Christmas Specials

Love it, hate it, or don't celebrate it, Christmas is coming, and with it are the classic Christmas movies and shows. A great majority of the classic Christmas specials are animated, Frosty the Snowman and A Charlie Brown Christmas are both 'traditionally' animated, by which I mean they use hand drawn 2D, but the majority of the specials are stop motion.

You know 'em, you love 'em, those weirdly done stop motion Christmas specials that were made during the '60s and '70s. You know, the ones with the really jerky movements and weird eyes?
There are the classic classics: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Clause Is Coming to Town, The Year Without A Santa Clause, and Jack Frost; the slightly more Christian: The Little Drummer Boy and Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey; the weird spin offs: Rudolph's Shiny New Year and Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July; even something called The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause which I have no memory of.

Who let these ugly movies see the light of day and why, of all things did they choose stop motion to bring these stories to life. I mean, most of them hold a place in my heart because I watched them when I was really little but yikes - the characters move like nightmare creatures.

Comments

  1. Rose PinnisiDecember 1, 2018 at 11:41 AM

    Ah, looks like you can't put images in comments... I was going to show you my embarrassing sketches from 2012 or so when I was trying to redraw Rankin/Bass characters in an anime style. Speaking of mixed forms of animation and all...
    I wonder if those were always seen as weird and creepy, or if they were more well regarded when they came out. They are fun, though! I always liked the Winter Warlock.
    Is there something about the sort of "wonder of Christmas" and the childlike nature of animation that just lends itself to animated Christmas movies? There seem to be a lot of them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. william barnesDecember 2, 2018 at 12:35 PM

    I am a huge fan of this collection of animated specials. I think how all of the characters are animated is quite interesting. It's so unnatural and just seems so wrong and robotic. It's crazy to see the difference from the animation today. I'd say my favorite of these would be The Year Without a Santa Claus because how can you not like a little showdown between Snow Miser and Heat Miser. The music is so catchy, they have little minion-esque people, and its just overall great. Watch it every year and I don't plan on stopping.

    ReplyDelete

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