But there's early in history, and then there's early in history. Both Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its companion series Xena: Warrior Princess had Christmas episodes, despite taking place centuries before the birth of Christ. Hercules' episode, "A Star to Guide Them," was an allegory about the Nativity story and King Herod's order of "The Slaughter of the Innocents."
Xena's series was frequently much darker than Hercules', but "A Solstice Carol," full of references to things that would become associated with Christmas in the 19th and 20th Centuries A.D., was really, really campy. And yet, as a story, it works very well.
Both stories were set around the time of the Winter Solstice, which falls on December 21 or 22 -- which is possibly the reason that the early Church set Christmas on December 25, given the difference between the Julian Calendar then in effect and the Gregorian Calendar being used now.
December 25, 1183: Not the best of Christmases for the 50-year-old King Henry II of England, his Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their sons, the princes Richard, Geoffrey and John.
The film is The Lion In Winter, and they are played by the following: Henry by Peter O'Toole, Eleanor by Katherine Hepburn, the future King Richard I (the Lionhearted) by Anthony Hopkins in his 1st major film role, Geoffrey by John Castle (not to be confused with Godfather actor John Cazale), and the future Magna Carta signer King John by Nigel Terry (who would play a much better King of England, Arthur, in Excalibur).
On an episode of The West Wing, President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen) confirms that this is his favorite movie of all time. Though, uncharacteristically, the New Hampshire professor turned head of state gets Henry's quote wrong: In the film, it's, "I've snapped and plotted all my life. There's no other way to be alive, King, and 50 all at once."
December 25, 1842: In London, moneylender Ebenezer Scrooge has a change of heart. Instead of treating it with a cry of "Bah, humbug!" he accepts Christmas the way those around him do, with the words of his employee Bob Crachit's small, handicapped son Tim: "God bless us, every one!" The story is A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.
Some may say Scrooge was corrupted by socialistic thoughts. Well, he didn't follow the suggestion of Christ that he give away all his money and possessions. The reason we celebrate Scrooge is simple: He stopped being a jerk about having great resources, and started using them for good.
Liberals can celebrate him for finding his heart. Conservatives can celebrate him for actually doing what they always say should be done: "Let the private sector do it." Like Pope Francis has been saying the rich should do, Scrooge lived up to the Christian ideal.
I previously had this date as 1843, because that's the year the story was published. But because of this, it had to have been about a past Christmas. Hence, I now have it listed as the year before, December 25, 1842.
Dickens sought to construct Christmas as a family-centered festival of generosity, in contrast to the community-based and church-centered observations, the observance of which had dwindled during the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. A Christmas Carol helped to restore Christmas to a day of celebration in Britain, and to establish it as such in America.
The versions of the story are so many, including the 1962 animated musical with Mr. Magoo (the 1st version that I saw), the 1970 live-action musical version with Albert Finney, the 1970 Odd Couple
episode "Scrooge Gets an Oscar," the 1979 Bugs Bunny version with Yosemite Sam as Scrooge, the 1983 Mickey Mouse version with Scrooge McDuck as Scrooge, Bill Murray's 1988 modern take
Scrooged, the 1992 Muppet Christmas Carol with Michael Caine, the 1994 Flintstones version, and a 2013 Smurfs version.
The 1951 film Scrooge, starring Alastair Sim, is often cited as the best version. No, the best version remains the 1984 CBS version with George C. Scott. In 1990, Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart began doing a one-man version on stage, and in 1999 starred as Scrooge in a version broadcast on TNT.
December 25, 1867: Young singer Andy Walker returns to his hometown of Virginia City, Nevada after a world tour. His uncle and manager, Thadeus Cole, tries to con Eric "Hoss" Cartwright (Dan Blocker) out of the money he's trying to raise for an orphanage. But Andy catches on to his uncle, and there's a Dickensian twist to the ensuing Christmas party at the Cartwright family's Ponderosa Ranch.
This 1966 episode of Bonanza was titled "A Christmas Story," and Andy is played by Wayne Newton, in his 2nd appearance in the role. Thadeus was played by Jack Oakie.
This 1966 episode of Bonanza was titled "A Christmas Story," and Andy is played by Wayne Newton, in his 2nd appearance in the role. Thadeus was played by Jack Oakie.
Bonanza episodes took place 99 years in the past -- established since a gravestone in a 1967 episode showed a date of death of 1868. It's odd that, in the supposedly progressive 1960s, the 3 most progressive TV shows were Bonanza, which took place nearly a century in the past; Star Trek, which took place 3 centuries in the future; and The Twilight Zone, which, as Rod Serling's narration suggested, took place in "another dimension."
As Trek creator Gene Roddenberry remarked, it was easier to get an allegory about a problem with current American life on television if it wasn't depicting current American life -- or even life on Earth at all.
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December 25, 1905: Della Young has just $1.87 – about $49 in today's money – which she considers to be not enough to buy a Christmas present for her husband Jim. She goes to a woman who buys hair, has her long hair cut, and receives $20, enough money to buy a platinum fob chain to go with the watch that Jim owns and loves.
As it turns out, Jim sold the watch, and used the money to buy hair-care products for Della, which, now, she can't use until her hair grows back to a respectable length.
This story was "The Gift of the Magi," by William Sydney Porter, a.k.a. O. Henry, and is included in his 1906 collection of stories, The Four Million, named for what was then the population of New York City. It has been copied many times, as you'll see below.
Supposedly, Porter wrote it at Healy's, which is now Pete's Tavern, and claims origination as the Portman Hotel in 1829, thus making it (or so they say) the oldest continuously run bar in New York. It's at 129 East 18th Street at Irving Place, in Manhattan's Gramercy Park.
December 25, 1909: The events of the Disney cartoon Lady and the Tramp begin. Jim Dear gives his wife an American Cocker Spaniel puppy, whom she names Lady.
December 25, 1921: Shortly after the birth of his son, Matthew Crawley leaves his family's Yorkshire estate, Downton Abbey, in his convertible, in high spirits. And he's hit by a truck and killed. On Downton Abbey, Matthew was played by Dan Stevens.
December 25, 1930: Eliot Ness discovers that an old friend and informant of his, Hap Levinson (who does not appear onscreen), has been shot and killed after playing Santa Claus at a Chicago orphanage. Hap turns out not to be the first victim in a series of killings. Ness finds out what's going on and who's to blame.
This was on an episode of The Untouchables. Oddly, it did not air anywhere near Christmas, but rather on September 25, 1962. Ness was a real person, but this story is entirely fictional. He was played by Robert Stack on the TV series, and by Kevin Costner in the 1987 film version.
