Triple Threat Match for Christmas Supremacy: Rudolph vs. The Grinch vs. Snoopy

     We are at the time of year when I can’t get enough of those Christmas specials; the kind you love to watch but you would never buy because you know they will be on television year after year. Last year, I had a woman come into my store saying how she had looked everywhere and could not find a single copy of ‘A Christmas Story’. I so just wanted to say that it is available free of charge for 24 hours on TBS starting on Christmas Eve, but not wanting to pass up a sale I took her to our ‘A Christmas Story’ display. She bought three copies. Fudge yeah!

     Today, I am looking at three ornaments on my tree that I believe represent the top three animated Christmas Specials of all time. We aren’t going to see eye to eye on everything, but rest assured I show no bias to any one of them as none of them are my favorite Christmas special. No Sir. My favorite animated Christmas special of all time goes to "Twas the Night Before Bumpy". Never heard of it? It aired once. 

Once. The specials we are discussing today have been on every year since the 1970s. My favorite special was aired once and will never be aired again (for good reason). If you weren't watching ABC at 10am on a specific Saturday morning in 1996 than you missed it. It is the Christmas episode of the early 1990s ABC Saturday morning show "Bump in the Night" which features the adventures of Mr. Bumpy who is a green closet monster who sings songs about loving filth and eating dirty socks in a suburban home. He spends most of his time hitting on Barbie dolls and trying not to get eaten by the house cat. (I've reread my description over and over again to make sure that it makes sense, and it doesn't; however, this is a 100% accurate description of the show. Maybe it is not in syndication for this very reason.)

Let’s Begin:

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

     So the bumble ornament is on my tree to pay homage to this classic Christmas special. I think he is a great ornament. I don’t know how much he cost but you can tell from the paint job and the weight of the ornament that it was not cheap.If I had all the money in the world I think I would try to have a professional sculptor take this EXACT mold and make it just tall enough to where it could look like it was hanging the star on our tree. BONUS: The other 11 months of the year I could put the giant Bumble in the front windows of my house so that people think I have a pet Wampa guarding my house and not two rat dogs. 

Anywho, we’ve all seen this one. Arguably the most famous of the claymation/stop motion toy Christmas specials that have been frightening children for many a December. Regardless of when it is aired, I miss it every single year so I purchased it at a thrift store, thus breaking the rule I just ranted about in the previous paragraph. I would rather have a quarter less in my pocket and be considered a hypocrite than to miss this Christmas Miracle.  I was originally a huge fan of this when I was a kid even though I hated every single elf. In fact, I wish it was elf-less.  I can’t stand the voices of the elves and I’m sure you can agree as well. 

     But I could put up with the elves if I didn’t have to listen to them for an entire hour. My biggest issue with the Rudolph special is that it is way too long at a one hour time slot. Now that I have so many things going on in my life, I have to choose my television viewing wisely in between Luke's naps and my naps. If you are like me, you don’t really “watch’ these specials per se; you just sort of have them on in the background and get to scratch them off your list of Christmas Traditions after they are over. With the Rudolph Special, I am happy until about that second commercial break when I look at the clock and think, “Man, there is 44 more minutes of this.” The special is based off of a song which takes under a minute to sing so why would the writers of the special feel the need to spread that out so much?

Yukon Cornelious makes up for it all. If it wasn’t for Yukon Cornelious, I don’t think I would be able to sit through this special year after year. have you ever seen a 'Family Matters' episode without Urkle? That is what this special would be like without Yukon Cornelious. Whereas everyone else talks too much, he has some of the best lines in the whole special:

Rudolph: But - But you fell over the side of the cliff.
Yukon Cornelius: Didn't I ever tell you about Bumbles? Bumbles *bounce*!

Yukon Cornelius: This fog's as thick as peanut butter!
Hermey: You mean pea soup.
Yukon Cornelius: You eat what you like, and I'll eat what I like!

King Moonraiser: Come closer. What do you desire?
Rudolph: Well, we're a couple of misfits from Christmastown, and now we'd like to live here.
King Moonraiser: No, that would not be possible. This island is for toys alone.
Yukon Cornelius: How do you like that? Even among misfits you're a misfit.

 

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

     So our last entry was an hour special based off of a Christmas Song and this special is a 30 minute cartoon special based on a book by Dr. Seuss. The Ornament that I have is a depiction from the live-action movie that came out about a decade back. I believe it came out of a Wendy’s Kids Meal.  There are plenty of iconic scenes to pull from but I think the fine people at Wendy’s really picked a good one for the tree. Thanks Dave!

     Now, this was the first year I had ever watched or attempted to watch the live-action movie ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’. So, the cartoon is a classic and its 30 minute time slot is well deserved, but taking a children’s book of under 30 pages and making it into a full length movie is quite a difficult task to do if you ask me so I had my reservations in watching it all these years. I finally saw that it was on tv and decided to go for it so I got all my snacks ready, got a good couch groove going, and was ready to give the Grinch movie a fair shot. 

I made it about 20 minutes in and told Rachel to put something else on. She put on Duck Dynasty. I had never seen this show before, but I love it. So I guess the movie will not always have a bad memory  because it got me started on a new show. However, I am usually pretty much open to watching anything (Message me if you want to have a 'Twas the Night Before Bumpy" viewing party. Due to demand, I will only be able to take the first 50 requests), but the Grinch movie is only the second movie I have ever said, “No I can’t do this”. The first was the second Twilight movie. We redboxed the first one and watched it because everyone was talking about it. We watched it. Then, we decided to went the second one and we tried….oh how we tried….I paid $1.09 for that 24 rental and I did not want to just throw money away. About 25 minutes in, I look at Rachel who is equally as miserable and say, “Listen, this isn’t worth a dollar, let’s just cut our losses and try to make the most of the evening.” She looks at me and said “Thannkkkk You!” as she was extracting the disc from the DVD Player. 

     But in all seriousness I just couldn’t watch the Grinch movie because I kept on comparing it to the cartoon which I love so much. I don’t think anyone will argue with me that the cartoon just has so much jam packed into it that it makes it very difficult not to like. So many iconic songs and scenes just make for an awesome Christmas special.

A Charlie Brown Christmas

     So we have about half a dozen snoopy ornaments on our tree, but I chose this one because it just makes me laugh. The Charlie Brown Christmas special is one of the most viewed Christmas specials of all time and I think that is because it has so many things going for it:

-It is short.

-It is simple.

-It has Snoopy

Last but not least

-It has the Peanuts theme(Actually titled “Linus and Lucy”)

     A Charlie Brown Christmas would not play year after year and be so popular as it is if it wasn’t for that song. I am not joking when I say that people will buy anything that plays this song. Every December I unbox all kinds of different Charlie Brown crap at work and it just seems that if it plays this song it is going to sell. There is this residual, nostalgic high that happens every time you hear the piano start playing this song. It just makes people happy, but I don’t think that makes a great cartoon special all on its own. This bothers me because I don’t think this special is all that great – it just interjects “Linus and Lucy” every time it starts to drag. Even the commercial for it makes use of the song “Linus and Lucy” in order to get everyone excited. 

     If ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ is too long in an hour time slot, then ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ is too long at the 30 minute time slot. All they need to do is play ‘Linus and Lucy’, have Linus read from the Bible, play ‘Linus and Lucy’ again, show the tiny tree during the credits. I think they could do that in 5 minutes and call it good.