There is the Christmas Cartoon Canon:

1. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
2. Frosty the Snowman
3. A Charlie Brown Christmas
4. How the Grinch Stole Christmas

And of course it takes all four to make a Christmas just right. I love Rudolph so much that once, when I discovered that a girl I was dating also adored Rudolph, I ransacked my closet, returned with a VHS tape and we watched Rudolph. Which was remarkable because it was July. This was one of our favorite memories together. But it would have had to have been. We only dated for something like four months. For three months, we were terribly cute; for a month we struggled to find something to say, to do. And then we called it quits. That’s not what I was talking about.

I am much-vexed by watching the Christmas Cartoon Canon on T.V. They’ve whittled at them and taken out some of my favorite parts. Like, for example, Clarisse (Rudolph’s girlfriend) has a song in Rudolph: “There’s always tomorrow for dreams to come true.” And it has nothing to do with Christmas. It belongs, better, say, in the Wizard of Oz. And as a child I loved that song. Almost every year I catch Rudolph on T.V., that song is cut.

It’s very difficult to miss the Christmas Cartoon Canon if you own a T.V. But, for the rarer Christmas cartoons, it seems very difficult to find them, indeed. At least I can hardly ever find them. One of my all time favorites was something called “‘Twas the Night Before Chirstmas” in which an inventor with his family and a mouse with his family try to build a clock in order to get Santa’s attention. Well of course the doubting mouse finally saves the day and he learns to believe. Not only that, but the cartoon uses verbatim, as far as I remember, most of the original poem by Clement Clarke Moore (or possibly by Mjr. Henry Livingston, Jr.). I hereby officially (insomuch as I can, which is to say not at all) nominate Twas the Night Before Christmas to be included as one of the Christmas Cartoon Canons if only, as the fates smile, to find it on any given Saturday afternoon in December.

But there are other Christmas favorites I can never find and perhaps, I fear, shall never see again. The Alf Christmas special justified my faith in that show. And if I remember correctly nearly brought me to tears the first time I saw it. I also love the Tick Christmas special. “Ho ho ho. Ho ho ho. Ho ho ho.” Genius. And there was a Flintstones Christmas episode too I was particularly fond of when I was a kid I’ve never seen since.

SS

Who wrote “‘Twas the Night Before Chirstmas”?

Behind the Fiction Past

Major Henry Livingston, Jr., author of “The Night Before Christmas”