December 25, 1939: Ralphie Parker actually gets his "Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass and this thing which tells time built right in to the stock." (This particular model did not exist in real life.) And doggone it if, but for the grace of God and his glasses, he doesn't come near to really shooting his eye out!
The film is A Christmas Story, narrated by the author of the original story, Jean Shepherd (who has a cameo as a parent standing on line with his son for Santa Claus in the store). Shepherd grew up in Hammond, Indiana, outside Chicago, although he was older than Ralphie, as 1939 was the year he graduated from Hammond High School.
In the film, Cleveland stands in for both Chicago and Hammond. Cleveland's Public Square is easily identifiable, with its big Civil War memorial in the center, the Terminal Tower (built in 1930), and Higbee's department store, which has since been turned into Horseshoe Casino Cleveland, although the Higbee's sign seen in the movie is still there.
Ralphie is played by Peter Billingsley. He is now 45, and while he still acts, having appeared in the 1st Iron Man film, he mainly produces and directs now, including the Netflix series F Is for Family.
In 2018, just 6 years after the Sandy Hook Massacre, only someone who doesn't understand anything about parenting -- or Christmas -- would give a child a firearm as a Christmas present.
December 25, 1945: Billy Bailey, co-director of the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan, of Bedford Falls, New York, with his late brother Peter's son George, loses $8,000 meant for the firm's accounts -- about $111,000 in today's money. Unable to come up with the money, George runs into one awful occurrence after another, and wishes he'd never been born.
An angel named Clarence Goodbody shows him what the world (or, at least, his home town) would have been like if that had been the case. George changes his mind, and finds that all the people he'd selflessly helped over the years have come to pay him back, to show him that, in the way that matters, he's "the richest man in town."
The film is It's a Wonderful Life, and George is played by James Stewart, Billy by Thomas Wilson, and Clarence by Henry Travers.
In the "bank run" sequence, set in 1932, $242 then would be $4,485 today; $20 would be $371; $17.50 would be $324; and the $2.00 the Baileys ended up with would be $37.06.
Here's what I don't get: George knows how Sam Wainwright can be reached. The bank examiner knows who Sam is, and knows that his word is good. Why doesn't George just wire Sam, and have him send a telegram not to George, but to the bank examiner, saying to expect a money order after the holiday? End of problem.
ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel recently showed what the film would have looked like from the perspective of the villain, Henry Potter, played by Lionel Barrymore. He was a brother of Ethel Barrymore and John Barrymore, whose granddaughter is Drew Barrymore.
On the same day, the Corleone family deals with the shooting and near-death of patriarch Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), in the 1969 novel and the 1972 film The Godfather.
December 25, 1947: A man known only as Kris Kringle, hired to work as Santa Claus at the main Macy's store in New York's Herald Square, is committed, and his lawyer, Fred Gailey, can find only one way to get this harmless, if apparently delusional, old man out of the psych ward: By proving to a court that, just as Kris claims, he really is Santa Claus. It works, and Fred wins the heart of Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara), who had hired Kris, and her daughter Susan (Natalie Wood, 8 years old at the time of filming but playing 6).
Miracle On 34th Street was remade in 1973 and 1994. In those versions, Santa was played by Sebastian Cabot and Richard Attenborough, respectively; the lawyer by David Hartman and Dylan McDermott (by then starring as a lawyer on The Practice); Mrs. Walker by Jane Alexander and Elizabeth Perkins; and Susan by Suzanne Davidson and Mara Wilson.
For the 1973 version, the lawyer's name was changed to Bill Schafner, and Mrs. Walker's name was changed from Doris to Karen -- definitely not to be confused with the Karen Walker played by Megan Mullally on Will & Grace!
For the 1994 version, the lawyer is named Bryan Bedford, Mrs. Walker goes back to being named Doris (or, rather, "Dorey"), and, this time, fictional store names had to be used: Macy's had refused to give permission to use their name, and became "Cole's"; while Gimbel's had gone out of business, so the scriptwriters used "Shoppers Express."
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December 25, 1950: Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, a surgeon with the U.S. Army at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Uijeongbu, Korea, has to leave a Christmas party there to attend to a wounded soldier in a foxhole. While still wearing his Santa Claus costume. This was on an episode of M*A*S*H. Hawkeye is played by Alan Alda.
December 25, 1951: On another episode of M*A*S*H, Hawkeye pays tribute to the camp's chaplain, 1st Lieutenant (later Captain) Francis Mulcahy (played by William Christopher). And the company clerk, Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly (Gary Burghoff) tells another surgeon, Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers) that, on Father Mulcahy's recommendation, he'd written to Charles' mother, and asked her to send something that would remind the down-in-the-dumps Boston Brahmin of happier times. She sent his old toboggan cap, and Charles was overjoyed. This time, Santa was played by Captain B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell).
Despite their efforts, the patient dies at 11:25 PM. Hawkeye, seeing his best friend take it hard -- clearly thinking of his wife, Peg, and daughter, Erin, back home in the San Francisco suburb of Mill Valley, California -- moves the clock ahead, so that the time of death will read 12:05 AM, December 26.
Farrell also wrote and directed this episode. Harry Morgan played the commanding officer, Colonel Sherman Potter, and, in this episode, Potter played Santa Claus.
On yet another episode of M*A*S*H, the MASHers are celebrating Christmas with British soldiers, who tell them of the tradition of the day after Christmas, Boxing Day, which in England is celebrated with two things. Neither of which turns out to be prizefighting, as is found out by a confused Corporal (later Sergeant) Maxwell Q. Klinger (Jamie Farr), a former corpsman who, by this point, has replaced Radar as company clerk. One is noblemen trading places with their servants, to boost morale. The British Army matches this by having the officers and enlisted men switch jobs.
L.A. Police Sergeant Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and Officer Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) promise to try to get it back before Mass on Christmas Day, but this means that they have less than 24 hours to catch the thief. As was always said on Dragnet, "The story you have just heard is true. The names have been changed, to protect the innocent."
The episode is title "The Big Little Jesus." When Dragnet returned in color in the 1960s, a 1967 episode basically redid the story, under the title "The Christmas Story," this time with Detective Friday teaming with Detective Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan -- 8 years before he first played Colonel Potter).
December 25, 1955: Not having enough money to buy his wife Alice a proper Christmas present, Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden pawns his bowling ball. And on Christmas Eve, he finds Alice has given him a proper bag for his bowling ball.
This Honeymooners episode, "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," was based on "The Gift of the Magi." Ralph was played by Jackie Gleason, Alice by Audrey Meadows.
A year earlier, when "The Honeymooners" was still just a sketch on the hourlong The Jackie Gleason Show, Gleason played most of his characters: Ralph, Reginald Van Gleason III, Joe the Bartender, Fenwick Babbitt, and the mute, pantomiming Pour Soul. Noticeably absent was "Charlie Bratton the Loudmouth."
