Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

[Michel_Stango]

Very fun, though why was there no intro video. The making of this nightmare fuel just has to be hilarious.

[Riedquat]

I believe the running joke was it was the Great Escape a good number of years ago, and more likely reruns of the Two Ronnies or Morcambe and Wise in later years.

There's a Terry Pratchett line, something along the lines of "When the TV reminds us that a saviour was born, and his name is James Bond." Christmas wasn't Christmas without a Bond film at one time.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

So... Is this mostly a US thing? Because I don't recall ever seeing these shows in the UK (well, at least not in my lifetime (40 later this year)), if they were only aired here in the 70s I wouldn't have, obviously.

Of course. It doesn't have enough gore and unquiet dead for a UK Christmas special.
https://satwcomic.com/it-was-a-dark-night

[Maximara]

As I said on twitter, this was my favorite origin of Santa story until my wife showed me the Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. While that one has more weirdness to it (owing to being written by Frank L. Baum, the same guy behind the Wizard of Oz) it has a stronger ending plus a friggin' battle between demonic trolls and woodland immortals (and a LASER AXE). The problem with this one is that the story just kind of peters out, with them just saying "Oh, and then the Burgermeister died and everything was okay," almost like they ran out of budget or couldn't think of a way to convincingly have him turn around after such a long campaign against Santa.

yeah, having the Burgermeister get the bad end from A Christmas Carol seemed weird because Winter Warlock was redeemed in the same story, Burgermeister almost turned around earlier and Christmas specials in general don't get that harsh with antagonists.

wile their fine for what they are, I'm not that fond of the Rankin/Bass specials, at least as an adult. like others, I found the stop motion Rudolph far too mean spirited and prefer the 2D animated version but considering the rest of GoodTimes Entertainment's filmography, it was probably an accident that version of Rudolph got decent scores on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Rankin/Bass specials do have a quality variation problem (ok not all of those are their work but most are)

I'm not thrilled with the way Santa behaves toward Rudolph either. Thought in terms of weird and bizarre IMHO nothing beats Rudolph’s Shiny New Year though I still love Father Time's song. Funny thing is that special totally screwed up the year the events in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer could have happened in.

This is because 1965 is a past year ("1965 was too noisy") but the first special aired in 1964. The year in Father Time's song has January 1 on a Monday. Only one year between 1964 and 1976 (year the New Year special aired) meets that criteria: 1973. Of course they screw up on the August 1928 sail by having the 1st on a Thursday when in reality it was on a Wednesday and compound matters by having August only have 30 days rather then the 31 it is supposed to have.

The thing is even back then I was aware of other calendars and so the main plot of it didn't really make sense (just go back to the Julian calendar and give yourself 13 extra day to find this kid or better yet use somebody else's calendar)

The premise that 1023 was the year all the fairy tales took place was an interesting one until you realized just how many of the things there were.

[Deledrius]

So... Is this mostly a US thing? Because I don't recall ever seeing these shows in the UK (well, at least not in my lifetime (40 later this year)), if they were only aired here in the 70s I wouldn't have, obviously.

I'm from the US and I don't think I ever saw this one. Rudolph and Frosty, definitely, but not this one.

[Steve]

Two unrelated remarks:

1) Given this seems to be set before the 20th Century, there were plenty of Germans in Eastern Europe as I recall.

2) I still have a soft spot for the Garfield Christmas Special myself. Jon's Grandmother spiking his mother's gravy with chili powder was one scene I'll never forget.