It's Christmas, that very special time of year when you can turn on the television on almost any night and catch any of your favorite Christmas specials and see them the way they were meant to be seen: With a lot of commercials. The Christmas spirit is about Amazon Wishlists, crowding malls, and spending extra to cut down your own Christmas tree. Capitalism! But as Charlie Brown teaches us, underneath all the Christmas commerce, the heart of Christmas is still beating and these ten Christmas specials and movies should help it to grow three sizes larger. The following slideshow is a rundown of the Ten Best Christmas Specials airing for the rest of the month (plus the network and airtime).
10. Elf: (December 8th, 9 EST, SyFy: It's kind of appropriate that Elf would be playing on the SyFy channel. Think about it: A man with a bushy beard and thousands of little people who build his toys rides around the planet on a sleigh flown by reindeer and climbs down 5 billion chimneys to deliver kids presents based on a naughty or nice list that he's kept for the entire year. That's more sci-fi than Aliens. Oh, and Zooey Deschanel is super hot in this movie.
9. I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown: (December 12th, 8 EST, ABC): Not nearly as good as the original Charlie Brown special, this one Cousin Olivers in a new character, ReRun, the younger brother of Linus and Lucy. Spike, Snoopy's canine brother, also gets involved, and then everything goes to hell. NEEDS MORE PIG PEN.
8. Rudolph's Shiny New Year: The best thing about the original 1964 Christmas classic, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is when the Abominable Snowman shows up and your kid pisses himself and has nightmares for weeks. No longer will you have to discipline your kid by threatening that Santa Claus is keeping a watchful eye over him, just tell him that the Abominable Snowman will show up outside his window on Christmas Eve and knock on it three times if he's not a good little boy. Unfortunately, you've already missed the original (it aired last week), but the Bass and Rankin 1976 flick is nearly as terrifying.
7. Frosty the Snowman: (December 9th, 8 EST, CBS) Some of these Christmas Classics can feel a little too thematically heavy for certain kids: In Frosty the Snowman, for instance, Frosty has to get back to the North Pole before melts or before Professor Hinckle steals his magic hat that gives him life. Watching a snowman melt in March is never quite the same afterwards. "DADDY, IS HE DYING? WHERE DO WE GO WHEN WE DIE?"
6. Prep and Landing 2: Naughty vs. Nice: (December 5th, 8:30 EST, ABC) For serious, if you missed the original Prep and Landing in 2009, it's probably the best new Christmas special to come out in over a decade. Word is that the sequel is just as good.
5. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (December 7th, 9 EST, ABC Family): Look, there are two kinds of families in the world: Those that watch It's a Wonderful Life every Christmas, and those that watch Christmas Vacation every Christmas. The families that watch Christmas Vacation usually have a screw loose somewhere, which makes them the family you most want to share a quart of egg nog with on Christmas Eve.
4. A Christmas Story: (TBS, All Day Christmas): Fun Fact: Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie in the movie, is grown up now and best friends with Vince Vaughn. Seriously, look him up: He produced Iron Man and several more of Vaughn and Jon Favreau's movies. As for the movie? If you haven't seen it yet, and if you're over the age of 12, I don't think we can be friends.
3. A Charlie Brown's Christmas (Monday December 5th, 8:00 on ABC): I love this Christmas special, but it has to be the darkest, most depressing Christmas special of all time. Basically, it involves Charlie Brown's existential crisis as he bemoans the crass commercialization of Christmas, something that's gotten even more crass since it originally aired. The beautiful Vince Giraldi music only underscores how melancholy the show is, and you may end up feeling worse about the holiday than before you watched it. But don't let that dissuade you: It's an amazing special. Just keep the handguns and pills out of reach.
2. It's a Wonderful Life: (Christmas Eve, 9 EST, NBC): Here's the thing about It's a Wonderful Life: It's really dark, and it's really long, which you often don't remember until you watch it the day after Thanksgiving or the night before Christmas with commercials. But before you realize you're in for a three and a half hour experience, the movie takes hold and the magic overwhelms you until the amazing, rousing finale that will leave you misty-eyed and yelling, "My lips bleedin' burt. My lips bleedin'!"
1. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (December 7th, 7:30, Cartoon Network): I think I've probably seen an airing of the Grinch at least once a year since I was five or six. This special is Christmas. One day, some dim bulb at the networks is going to yank it off the air in favor of The Kardashian Kristmas Special XXII and as we're all at our deepest and darkest, the Grinch will magically come to life (and not that creepy Jim Carrey version) and the world will hold hands and sing songs and bells will ring out until the Kardashians are exorcised from existence. BEST CHRISTMAS EVER.
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Where’s Die Hard?
I reiterate BBW’s shock that Die Hard was left off the list.
Charles Schultz just doesn’t do it for me. All I can think about when I see any Charlie Brown special is how fucking depressed that kid would be if he were an adult. He would have slit his wrists a half-dozen times by now. It doesn’t help the comics of Peanuts blow donkey balls each and every day. They’re not funny. I don’t care he died. Run re-prints of Calvin and Hobbes.