Halfway across the country, in Milwaukee, Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) discovers that his pal Arthur Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler) has nowhere to go on Christmas. Naturally, Richie proves that, on occasion, he can be every bit as cool as the Fonz, and invites him to have dinner with the family. Happy Days, indeed.
This episode, titled "Guess Who's Coming to Christmas," aired in 1974 -- and it was eventually established that the show took place 19 years in the past; hence, 1955.
December 25, 1960: Fired after arriving for work late and sloshed, department store Santa Henry Corwin wanders into an alley and finds a bag filled with gifts. The spirit of the holiday is one of the few bright spots in Henry's life, and as he begins handing out the gifts, he realizes the bag is able to produce any gift a recipient requests. After a brief jail stint that ends with Henry changing the mind of his mean, skeptical former boss, he continues handing out gifts.
Soon, one of his giftees points out that Henry has taken nothing from the bag himself. All he wants? To continue playing Santa every year. The wish is granted when he finds an elf with a reindeer-driven sleigh waiting, to whisk him off to the North Pole.
This was an episode of The Twilight Zone, titled "Night of the Meek." Henry was played by Art Carney. In 1988, Carney would appear in my favorite Christmas-themed commercial of all time, despite it being for a product I don't like, Coca-Cola: "Grandpa's magic pinecone!" The grandson was played by Brian Bonsall, who played Andy Keaton on Family Ties and Worf's son Alexander Rozhenko on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He stopped acting while in high school, and has been in punk bands ever since.
Also on this day, in Mayberry, North Carolina, department store owner and resident Scrooge Ben Weaver demands that Sheriff Andy Taylor lock up local moonshiner Jim Muggins. Muggins' family, as well as Andy's, gather to celebrate the holiday with Jim. After witnessing how Jim and Andy and their broods can turn the jailhouse stay into a warm, inviting celebration, Weaver gets himself arrested so he can be part of the fun, and he ends the holiday by getting a nip of Jim's hooch himself.
This was the only Christmas episode of The Andy Griffith Show, and was titled "The Christmas Story." Andy was played by Andy Griffith, Deputy (and substitute Santa Claus) Barney Fife by Don Knotts, Ben by Will Wright, and Jim by Sam Edwards.
December 25, 1964: Rudolph, with his nose so bright, guides Santa's sleigh tonight, according to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, based on the 1947 song, the 1st animated holiday special by Rankin-Bass Productions.
Also on this day, the personal life of Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) gets messy. That of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) gets even messier than it already was. And a Christmas party at the ad agency goes very wrong. This episode of Mad Men, which aired incongruously on August 1, 2010, is titled "Christmas Comes But Once a Year."
December 25, 1965: Charlie Brown, the lead character of Charles Schulz' comic strip Peanuts, wasn't the 1st fictional character to wonder what Christmas was all about, nor the last. Nor was he the first nor the last to get his Christmas hopes laughed at.
But, as his best friend Linus Van Pelt (voiced by Chris Shea) points out (after quoting The Gospel According to Luke, Chapter 2, Verses 8 through 14, to remind us of "what Christmas is all about"), like the scrawny little tree that he'd found, ol' Chuck (voiced by Peter Robbins) just needed a little love. A Charlie Brown Christmas was the 1st Peanuts special, and it remains the best.
December 25, 1966: Agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin have to protect Chairman Georgi Koz, a foreign leader, who looks suspiciously like Nikita Khrushchev, at the United Nations. This episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was titled "The Jingle Bells Affair."
Solo was played by Robert Vaughn, Kuryakin by David McCallum, and Koz by Akim Tamiroff, who was born in the part of the Russian Empire that is now the former "Soviet republic" of Georgia, but was of Armenian descent. Vaughn died in 2017. He was the last surviving member of the titular heroes in the 1960 film The Magnificent Seven.
Also on this day, as aspiring actress Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) ends her shift as an elf for a department store Santa Claus, she tells her boyfriend Donald Hollinger (Ted Bessell) about her stint as a teacher in a boarding school trying to bring good tidings and joy to a boy who won't be able to go home for Christmas. This episode of That Girl was titled "Christmas and the Hard-Luck Kid." It was written by James L. Brooks. (Remember that for a few moments.)
That Girl premiered on September 8 of that year -- as did Star Trek.
December 25, 1968, 50 years ago: The Arnold family of The Wonder Years -- the location is never specified, although show writer Neal Marlens wanted it to be set in his hometown of Huntington, Long Island, New York, hence Kevin often wears a Jets jacket -- is disappointed that family patriarch Jack (Dan Lauria) didn't take the opportunity of Christmas to buy the family's 1st color television set.
Kevin (played by Fred Savage, adult Kevin's voiceover by Daniel Stern) says that said set was bought in 1970 -- meaning the writers did their research, because that was the 1st year in which more than half of all American households had color TV.
December 25, 1969: Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) loses her voice, just days before a lucky chance to sing a solo at her suburban Los Angeles church's Christmas service. Youngest daughter Cindy (Susan Olsen) hears the kid in front of her in line ask Santa Claus for a jillion things, so she tells Santa that all she wants for Christmas is for her Mom to get her voice back. She does, singing "O Come, All Ye Faithful," making this episode of The Brady Bunch, "The Voice of Christmas," a happy one.
This was also the year that Rankin-Bass debuted their special Frosty the Snowman. Had the character not already had his song -- which doesn't mention Christmas at all -- played endlessly at Christmastime, this special would have been enough to irrevocably link him with the holiday.
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December 25, 1970: Felix Unger, a commercial photographer -- portraits a specialty -- asks his roommate, New York Herald sports columnist Oscar Madison, to play Ebenezer Scrooge in a neighborhood production of A Christmas Carol.
Oscar bah-humbugs the idea, until his awful diet produces a nightmare in which he actually is Scrooge, Felix becomes Jacob Marley, and "Ebenezer Madison" sees his Christmas Past, his Christmas Present, and a possible Christmas Future. This convinces him to do the play.
This episode of The Odd Couple was titled "Scrooge Gets an Oscar." Felix was played by Tony Randall, and Oscar by Jack Klugman. Sadly, Klugman died on a Christmas Eve, December 24, 2012. Randall died in 2004.
Also on this day, Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) has to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at Minneapolis TV station WJM-Channel 12, and so it seems that her favorite holiday is completely ruined.
However, on her Christmas Eve shift, her coworkers come to the rescue, bringing the holiday spirit to her, and proving that even if the holiday isn't in line with tradition, it can still be a wonderful night full of bright spirits.
This episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show is titled "Christmas and the Hard-Luck Kid II": It was a reference to the aforementioned episode of That Girl, written by James L. Brooks. Brooks also wrote this episode, or rather co-wrote it with Allan Burns.
