December 6, 2007

Let's keep all the years without "The Year Without a Santa"

Rankin-Bass are admittedly the masters of the animated Christmas special -- Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Frosty, Rudolf, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and Nestor the Long-Eared Donkey. Charming stories, great songs (Nickelodeon's Classic Cartoon Christmas albums are half R-B songs) and excellent animation (for the day).

There was also the little-aired Year Without A Santa. We all remembered it from that wonderful "Heat Miser/Cold Miser" song, but it never appeared on television after the first years it aired.

Then came cable television, and 57 channels, and networks desperate for viewers and content for the viewers to watch, and hey, everyone likes Christmas, right? Leading to some executive decision to air every holiday special every day in December, all day, every day.

What a way to kill the holiday spirit!

There's no thrill to the Grinch's meanness if you see his transfiguration every afternoon! There are not nearly enough holiday specials, even including the Grinch and the entire Charlie Brown oeuvre, from Christmas to Arbor Day.

So the network pulled out every Rankin Bass special they could find. Jack Frost featuring Buddy Hackett narrating as the Groundhog's Day groundhog, Leprechauns, Rudolf's Shiny New Year, some bizarre winter-pagan thing with Santa. Shows probably broadcast once and quickly and deservedly forgotten. (Except that Shiny New Year; that was a bad penny that ran over and over and over again.)

To everyone's delight, the Heat Miser and Cold Miser returned. The song was a great as we remembered. The rest of the show was mediocre at best and suffered by comparison. One watching satisfied any curiosity I had for the show.

Some memories are better left unexamined, in a hazy, childish delight.

That, and there's enough bad television already.