The A.V. Club loves the holiday season, and we also love opening small doors in paintings of Santa Claus and pulling out stale chocolate the manufacturer couldn’t sell four years ago, then eating it and pretending we’re having a good time. We’ve found a way to combine those things with our love of television, and we’re hoping you’ll join us every day through December 25 to open one of our virtual doors and find out which holiday special or holiday-themed episode we’re covering that day. We’ve got the usual suspects, some of the worst specials, and some surprises for you, and we’re hoping you’ll join us every day to get in the holiday spirit.
When one sees or hears the words “Rankin-Bass,” the mind tends to wander toward their holiday specials, as well it should. Not that the names of Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass haven’t been attached to numerous other projects during their lengthy careers. They were behind the animated adaptations of The Hobbit and The Return Of The King, they brought us Mad Monster Party and The Last Unicorn, and it was their studio that first introduced the world to Thundercats. But it’s invariably their holiday-themed material that’s remained stuck in the most memories and, in turn, has maintained the most replay value over the years.
You can blame some of that continued success on the instant nostalgia inspired by the sight of stop-motion animation, but for the most part, there are two big reasons the Rankin-Bass specials have kept viewers coming back over the years: Either they were inspired by existing Christmas classics—be it a song, a story, or even a poem—that provide them with a perpetual high profile (the eternal trifecta being Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty The Snowman, and Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town), or they feature music that’s so damned catchy that, even 40-plus years later, you still can’t get their pop hooks out of your head, a la “The Heat Miser Song” and “The Cold Miser Song” in The Year Without A Santa Claus.
Over the past several years, however, I’ve noticed that the Rankin-Bass adaptation of Clement Moore’s classic ’Twas The Night Before Christmas has slowly but surely begun to fall out of favor as a must-air special. At first, I found this surprising, given that I can’t imagine anyone questioning the designation of Moore’s poem as a classic. Gradually, however, as I started to express my dismay over the fact that it wasn’t earning as much airplay, what I began to discover was that, despite the near-ubiquitous nature of the poem on and during the weeks leading up to December 24, a surprising number of people can’t actually place the animated special it inspired… not even when I break into the special’s signature song.
Still doesn’t ring a bell? Well, in that case, as Father Mouse says when approaching a tall piece of cheddar, better start from the top.
As one might expect, ’Twas The Night Before Christmas begins with the recitation of the poem that inspired it, courtesy of Joel Grey. Grey—a mere two years past winning his Oscar for playing the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret—provides the voice of clockmaker Joshua Trundle, who is indeed in his cap. Yes, the children are snug in their beds. Yes, his wife’s sporting her kerchief. But Mr. Trundle’s brain is a far cry from settled, and it’s immediately apparent that he’s a long way from a long winter’s nap. Shifting out of poem-reading mode, he sighs and says, “If only I knew…”
At this point, we discover that at least one mouse is still stirring in the Trundle house: the aforementioned Father Mouse, voiced by George Gobel, who’s having just as much trouble sleeping as his human counterpart. Breaking the fourth wall, he begins to explain what’s keeping them both awake, but after establishing the time—my God, it’s only three minutes ’til midnight!—he decides it’s easier to instigate a flashback than just tell us the situation outright.
In watching ’Twas the Night Before Christmas as an adult, it becomes a little bit easier to see why the special hasn’t stuck in the memories of as many kids as its peers. For starters, it’s possible that some of them have made a concerted effort to put it out of their mind because it spends the majority of its 24-minute running time painting a picture of an Old Testament Santa Claus, if you will, a holiday deity who, despite well-recognized assurances elsewhere that “he sees you when you’re sleeping,” “knows when you’re awake,” and “knows if you’ve been bad or good,” is nonetheless unafraid to unleash his wrath upon an entire town simply because one person—or mouse, as is the case here—denies his existence.
Y’see, there’s this letter that runs in The Junctionville Register that says that he’s “a fraudulent myth rooted in unconscious fantasies and emerging as a deceitful lie,” and if that isn’t bad enough, it doesn’t help matters that the postscript claims that his reindeer are phony, too. Seeing that the letter is signed “All Of Us,” Santa’s so pissed that he can’t be bothered to check the facts on the situation and, instead, just stamps “Not Accepted By Addressee” on every single letter he’s received from a child in Junctionville and sends them right back.