This is also the year of Rankin-Bass' special Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, with an origin story for Big Red, totally unconnected to any that had previously appeared.
December 25, 1971: "Christmas Day at the Bunkers'" in Flushing, Queens is not merry, as Archie (Carroll O'Connor) makes a mistake at work, sending an order to London, England when it should have been sent to London, Ontario. This costs him a Christmas bonus. This was the 1st Christmas episode of All In the Family.
December 25, 1973: In another All In the Family Christmas episode, titled "Edith's Christmas Story," Archie's wife Edith (Jean Stapleton) tries to keep the holiday going despite knowing that the doctor found a lump in her breast.
I don't know if this was the 1st time the word "breast" was used in prime time. Edith did survive the scare -- although Stapleton left the show (by then renamed Archie Bunker's Place) in 1980, and Edith's death was written into the series. No cause was given.
December 25, 1974: This was almost The Year Without a Santa Claus. Mickey Rooney, who voiced Kris Kringle in Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, reprises the role in this Rankin-Bass special, but he's not feelin' it this year. Shirley Booth, in what turns out to be her final acting role (she retired, and lived a few more years), narrates in character as Mrs. Claus.
This special also, many years before the Santa Clause movies did so, introduces Mother Nature into the Santa legend, and her sons, Snow Miser and Heat Miser.
December 25, 1976: Office of Scientific Intelligence Agent Steve Austin (Lee Majors), a former U.S. Air Force Colonel, test pilot and astronaut, discovers that an OSI project is being tampered with by a modern-day Scrooge. So The Six Million Dollar Man uses his enhancements to create the episode's title, "A Bionic Christmas Carol," and gets the man to mend his ways. Factoring in inflation, the $6 million it cost to "rebuild" Steve in 1973 would be about $33.4 million today.
Another superhero, Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter), faces down a holiday-season saboteur in the episode "The Deadly Toys."
Meanwhile, across the country, in Queens, it's Christmas dinner at the Bunkers' house on All In the Family. Gloria and Mike Stivic (Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner) invite David, an old friend of Mike's living in Canada, but choose not to tell Gloria's parents Archie and Edith that the reason David went to Canada is that he is, as the episode's title states, "The Draft Dodger." He was played by Renny Temple, who has mostly directed since the late 1980s.
Unlike most of these Christmas episodes, this one actually did air on a December 25, a day on which networks usually show reruns, thinking families will be eating Christmas dinner at the time, or show "family entertainment" films and specials.
Archie had also invited a friend, Pinky Peterson (Eugene Roche), whose son had asked him whether he should accept being drafted into the Army and fight in Vietnam, or run away to Canada. Pinky advised him to obey the law, and accept being drafted. Pinky's son was killed, making Pinky a "Gold Star Father." Also a widower, Pinky was thus alone on Christmas, and Archie, in a gesture of humanity not often seen from him, thought Pinky could use the company.
When Archie finds out about David, he rants and raves, until Pinky asks if his opinion means anything. Archie, citing Pinky's circumstances, says his opinion means more than anyone else's. Pinky tells his son's story, and offers David the handshake that he says his son would have given. As usual, Archie does not take defeat well.
December 25, 1978, 40 years ago: Or, rather, on the 24th: It's Christmas Eve On Sesame Street. Bert doesn't have enough money to buy a Christmas present for Ernie. So he sells his beloved paper-clip collection to Harold "Mr." Hooper, and uses the money to buy a soap dish for Ernie's beloved Rubber Duckie.
But Ernie doesn't have enough money to buy a present for Bert, either, so he sells his Duckie to Mr. Hooper, and uses the money to buy a cigar box, which he thinks would be perfect for storing Bert's collection.
Then Mr. Hooper comes over and gives them presents: Bert gets his paper clips back, and Ernie gets his Duckie back. The boys, feeling guilty, tell Mr. Hooper – who's Jewish, and has been wished a Happy Hanukkah by Bob – that they're sorry they didn't get him anything. He tells the boys, "I got the best Christmas present ever: I got to see that everybody got exactly what they wanted."
Another main plotline is Oscar the Grouch's cruel question to Big Bird: How does big fat Santa Claus get down those skinny chimneys? As it turns out, it doesn't matter how: Apparently, he does it.
The other, much funnier subplot, tells of Cookie Monster trying to contact Santa Claus, to ask Big Red to bring him cookies for Christmas. The problem is, Cook keeps eating his means of communication. First, he ends up eating his pencil. Then he tries to type, but the typewriter keys remind him of raisins, and then the paper reminds him of fortune cookies. Finally, he tries to call Santa on the phone, but the ends of the receiver look like "cuppy-cakes" to him. Oddly, he claims to be allergic to peanut butter cookies and hazelnut cookies.
Bert and Cookie Monster were puppets operated by Frank Oz, Ernie by Muppets creator Jim Henson. Mr. Hooper was played by Will Lee, and Bob by Bob McGrath. And Carroll Spinney played both Big Bird and Oscar. He turns 85 on the day after this Christmas, and has finally retired from wearing the Big Bird costume. But he still voices both characters.
Also on this day, Mindy McConnell (Pam Dawber) has to explain Christmas to alien Mork from Ork (Robin Williams). This episode of Mork & Mindy is titled, naturally, "Mork's First Christmas." Morgan Fairchild guest-stars.
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December 25, 1980: Hazzard County Executive Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg (Sorrell Boke) hires a trio of criminals to hijack a load of Christmas trees bound for the Georgia locale, knowing that Bo and Luke Duke (John Schneider and Tom Wopat) were responsible for the deliveries, and for the receipt of a $500 down payment. (About $1,460 in today's money.)
With the community convinced that the Duke Boys had stolen the funds, the crooks each dress as Santa Claus and break into Hogg's safe to retrieve the stolen money. Bo, Luke, their cousin Daisy (Catherine Bach) and their mechanic friend Cooter Davenport (Ben Jones) eventually team to give Hogg and the bad guys a lesson in confusion.
In the end, Hogg -- who has been Scroogelike throughout the episode -- gets a lesson in the meaning of the season. This episode of The Dukes of Hazzard is titled "The Great Santa Claus Chase."
December 25, 1982: Chicago Police Detective Neal Washington (Taurean Blacque) tries to make amends with the widow of a liquor store owner that he accidentally killed while trying to foil a robbery. Another Detective, Michael "Mick" Belker (Bruce Weitz), goes undercover as Santa Claus. This episode of Hill Street Blues is titled "Santaclaustrophobia." That title would also be used for a 2003 episode of The King of Queens.
Also on this day, Philadelphia commodities broker Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) learns of the scam pulled by Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche); and that his apparent tormentor, Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy), is also about to become a victim of the scam.
