Unreality Companion: 5 Best Christmas Specials

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

Christmas is just around the corner, and I've already started getting into the Christmas spirit (not only here, but on Unreality as well).  And seeing how this week's article on Unreality is a roll call of the most entertaining Christmas horror movies, I thought that I would do a complete 180 here: a run-down of the best Christmas specials.

5 - Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire  Although Simpsons holiday specials in the following years may have been better written, animated, voiced and conceived, the original captured the spirit of the season the best.  It may not be the most quotable, probably not even the most memorable, but it is easily the Christmas-est of them all.

In fact, Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire was the series' inaugural episode, meaning that it had to double-down on what it needed to accomplish.  Not only did it have to introduce the show's expansive cast of characters, but it had to do so while telling an endearing holiday narrative.  Despite what it was working against, the episode pulled off both goals simultaneously, with more heart than most other specials could have hoped for.

4 - A Tale of Two Santas  I don't know what it is about Matt Groening, but his shows have consistently captured the spirit of the holiday, in their own unique way, for the past twenty-five years.  I was strongly tempted to include Xmas Story on here instead, but the third season's take on the holidays, much like the aforementioned Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, captured the spirit of the season better than its more imaginative competition.

The episode features a delightfully 31st century take on the millennia-old Santa: a corporate robot whose threshold for "good" was set so astronomically high that nobody can possibly meet them (except for Zoidberg).  As a result, Christmas has become a time of fear, when people barricade themselves in at home and pray to live through the night.  But when the Planet Express crew incapacitate Santa, they set out to return Christmas to a time "to bring[...] people together, not blow[...] them apart."  What results is one of the series' best overall episodes: exciting, hilarious and touching in the way that only Matt Groening can seem to manage in earnest.

3 - The Year without a Santa Claus  This was easily my favorite Christmas special as a kid.  And even though it's lost its #1 position, its imaginative, intelligent and all-around entertaining take on Christmas still beats out a lot of the more slickly produced specials that have come out both before and after its 1974 premiere.

Interestingly, I can't think of any other show or film that presents the cosmic half of Christmas.  Some touch on the inherent religiosity of the holiday, but The Year without a Santa Claus pits the elemental forces of nature against the immortal Santa Claus, his well-meaning elves and the hapless mortal denizens of Earth.  It even presents the calm-minded Mother Nature herself: the only being (cosmic or mundane) capable of reeling in her bickering children.

This is definitely something that Christmas needs more of.  I don't need it needs to be more cosmic, just more epic: more willing to take big risks that may or may not pay off, but are worth taking all the same.  Christmas has become too safely intimate, too unwilling to tackle hefty, large-scale narratives.  The only one to even try in recent years is Arthur Christmas which, like The Year without a Santa Claus, paid off in a big way.

2 - Woodland Critter Christmas  This is not your parents' Christmas special.  Those looking for kid-friendly holiday entertainment that the whole family can enjoy had best keep looking for it.  Woodland Critter Christmas is not for the faint of heart.

The reason why I love Woodland Critter Christmas is largely the same reason why I love Gremlins.  It takes two completely unlike concepts - Satanic horror and old-fashioned Christmas specials - and throws them together with reckless abandon: damn the consequences.  But because of the shockingly intelligent way in which series creators Parker and Stone handle their juxtaposed subjects, they succeed at pulling of an episode that is as conventionally structured as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, yet as grotesque as Rosemary's Baby.

Speaking of which...

1 - How the Grinch Stole Christmas  This is hands-down my favorite holiday short: surpassing the old darlings and holding off the recent upstarts alike.  It succeeds in capturing the distilled essence of Christmas in 26 minutes what the live action adaptation couldn't manage in four time that length length.

It's not hard to see why it has held up so well over the years either.  The animation is clean, the songs are memorable and fun, the writing is lean and the moral center of the film - that "Christmas doesn't come from a store [...] Christmas means a little bit more" - only continues to be more resonant the more commercialized the holiday becomes.  And, best of all, Boris Karloff, who played the monster in Frankenstein, narrates the happy, Christmassy Dr. Suess cartoon.  Now there's an image for you.

What Christmas special do you plan on watching, or have watched already, this year?  Are there any Christmas specials that I should have included on the list?  Feel free to let me know in the comments section below.

If you liked what you read, please share this post on social media and subscribe to this blog in order to keep up with the latest posts.  Ask questions or share your thoughts in the comments section below.