Year-round Yuletide oddities
Originally a spinoff from The Show of He-Who-Must-Not-be-Named, this college-set sitcom featuring race relations and whatnot came into its own balancing haha and uhoh way back in the day before woke was a thing you said.
Costars included Sinbad and Jada Pinkett, but one episode had Patti LaBelle singing a snippet of her own Christmas song “Nothing Could be Better.” Popspel.
The juggernaut of prime time cartoons has outlasted the age of irony, post-irony, and colonial irony. Naturally most of its holiday contributions are parodies of carols (caroldies).
“The 39 Days of Christmas” (sorry about all the non-song bits) came after “The 12 Days of Christmas (parody).” “The Grinch (parody)” nobody remembers. (Get that poster a tripod for Christmas.)
Better are the Nutcracker bits.
The holiday-inspired “Everybody Hates Ned Flanders” is the winner here, by a single Homer hair. (I mean, David Byrne covering…!) [To discover why this is considered a carol, watch the poorly recorded 40 second intro here–then stop watching.]
An independent TV toon that’s lasted for decades and offered music too, this playground of stereotypes need to work through their childish ways and become stiff upper lipped. And sing about being of use (why do i think of Boxer in Animal Farm?).
Not a follower, but i can tell “Glynn’s Christmas Wish” is later on with the uncanny valley scariness of the computer animation. Nice Brit pop story.
More derivatively carol-like, “There’s Snow Place Like Home” just sells it all the way out. Learn, kids, learn!
Less hyper, “It’s Christmas Time” is a measured consideration of pomp and celebration. Stand straight when you sing this one. Then you’ll get a lump of coal in your throat.
Like the Simpsons a bit later, this series began with a Christmas special. The songs in ‘A Garfield Christmas’ are standard fare for cartoons (for A Prairie Home Companion children), tending toward the sentimental.
Worst is “Christmas in Your Heart” reading off discount bin greeting card lines. Skip it.
“A Good Ol’ Fashioned Christmas” at the end is middle-of-the-road laundered country pop. I like the jew’s harp though (excuse me: lamellophone).
An interesting music hall ditty by John (Thomas Huge) and Garfield (Lorenzo Music) contrasts the wide-eyed owner with the id-centric cat. “Can’t Wait Till Christmas” is mercifully brief, albeit bouncy.
An unexpected gem is the motor music in the background of the cat spying on the dog. “You Can Never Find an Elf When You Need One” is swung by Lou Rawls, but i like Deena Moore’s instrumental in some courthouse.
The cool cat intro, however, buckles us up to the Garfield zeitgeist: “Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme” by Lou Rawls is pop Motown without regret.
These furry sapsters began as greeting cards, then movie stars. But they did have a TV series.
Oh, and a holiday album (or more): Care Bears Christmas (1982), and then the worse Holiday Hugs and Care Bears: Christmas Eve (both 2004).
Tiny tots may smile for “Holiday Hugs” and its smothering perkiness, but i find it analogous to being beaten with kittens.
“Christmas in Care-a-Lot” strives for more hep jazz, but comes off like a porkpie hat on a pile of feathers.
“Have a Merry, Merry Christmas” faux-rocks lamely enough to make me want to watch The Wiggles.
The original album
scores higher as a 13 minute story for kids to listen to, despite its arrival BEFORE the Saturday morning cartoon. The “Christmas Theme”
borrows from their own theme, but “Happy Christmas Time”
and “Here Comes Christmas” are a sloppy grinning hippie hug of family folk warmth.
More unearthly creatures who never heard of Christ get into the spirit.
Let’s call this minute-long folk pop mess “Christmas Spirit” because the title ‘He-Man Christmas song’ doesn’t do us any good.
Belgian freedom fighters in 1950s comic book form are just as good of inspiration as any old Grimm’s tale. The Smurfs as a Saturday morning cartoon, however, are johnny-come-latelies to the smurf-capades.
Their execrable 1983 album Merry Christmas with the Smurfs offends with such morsels as the alphabet song inspired “Santa Claus is Coming Tonight,” the oddly downbeat “Smurfing Bells,” and the aptly old world oompah of “Christmas Presents.” But later (1996’s Christmas with the Smurfs) the dance party “Christmas Party” opens their isolationist utopia to more friendly possibilities.
Time Machine alert! If we were to go back to a time before the TV series, we might find the suddenly more valuable Father Abraham ’78 single featuring “Christmas in Smurfland.” Country twaddle with some Continental panache.
No, it’s not David Soul here!
Antonio Fargas was the jive talking informant who added color to the muscle car commercial that was this cop show. His 1980 single “It’s Christmas” is just as Jamaican flamboyant as a closeted drag queen can be. (His parents were Puerto Rican and Trinidadian.)
But “Christmas Eve 1953” is free form word jazz with a dollop of disco. Worth a listen.
The holidays include more than Christmas, as many other cultures get holy-rolly this time of year for their own simpatico reasons.
Thus we include a mention to the Wiccan-mystic underground fantasy creatures who worry about the big bell overhead. “The Bells of Fraggle Rock” mentions no Santa, no JC, no mistletoe… but it is in the spirit of the season relying on faith–not proof.
Silent film for kids, this long running cartoon series without dialog appealed to the imaginative and the dense alike.
A 1978 special “A Pink Christmas” featured the rewriting of an O. Henry story (used more than once for Xmas TV series). Instead of dying at the end of “The Cop and the Anthem,” however, it’s Santa and magic food. Despite muteness, the show had a couple songs, including “Yuletide Spirit”
and “Wonderful Wintertime”
sung by St. Michaels Day School Choir. Also “Jolly Holiday” covered by grown up fan jazz stylist Marian Hortens (w/The M Sandberg Duo). Cool.