He teams up with his butler Coleman (Denholm Elliott) and his prostitute girlfriend Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), so that he and Billy Ray, and the Dukes (definitely richer and meaner than the "Duke Boys" of Hazzard), will be Trading Places.
December 25, 1988, 30 years ago: New York Police Detective John McClane goes to Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife Holly, at the same time that Hans Gruber and his terrorists decide to rob her company of $640 million in bonds -- about $1.34 billion in today's money. The film is Die Hard. Ho ho ho and yippie-kai-yay.
I've gotten into debates as to whether Die Hard is "a Christmas movie." I say it isn't, because, while it takes place on Christmas Eve, and Christmas decorations are shown, almost none of the usual Christmas tropes are used. There's no reference to the Nativity, or to Santa or any of his entourage, and the only Christmas song played is "Christmas in Hollis" by Run-DMC, near the beginning. Vaughn Monroe's version of "Let It Snow" plays over the closing credits, but, as I've noted before, that song has nothing to do with Christmas.
Also on this day, the extended Tanner family of San Francisco gets stuck at the snow-covered airport on Christmas. Middle daughter Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) is convinced that she won't get any Christmas presents, because now, Santa Claus won't be able to find her. But Santa shows up at the airport. At first, she thinks it's actually "Uncle" Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier) in disguise. It isn't.
This episode of Full House is titled "Our Very First Christmas Show," and it also features the first kiss between actual uncle Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos) and Rebecca Donaldson (Lori Loughlin), co-host of the show-within-the-show Wake Up San Francisco along with Stephanie's father Danny (Bob Saget). Jesse and Rebecca, of course, eventually get married. Sorrell Booke, who played Boss Hogg on The Dukes of Hazzard, guest-stars.
December 25, 1989: Married... with Children does a takeoff on It's a Wonderful Life. Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) gets shocked into unconsciousness while working on his Christmas lights, and is visited by a rather unlikely guardian angel, played by Sam Kinison. He gets to see what the world would be like if he had never been born. As it turned out, much better for Peg (Katey Sagal). Unable to stand the thought of his family happier without him, Al wants to live again.
And the 3rd film in National Lampoon's Vacation series, Christmas Vacation, takes place. Chevy Chase again leads the Griswold clan of Chicago, but, this time, they're staying home for the holidays.
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December 25, 1990: The film Home Alone takes place. Compared to Nicolae Ceausescu and Billy Martin the year before, the Wet Bandits, played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, get off considerably easier, despite being tormented by Kevin McCallister, the child protector of the home they were invading in Shermer, Illinois. Kevin was played by Macaulay Culkin.
Also on this day, on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will Smith (played by Will Smith) spends his 1st Christmas in the Los Angeles suburb of Bel-Air. He wants to make himself feel a little more at home, and give his cousin Ashley Banks (Tatyana M. Ali) a taste of a real Christmas, so he decorates the Banks home in flashy, non-Home Owners Association approved decorations.
Naturally, the whole neighborhood -- which includes the newly-crowned Heavyweight Champion of the World, Evander Holyfield, who plays himself -- comes out in protest. Eventually, a group of neighborhood kids comes by to bestow an award for the best Christmas decorations in Bel-Air to the Banks and their "eyesore," because it has the whimsy of a child's idea of Christmas. The HOA gives up the fight, and Will chips away at another snobby Bel-Air tradition.
December 25, 1993, 25 years ago: New York Police Detective Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) is not the first man you would think of to play Santa Claus at a Christmas party, but he does it. James Martinez (Nicholas Turturro) gets his shield, promoting him to Detective.
And Detective John Kelly (David Caruso) visits his mother at a nursing home. Her Alzheimer's-affected mind has her going back and forth between seeing her son as the man he is, and also as her husband, also a detective named John Kelly, who'd been killed in the line of duty years earlier.
This episode of NYPD Blue was titled "From Hare to Eternity," for a subplot in which Detective Greg Medavoy (Gordon Clapp) discovers that a cat living in the 15th Precinct house has eaten a rabbit he'd wanted to bring home to his kids.
Also on this day, Chicago-based toy company executive Scott Calvin accidentally causes the death of Santa Claus, and finds a note in Big Red's pocket: "If something should happen to me, put on the suit. The reindeer will known what to do." Scott does this, and gets taken to the remaining houses, and puts the gifts in the stockings. He is then taken to the North Pole, where he is told that, now, he is Santa.
Soon, he finds he is putting on a lot of weight, his hair is turning white, he can't stop himself from growing a beard, and he begins to develop Santa's powers. This is told in the early part of the film The Santa Clause. Scott is played by Tim Allen.
December 25, 1994: It's been a year since Scott Calvin became Santa, and now, he's fully prepared to go on his 1st real run. But he ends up getting arrested, and the elves have to, figuratively and literally, bail him out. This enables him to reconcile with, if not win back, his ex-wife, and concludes The Santa Clause.
Elsewhere in Tim Allen's ouevre, Tim Taylor has to tell his son Randy, who wants to spend Christmas at a ski lodge with his friends, "Christmas isn't about being with people you like! It's about being with your family!" The show was Home Improvement, Randy was played by Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
"Tim the Tool Man" could use some of Superman's invulnerability. However, on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Big Blue (Dean Cain) has his hands full. This episode, titled "Seasons Greedings," adapts the Superman villain Winslow P. Schott, the Toyman, for the small screen. Instead of the Ben Franklin-ish appearance of the comic book villain, this Toyman, a man fired from his job designing toys, is played by Sherman Hemsley. So he invents toys that spray a substance that makes people greedy, and makes adults act like children -- and, as it turns out, Kryptonians are not immune.
With help from Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher), things get straightened out, Schott sees the error of his ways, and he even gets a date -- who is played by Hemsley's former TV wife, Isabel Sanford. Dick Van Patten (as a Santa), comedian Dom Irrera, and Dean's mother Sharon Thomas Cain also appear.
In the fictional Chicago satellite town of Lanford, Illinois, Becky Healey (Sarah Chalke, having replaced Lecy Goranson in the role), daughter of title character Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr), gets a job at Bunz (a ripoff of Hooters) to help put her husband Mark (Glenn Quinn) through college.
Becky's father Dan (John Goodman) and husband have never really gotten along, but, together, they put up Christmas decorations in such a fashion that it gives this episode its title: "White Trash Christmas." Why? To protest the neighborhood's newly-installed "white twinkle lights only" rule. That this plot was a twist on the aforementioned Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode seems to have escaped the Roseanne writers and producers.
December 25, 1997: We find out what Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) did when he, you know, actually worked. He worked at H&H Bagels -- which existed in real life, until going out of business in 2012. He and his fellow employees went on strike 12 years earlier, demanding an hourly rage that has now become the New York State minimum wage. Kramer goes back to work, but soon quits.
