EJ’s Top 5 Animated Christmas Specials

So, I am not ashamed to say I was a 60’s baby and a 70’s kid! My TV watching back then meant afternoon and Saturday cartoons and prime time viewing with my parents on a “ color tv” that was in this huge wood cabinet and sat on the floor! We would sit on the floor with our snacks and watch shows with our parents each evening. And the highlight of our viewing was the Christmas season! In these days of on demand viewing it must seem quaint to plan your viewing around a locked in time of the airing of a TV special. But we would count down each day until the yearly broadcast of these shows! Today our 70” flat screen sits above our fire place, and I still love watching these shows 50 years later!

• #5: Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)

  Who can’t relate to The Grinch!  We all have our Grinch moments.   I love the music featured in this classic and who can’t love and feel for The Grinch’s dog Max!  After the grinch disguises  himself as Santa, he thinks he will steal the Christmas spirt of Whoville!  (Spoiler alert!!). In the end he learns that the Christmas vibe of love, cheer and togetherness does not come from gifts but from spending time with the ones you love!

• #4: Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town (1970)

  This is one of those Rankin-Bass produced stop-motion classics!  Fred Astaire is a mailman and answers the questions kids have about Santa.  Along the way we meet the evil Burgermeister Meisterburger and the Winter Wizard!  In the end love prevails and Winter Wizard’s heart melts and he becomes a nice guy!  Who does not love a change of heart story!

• #3: Frosty The Snowman (1969)

  There must have been some magic in that ‘ol silk hat they found!  When the hat blew on top of the snowman the kids built, he began to dance around and leads the kids on the most fun day ever around their town!  But the evil magician owner of the magic hat- who threw it out, wanted it back when he learned of Frosty’s magic!  Who would be more fun to play with than Frosty!?  Nobody!

• #2: A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

  Charlie Brown has a disgust of commercialism, and looks for the true meaning of Christmas! And he finds it thanks to his wise friend Linus and a sad Christmas tree who benefited from a little Christmas love!

• #1: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

  Taking my top spot  on my Top 5 TV Christmas specials is another 60s stop-motion animation about Santa’s reindeer who’s uniqueness saved Christmas!  Rudolph had to deal with a father who tried to covered up with mud, what he views as a disability that he was personally embarrassed by.  But it was not a disability.  We later learn that Rudolph has a unique ABILITY!  Along the day he gets made fun of and rejected by other reindeer and the father of his first little girlfriend.   Rudolph runs off and is befriend by another misfit, an elf who wants to be a dentist!  On their adventures they meet the great Yukkon Cornelius.   On their search for “silver and gold”  they not only discover the Bumble, but an entire island filled with rejected toys. When they return to Christmstown, Santa is ready to cancel Christmas, but Santa wisely uses Rudolph’s nose to light Santa’s way through a dense fog and snow.  Rudolph saved Christmas and found homes for the misfit toys!  And the Bumble becomes a kind expert tree topper!  I loved this special so much, I recorded it on a reel to reel tape recorder when I was a child and would listen to it over and over!  I drive my adult kids nuts repeating lines from this classic!