity about blobby monochromatic people with names like Small, Tender,
Malicious, and Rotten all discovering the true meaning of
Halloween—basically, that it's a time for living out secret fantasies. A
similar '70s self-awareness-and-empowerment message reigned in Leach's
previous, much more ramshackle TV special featuring the same characters: 1974's The Gift Of Winter. Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner handled most of the character
voices and sound effects in this barely animated cartoon—wind noises are
clearly them going "Whoooshhhh," while the sound of a mob storming off for a
confrontation sounds like several voices proclaiming "Tramp tramp tramp tramp!"
(Until the crowd gets tired, whereupon it becomes a whiny "Trudge trudge trudge
trudge.") The plot is an odd thing about how boring and dreary winter was
before snow was invented, which leads the blobby monochromatic people to break
off their Christmas preparations and travel to confront the embodiment of
Winter. The whole thing looks so ragged and homemade that it's no wonder it
didn't become an enduring hit, but it's fun to imagine Aykroyd, Radner, and
Leach cobbling it together in a basement somewhere, like 14-year-old friends
getting ready for their big YouTube debut.
15. Nautical-Themed Long John Silver's Mugs (1984)
Collectible drinkware used to be a
fast-food staple, as anyone who grew up drinking soda out of R2D2's image can
attest. But not even the Norman Rockwell images, the homey tones of the
commercial's narrator, or the genial presence of an olde storytelling sailor
can make this promotion seem like a good idea. What says Christmas like a
tribute to our nautical past?