The Seinfeld gang's, uh, friend, dentist Tim Whatley (Bryan Cranston, breaking naughty if not outright bad), hosts a Hanukkah party. Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who has an on-again-off-again relationship with him, can't believe Tim is still Jewish. Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld) says, "It's a breeze without the parents."
In a previous episode, Jerry came to the conclusion that Watley had converted just so he could tell Jewish jokes and use Yiddish words with impunity. Asked by a priest, "This offends you as a Jew?" Jerry says, "No, it offends me as a comedian!"
And George Costanza (Jason Alexander) has to deal with his father Frank (Jerry Stiller) reviving, upon urging from Kramer, his former, noncommercial December holiday. "This is the best Festivus ever!" he yells during "The Feats of Strength." This episode is titled "The Strike."
December 25, 1998, 20 years ago: Just Shoot Me! airs "How the Finch Stole Christmas," narrated by Kelsey Grammer (Frasier Crane on Cheers and Frasier), who uses his basso profundo voice to sing "You're a Mean One, Mr. Finch." But Dennis Finch (David Spade) has (roughly) the same thing happen to him that the Grinch did.
The episode also has references to It's a Wonderful Life and, with Elliot DiMauro (Enrico Colantoni) looking a lot like ol' Chuck thanks to his bald head and his shirt, A Charlie Brown Christmas.
December 25, 1999: White House Director of Communications Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) discovers that a homeless man, who'd received a winter coat that Toby had donated, has died, and is a Korean War veteran. Toby uses his position to get him a military funeral and burial at Arlington National Cemetery. President Bartlet (Martin Sheen, as stated earlier) isn't happy about how it was done, but allows it.
His secretary, Delores Landingham (Kathryn Joosten), attends the funeral, and tells Toby that her late husband had also served in the Korean War, and that their twin sons Andrew and Simon had been killed in Vietnam -- on Christmas Eve, 1970. The episode of The West Wing is titled "In Excelsis Deo."
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December 25, 2000: A darker episode of The West Wing, titled "Noel," telling of how Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Lyman was dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, after being the person most seriously hurt in the recent assassination attempt on President Bartlet. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma appears as himself, and his performance triggers the memory of the police and ambulance sirens from the attempt.
Bradley Whitford won an Emmy for playing Josh in this episode. Near the end of it, Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer) tells Josh the story about a man who falls into a hole, and puts Josh at ease by saying, "As long as I got a job, you got a job."
December 25, 2001: Or, rather, 2 days before. In "Bartlet For America," a Congressional hearing into whether President Bartlet committed any crimes in keeping his multiple sclerosis from the public focuses on Leo, who flashes back to the 1st Bartlet campaign.
Before a shocking truth can be revealed, the Republican Counsel on the committee, Cliff Calley (Mark Feuerstein), recommends that they break for Christmas. This buys time for a solution, and both the President and Leo end up keeping their jobs, at least through the end of the 1st term.
Also on this day, it's been 8 years since Scott Calvin became Santa Claus, and he's doing very well at it. But he begins to lose his powers, and even his look. It turns out that Santa has to be married. It's "The Mrs. Clause."
This is confirmed at a meeting of The Council of Legendary Elders: Aisha Tyler as Mother Nature, Peter Boyle as Father Time, Jay Thomas as the Easter Bunny, Kevin Pollak as Cupid, Art LaFleur (Babe Ruth in The Sandlot) as a rather masculine Tooth Fairy (preceding Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the role by a few years), and Michael Dorn (Worf in Star Trek) as The Sandman.
This brings up the question: What happened to all the previous Mrs. Clauses? Including the wife of the Santa that Scott accidentally killed on Christmas '93? Was he already a widower? Or is his wife out for revenge?
Actually, that plot, with her attempt to sabotage Scott's attempt to woo his son's principal, Carol Newman (Elizabeth Mitchell), would have been a better story for The Santa Clause 2 than his attempt to build a robotic substitute Santa to stand in for him, resulting in near-disaster, actually was.
December 25, 2002: Now re-elected -- it was never explained on the show why Presidential elections were now taking place in even-numbered non-leap years -- Bartlet has an old problem crop up.
Washington Post White House correspondent Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfield), who has a flirtatious relationship with White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney), arrives in a Santa Claus suit, and tells her he knows about the assassination of a foreign defense minister (and brother of the prime minister) who ran a terrorist group that intended to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge -- except that, in West Wing World, "their 9/11" was prevented. (The series would close by showing C.J. and Danny married with a baby.)
Meanwhile, we discover that Toby was born 2 days before Christmas 1954, and his father, Julius "Julie" Ziegler (Jerry Adler), an ex-con due to having worked for the long-defunct Brooklyn-based Jewish organized-crime outfit Murder, Incorporated, visits -- Toby can't figure out how, with a criminal record, his father got past White House security -- and they have to tie up loose ends. The episode is titled "Holy Night."
Also on this day, The Santa Claus 3: The Escape Clause takes place. Martin Short plays Jack Frost, who tricks Scott Calvin, whose wife Carol (who became Mrs. Claus at the end of the 2nd film) is about to have a baby (And where are all the children the various Santas have had through the ages?), into renouncing his post.
This creates an alternate timeline where Scott is now boss of his toy company, but his family is in ruins, and Jack is Santa, doing to the North Pole what Mr. Potter did to Bedford Falls. Things do get fixed, though.
December 25, 2003, 15 years ago: The Bartlets, President Jed and First Lady Abbey (Stockard Channing), are still dealing with the repercussions -- including with each other -- of the kidnapping of Zoey (Elisabeth Moss) the preceding Spring. It is not clear whether daughters Liz (Annabeth Gish) and Ellie (Nina Siemaszko) will come to the White House for Christmas. In the end, they all do.
Jed remembers a trip to Egypt: "Saw the Pyramids and Luxor, and then headed up into the Sinai. We had a guide, a Bedouin man, who called me 'Abu el Banat.' And whenever we'd meet another Bedouin, he'd introduce me as 'Abu el Banat.' And the Bedouin would laugh and laugh, and offer me a cup of tea. And I'd go to pay them for the tea, and they wouldn't let me. 'Abu el Banat' means 'Father of daughters.' They thought the tea was the least they could do." "Abu el Banat" is also the title of the episode.
In the Los Angeles suburbs of Orange County, California, the setting of the teen angst drama The O.C., mixed Christian and Jewish families celebrate a combination of Christmas and Hannukkah, which they call "Chrismukkah," which is also the title of the episode. The way it's explained is supposedly hilarious. I say, "supposedly," because I've never seen it.