I can’t stand Denis Leary anymore but I still consider The Ref to be required viewing at Xmas.
Christmas Vacation on xmas eve is the longest running tradition my family has, we’ll skip church some years but never the griswalds.
Scrooged and The Ref round out my top 3 Christmas movies. Die Hard and Die Hard 2 would be 4 and 5.
Polar Express in HD on the new 55″ LED with surround sound is a sensory treat.
Any list that uses “Christmas Vacation” as its banner picture is all right by me. I come from one of those families.
#7 is the Heat Miser from A Year Without a Santa Claus, not Frosty the Snowman. (I’m. . .kinda of ashamed I know that.)
Zooey > Emily
I wish Olive, the Other Reindeer still aired. Stupid name, but great special, with voice work from Michael Stipe, Dan Castellaneta, Joe Pantoliano, and Ed Asner. Not even Drew Barrymore could sabotage the thing.
For the “Frosty the Snowman” page, you have a picture of the Heat Miser, who actually appears in “The Year Without a Santa Claus”, which which was inexplicably left off the list and for my money was always the Rankin and Bassiest of the stop-motion animated specials.
Where’s a Christmas Carol with Jean Luc Picard?
Heat Miser > Snow Miser
As far as I’m concerd, the best Christmas specials will be NBA and NFL games!
Die Hard? Absofreakinglutely.
Other honorable mentions:
Less Than Zero
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Bad Santa
Reindeer Games
Fred Claus
The Ref
Scrooged
A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
Is it possible to actually like A Christmas Story if you didn’t grow up with it? I had friends talk it up like it was on par with Xmas vacation but when I finally saw it in college I thought it was awful. I’d rather watch a claymation christmas special, and I fucking hate those too.
Zooey Deschanel is adorable in “Elf,” but the cutest thing in that movie has to be the Arctic Puppets. Bonus points for the narwhale.
Fact: Every spoof of “It’s a Wonderful Life” retells the story in a better and more manageable fashion.
Bad Santa is an inexcusable omission. Die Hard and The Ref are good calls as well.
*Looks up Peter Billingsley on Wikipedia*
“In 1984 Billingsley starred in an adaptation of The Hoboken Chicken Emergency with Dick Van Patten and Gabe Kaplan.”
*Head Explodes*
My personal addition would be Futurama’s 3 Xmas episodes.
While I agree that Die Hard is the best Christmas movie ever, it can be enjoyed anytime of the year and so I wouldn’t label it a “special”
Clark Griswold is what makes my Christmas merry.
A Christmas Story should be number 1.
@LastTexansFan
I think more Calvin and Hobbes is something we can all get behind. Though what the hell? No Muppet’s Christmas Carole? It’s only the best post-Henson Muppet production by far (haven’t seen the new one). Michael Cain FTW
@Chazz, I’m with you. For whatever reason that was a glaring hole on my Christmas movie resume, then when I finally saw it I was extremely underwhelmed. Now I just get annoyed at the inevitable (and nearly universal) love it gets come Christmas time.
Home Alone!
Everything needs more Pigpen.
@LastTexans and JamaalCharles A big piece of me died when Bill Watterson stopped making Calvin and Hobbes.
‘Raging Rudolph’ from MadTV FTW. A Christmas Story’ needs to die. I love ‘Bad Santa’, Scrooged, Christmas Vacation, The Ref, Home Alone, and Muppet’s Christmas Carole. I keep a list of great christmas tv episodes, like Married with Children and 30 Rock. Ludachristmas!
Not having Bad Santa, Home Alone, and Die Hard = THIS LIST MAKES ME MISS MATT!
A Very Sunny Christmas will be on this list soon enough. The funniest Christmas special I have ever seen.
Ralphie is in Elf too., you cotton-headed ninny muffin.
FWIW, I know two people in the Elf banner picture.
And Jim Carrey sucks for redoing Grinch.
Do Americans not watch “The Snowman”? It’s my all-time favourite Christmas special.
Um, Scrooged and Love Actually are missing from your list. I’ll hold my breathe while you add them.
I’d like the see The Apartment on there!
Christmas doesn’t start until Bad Santa and the Always Sunny Christmas Special have been watched.
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Lethal Weapon, or A Garfield Christmas….. Grandma’s rack was unstoppable!
I understand people loving Die Hard, I do too, but it’s not a Christmas special or a Christmas movie. It’s a movie that happens to take place around Christmas. I agree with this list, minus Rudolph’s Shiny New Year.
For me, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas is an essential Christmas special.
What about the unlicensed porno “Christmas with My Crank?” Better than that shit Tim Allen gave us.
Missing from this list: A Nightmare Before Christmas and the veneralbe Jingle All the Way.
Two movies and that is all you need.
Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas
The Ice Harvest
Emmet Otter’s Jug Band yes yes yes.
Actually I was thinking about it the other day and wondering where the hell I could see it…just this week, BOOM, it’s on Netflix. Though it’s the version with Kermit edited out, it still roxxx. RIVER BOTTOM NIGHTMARE BAND!