Christmas has thousands of traditions, however none appear to be as universally adored — and adopted — like watching a tv Christmas particular with your loved ones. From Rudolph the Crimson-Nosed Reindeer to streaming platforms categorizing all the Christmas episodes of your favourite reveals for straightforward watching, tv has turn out to be an iconic a part of our festivities.
What’s it a couple of tv Christmas particular that will get us all in our feels? Even in a world the place you’ll be able to click on purchase or hire or play on almost every bit of leisure you’ll be able to consider, there’s nonetheless one thing about gathering across the TV at 8 p.m. to look at a Christmas particular the second it airs. Some Christmas specials have taken on a lifetime of their very own, changing into big popular culture moments that reverberate for many years, inspiring every thing from ornaments and vacation decor to whole franchises (he’s a imply one, however The Grinch knows exactly what he’s doing).
Nostalgia is king of so many issues, but it surely actually reigns supreme in the case of our leisure decisions. And what’s extra nostalgic than your favourite Christmas present?
Like so a lot of our favourite issues about Christmas — stocking stuffers, Christmas timber, out of doors inflatables — Christmas specials owe quite a bit to good ol’ commercialism. (Sure, that is an argument we’ve been having since earlier than Miracle on thirty fourth Avenue in 1947.) Tv took a minute to kick off, so Christmas radio specials have been completely a factor, however after a 1962 NBC displaying of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol had shocking success, advertisers have been prepared for extra, Tim Stevens, a author at Connecticut School and popular culture critic, tells me.
Advertisers and different networks have been now in search of their very own model of the vacation traditional, and Rudolph the Crimson-Nosed Reindeer was subsequent in 1964. “Rudolph basically started his life as a bit of promoting, the star of a kids’s e book commissioned by the Chicago division retailer Montgomery Ward and written by one in every of its promoting staff, Robert L. Could,” Stevens says. “The particular was sponsored by Common Electrical and featured what we now consider because the ‘traditional’ Santa Claus, truly a creation of Coca-Cola. So whereas a ton of expertise and energy went into it, advertisers have been within the combine, too.”
As a preferred advertiser, Coca-Cola stored the hits coming with A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965. However whereas this one’s thought of an absolute traditional nowadays, rumor has it the advertisers and networks weren’t precisely stoked about this one Christmas particular. “Schultz, unsurprisingly, wasn’t excited about a happy-go-lucky Christmas particular,” Stevens says. Community execs have been satisfied it will be a catastrophe due to a lot of Schultz’s artistic decisions, like a melancholy tone, the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack, utilizing little one actors for the voices, and a scarcity of fun monitor. “Nevertheless, it was solely completed lower than two weeks earlier than it was set to air, in order that they needed to grin and bear it.”
The factor is, networks needed Christmas specials that have been upbeat and memorable, says Stevens. A Christmas particular wanted to drag in viewers, particularly “throughout a time of yr that was each very busy and largely devoid of authentic tv programming due to breaks in manufacturing schedules.”
This might additionally clarify why so many motion pictures really feel like “Christmas” motion pictures to some — The Wizard of Oz was initially broadcast on tv for the primary time in November 1956. It was an enormous TV occasion that drew excessive rankings, and since most individuals hadn’t seen the film because it was first in theaters in 1939, it all the time felt like a giant factor to take a seat down and watch. (And helped networks fill some main airtime.)
As a result of that’s the factor a couple of Christmas particular: It’s a common expertise. And particularly now, when all people can watch precisely what they need at any time on any variety of gadgets, there’s one thing so joyful about settling down with your loved ones to look at a Christmas particular all collectively, all on the similar time. “Given the period they have been conceived throughout — the early/mid-60s — the everyday American family would solely have one tv, and for years, cable didn’t exist. So watching TV collectively as a household in the course of the first hour of primetime was the norm,” Stevens says.
Christmas specials have been additionally a simple manner for tv reveals to slip in one thing memorable with out quite a lot of additional work.
I requested Stevens particularly concerning the I Love Lucy Christmas particular, which aired on Christmas Eve, 1956. It was one in every of my favorites as a child, but it surely’s arduous to seek out nowadays, and doesn’t present up within the episode line-ups on streaming platforms like Paramount+. It wasn’t a standard episode, though it did air on the traditional Monday night time scheduling of I Love Lucy. Stevens tells me that the I Love Lucy Christmas particular was truly the first-ever clips episode of a sitcom — the episode is generally made up of earlier episodes because the Ricardos and Mertzes reminisce underneath the tree. It was a simple manner for CBS to squeeze in one thing festive with their most iconic program, and it didn’t require an entire lot of additional work for the writers or actors as a winter filming hiatus started.
And hey, they knew the household was going to assemble for I Love Lucy it doesn’t matter what, proper?
As a result of as a lot as a Christmas particular is about cash, Stevens acknowledges that networks need to — in the event that they wish to earn a living — give folks what they need. “They noticed households appreciated ‘occasions’ on the holidays that introduced the household collectively for a watching expertise and needed to emulate that,” he says.
While you have a look at the Christmas specials, there’s a lot work put into them to make them entertaining for the entire household. “The total orchestra in Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, the stop-motion animation in Frosty and Rudolph, actual identify voice expertise like Boris Karloff (The Grinch), all the unique music made for these specials, airing them throughout primetime — all of that factors to a sure seriousness within the challenge and an expectation that folks could be watching them together with their youngsters,” Stevens says. And extra adult-aimed Christmas specials or selection reveals doubtless aired in later time slots, he provides.
And now, even with DVDs and streaming and cable tv, households nonetheless collect for absolutely the magic and pleasure of a Christmas particular. Perhaps you recorded it, perhaps to procure it on Prime Video, perhaps you discovered it on Paramount+ — however chances are high, you aren’t watching it till you’re all collectively on the sofa. In fact, nostalgia performs an enormous issue. After I ask my grandmother about watching Rudolph now, she tells me it catapults her proper again to being a younger mom of two little boys, all of the marvel and pleasure of Christmas by means of their eyes hitting her once more.
That type of pleasure trickles down, era by era. After I take into consideration my women being obsessive about the unique How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and Rudolph and Frosty, I take into consideration how at some point they may have kids who will keep it up the custom. In some unspecified time in the future, these specials will probably be 100 years previous, and other people will nonetheless maintain watching them, a household custom rooted in so deeply, they will’t bear in mind which great-great-grandmother began the entire thing.
After we watch these specials, we catch a bit of little bit of our mother and father and our grandparents and all the thrill and pleasure and hope they’d for the vacation forward. Even with all of the work poured into these specials put apart, what we will see and really feel after we rewatch them is love. Love for our grandparents who made certain youngsters have been out of the bathtub by 8 p.m. so they may catch Rudolph. Love for a time the place gratification was delayed, and there was magic in being there for one thing proper when it occurred. Love for a world that basically isn’t all that completely different from ours at this time. We’re nonetheless anxious about commercialism. We nonetheless say issues like “again within the good ol’ days.” We nonetheless imagine in traditions.
And we nonetheless imagine in Christmas.
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