December 25, 2005: The West Wing skipped over an entire year of the Bartlet Presidency, and jumped ahead to the end of Year 7 for an episode titled "Impact Winter." While the President suffers a paralyzing multiple sclerosis attack on a state visit to China, there is concern that an asteroid might hit Earth, resulting in the worst-case scenario, the phenomenon described by the episode's title.
While both crises are averted, Josh realizes that Year 8 is going to be an election year, and someone has to take the baton for Year 9. He thinks he's found his man, Congressman Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits), and shows up on Santos' doorstep in Houston, as a "ghost of Christmas yet to come." There was no Christmas episode for Season 7/Year 8.
Elsewhere in Washington, The Jeffersonian Institute is quarantined due to an outbreak of Valley Fever. (This is a real fungus-borne disease, which affects plants, but can affect people as well.) This forces Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) to focus on a murder.
Also, the Jeffersonian gang finds out that Billy Gibbons of the band ZZ Top (who plays a fictional version of himself) is the father of one of their own, Dr. Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin). This episode of Bones is titled "The Man in the Fallout Shelter."
Christmas 2008, 10 years ago: For the 1st time, NCIS airs a Christmas episode. The Gibbs team is asked to investigate a long-ago murder, of a sailor whose death certificate had been signed by Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum). Guest stars include Peter Coyote, Kay Lenz, and Eric Stonestreet, in the role that likely got him hired as Cameron Tucker for Modern Family.
December 25, 2012: Mystery writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and New York Police Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) spend their 1st Christmas together as a couple, after finding out who killed a man dressed as Santa Claus, on Castle.
December 25, 2265: A Christmas party is held about the starship USS Enterprise. Captain James T. Kirk, (William Shatner) hooks up with a scientist, the aptly-named Dr. Helen Noel. This was referenced in the Star Trek episode "Dagger of the Mind," taking place the following year.
So Christmas does survive all the trouble of the 21st, 22nd and early 23rd Centuries in the Star Trek timeline. But this is the closest the Trek canon has ever come to having a "Christmas episode."
Dr. Noel was played by Marianna Hill, born Marianna Schwarzkopf. Still alive at age 77, she was a cousin of Norman Schwarzkopf, the leading field General in the U.S. Army in the Persian Gulf War.
In the 1994 film Star Trek: Generations, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) ends up trapped in the Nexus in 2371. The Nexus shows him a fantasy of a family, meant to be an alternate version of his own, at Christmas in his hometown of La Barre, France. But it wasn't real, and he got out, and saved the Veridian solar system.
This was on an episode of The Untouchables. Oddly, it did not air anywhere near Christmas, but rather on September 25, 1962. Ness was a real person, but this story is entirely fictional. He was played by Robert Stack on the TV series, and by Kevin Costner in the 1987 film version.
December 25, 1939: Ralphie Parker actually gets his "Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass and this thing which tells time built right in to the stock." (This particular model did not exist in real life.) And doggone it if, but for the grace of God and his glasses, he doesn't come near to really shooting his eye out!
The film is A Christmas Story, narrated by the author of the original story, Jean Shepherd (who has a cameo as a parent standing on line with his son for Santa Claus in the store). Shepherd grew up in Hammond, Indiana, outside Chicago, although he was older than Ralphie, as 1939 was the year he graduated from Hammond High School.
In the film, Cleveland stands in for both Chicago and Hammond. Cleveland's Public Square is easily identifiable, with its big Civil War memorial in the center, the Terminal Tower (built in 1930), and Higbee's department store, which has since been turned into Horseshoe Casino Cleveland, although the Higbee's sign seen in the movie is still there.
Ralphie is played by Peter Billingsley. He is now 45, and while he still acts, having appeared in the 1st Iron Man film, he mainly produces and directs now, including the Netflix series F Is for Family.
In 2018, just 6 years after the Sandy Hook Massacre, only someone who doesn't understand anything about parenting -- or Christmas -- would give a child a firearm as a Christmas present.
December 25, 1945: Billy Bailey, co-director of the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan, of Bedford Falls, New York, with his late brother Peter's son George, loses $8,000 meant for the firm's accounts -- about $111,000 in today's money. Unable to come up with the money, George runs into one awful occurrence after another, and wishes he'd never been born.
An angel named Clarence Goodbody shows him what the world (or, at least, his home town) would have been like if that had been the case. George changes his mind, and finds that all the people he'd selflessly helped over the years have come to pay him back, to show him that, in the way that matters, he's "the richest man in town."
The film is It's a Wonderful Life, and George is played by James Stewart, Billy by Thomas Wilson, and Clarence by Henry Travers.
In the "bank run" sequence, set in 1932, $242 then would be $4,485 today; $20 would be $371; $17.50 would be $324; and the $2.00 the Baileys ended up with would be $37.06.
Here's what I don't get: George knows how Sam Wainwright can be reached. The bank examiner knows who Sam is, and knows that his word is good. Why doesn't George just wire Sam, and have him send a telegram not to George, but to the bank examiner, saying to expect a money order after the holiday? End of problem.
ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel recently showed what the film would have looked like from the perspective of the villain, Henry Potter, played by Lionel Barrymore. He was a brother of Ethel Barrymore and John Barrymore, whose granddaughter is Drew Barrymore.
On the same day, the Corleone family deals with the shooting and near-death of patriarch Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), in the 1969 novel and the 1972 film The Godfather.
December 25, 1947: A man known only as Kris Kringle, hired to work as Santa Claus at the main Macy's store in New York's Herald Square, is committed, and his lawyer, Fred Gailey, can find only one way to get this harmless, if apparently delusional, old man out of the psych ward: By proving to a court that, just as Kris claims, he really is Santa Claus. It works, and Fred wins the heart of Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara), who had hired Kris, and her daughter Susan (Natalie Wood, 8 years old at the time of filming but playing 6).
Miracle On 34th Street was remade in 1973 and 1994. In those versions, Santa was played by Sebastian Cabot and Richard Attenborough, respectively; the lawyer by David Hartman and Dylan McDermott (by then starring as a lawyer on The Practice); Mrs. Walker by Jane Alexander and Elizabeth Perkins; and Susan by Suzanne Davidson and Mara Wilson.
For the 1973 version, the lawyer's name was changed to Bill Schafner, and Mrs. Walker's name was changed from Doris to Karen -- definitely not to be confused with the Karen Walker played by Megan Mullally on Will & Grace!
For the 1994 version, the lawyer is named Bryan Bedford, Mrs. Walker goes back to being named Doris (or, rather, "Dorey"), and, this time, fictional store names had to be used: Macy's had refused to give permission to use their name, and became "Cole's"; while Gimbel's had gone out of business, so the scriptwriters used "Shoppers Express."
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December 25, 1950: Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, a surgeon with the U.S. Army at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Uijeongbu, Korea, has to leave a Christmas party there to attend to a wounded soldier in a foxhole. While still wearing his Santa Claus costume. This was on an episode of M*A*S*H. Hawkeye is played by Alan Alda.
December 25, 1951: On another episode of M*A*S*H, Hawkeye pays tribute to the camp's chaplain, 1st Lieutenant (later Captain) Francis Mulcahy (played by William Christopher). And the company clerk, Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly (Gary Burghoff) tells another surgeon, Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers) that, on Father Mulcahy's recommendation, he'd written to Charles' mother, and asked her to send something that would remind the down-in-the-dumps Boston Brahmin of happier times. She sent his old toboggan cap, and Charles was overjoyed. This time, Santa was played by Captain B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell).
December 25, 1952: On yet another episode of M*A*S*H, Hawkeye, B.J., Major Margaret Houlihan (Loretta Swit), and Father Mulcahy are called away from Mulcahy's party for the local orphans, to tend to a wounded soldier. The soldier has no chance, but when Margaret finds a picture of his family in his pocket, B.J. goes back to work, saying, "A family's Christmas wreaths should be green, not black."
Despite their efforts, the patient dies at 11:25 PM. Hawkeye, seeing his best friend take it hard -- clearly thinking of his wife, Peg, and daughter, Erin, back home in the San Francisco suburb of Mill Valley, California -- moves the clock ahead, so that the time of death will read 12:05 AM, December 26.
Farrell also wrote and directed this episode. Harry Morgan played the commanding officer, Colonel Sherman Potter, and, in this episode, Potter played Santa Claus.
On yet another episode of M*A*S*H, the MASHers are celebrating Christmas with British soldiers, who tell them of the tradition of the day after Christmas, Boxing Day, which in England is celebrated with two things. Neither of which turns out to be prizefighting, as is found out by a confused Corporal (later Sergeant) Maxwell Q. Klinger (Jamie Farr), a former corpsman who, by this point, has replaced Radar as company clerk. One is noblemen trading places with their servants, to boost morale. The British Army matches this by having the officers and enlisted men switch jobs.
The other Boxing Day tradition, not mentioned on the show, is, as I mentioned earlier, nearby "football clubs" playing each other in "derby" matches. Although there was an episode that had wounded British soldiers mentioning their country's FA Cup, including Arsenal defeating Manchester United in a match. Arsenal did not, however, win an FA Cup Final during the Korean War, their best performance being losing the 1952 Final to Newcastle United. They won the Final in 1950, right before the war, and took the 1953 League title, the last one before the war ended.
Potter thinks the Boxing Day switcheroo is a great idea. So he becomes company clerk, and names Klinger commanding officer. Surgeon Hawkeye and Father Mulcahy become hospital orderlies. Surgeon B.J. and head nurse Margaret are assigned K.P. (kitchen patrol). Charles, a gourmet who's always complaining about the quality of Army food (though, to be fair, they all did), is assigned to be the cook.
Then problems arise, and Klinger is in way over his head. And then casualties arrive, and Hawkeye says, "Just this morning, I was a humble orderly. And now, I'm doing abdominal surgery."
The Korean War lasted 3 years, plus 1 month. But M*A*S*H had 4 Christmas episodes. Clearly, those British soldiers had to have arrived in the half-hour remaining of Christmas 1952, between the time B.J. lost the battle to save that soldier and midnight. It couldn't be 1950, since it would have been Captain "Trapper" John McIntyre (Wayne Rogers) in B.J.'s place, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) in Potter's, and Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville) in Charles'. And it couldn't be 1951, since Klinger has already replaced Radar as company clerk.
Then problems arise, and Klinger is in way over his head. And then casualties arrive, and Hawkeye says, "Just this morning, I was a humble orderly. And now, I'm doing abdominal surgery."
The Korean War lasted 3 years, plus 1 month. But M*A*S*H had 4 Christmas episodes. Clearly, those British soldiers had to have arrived in the half-hour remaining of Christmas 1952, between the time B.J. lost the battle to save that soldier and midnight. It couldn't be 1950, since it would have been Captain "Trapper" John McIntyre (Wayne Rogers) in B.J.'s place, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) in Potter's, and Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville) in Charles'. And it couldn't be 1951, since Klinger has already replaced Radar as company clerk.
December 25, 1953: On television, Father Xavier Rojas (Harry Bartell -- far be it for a TV network in the early '50s get a Hispanic actor to play a Hispanic character) discovers that the statue of the Infant Jesus is stolen from its crib at the Old Mission Plaza Church in Los Angeles. The statue's worth is only a few dollars, but it is of great sentimental value for the parish.
L.A. Police Sergeant Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and Officer Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) promise to try to get it back before Mass on Christmas Day, but this means that they have less than 24 hours to catch the thief. As was always said on Dragnet, "The story you have just heard is true. The names have been changed, to protect the innocent."
The episode is title "The Big Little Jesus." When Dragnet returned in color in the 1960s, a 1967 episode basically redid the story, under the title "The Christmas Story," this time with Detective Friday teaming with Detective Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan -- 8 years before he first played Colonel Potter).
December 25, 1955: Not having enough money to buy his wife Alice a proper Christmas present, Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden pawns his bowling ball. And on Christmas Eve, he finds Alice has given him a proper bag for his bowling ball.
This Honeymooners episode, "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," was based on "The Gift of the Magi." Ralph was played by Jackie Gleason, Alice by Audrey Meadows.
A year earlier, when "The Honeymooners" was still just a sketch on the hourlong The Jackie Gleason Show, Gleason played most of his characters: Ralph, Reginald Van Gleason III, Joe the Bartender, Fenwick Babbitt, and the mute, pantomiming Pour Soul. Noticeably absent was "Charlie Bratton the Loudmouth."
Halfway across the country, in Milwaukee, Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) discovers that his pal Arthur Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler) has nowhere to go on Christmas. Naturally, Richie proves that, on occasion, he can be every bit as cool as the Fonz, and invites him to have dinner with the family. Happy Days, indeed.
This episode, titled "Guess Who's Coming to Christmas," aired in 1974 -- and it was eventually established that the show took place 19 years in the past; hence, 1955.
December 25, 1960: Fired after arriving for work late and sloshed, department store Santa Henry Corwin wanders into an alley and finds a bag filled with gifts. The spirit of the holiday is one of the few bright spots in Henry's life, and as he begins handing out the gifts, he realizes the bag is able to produce any gift a recipient requests. After a brief jail stint that ends with Henry changing the mind of his mean, skeptical former boss, he continues handing out gifts.
Soon, one of his giftees points out that Henry has taken nothing from the bag himself. All he wants? To continue playing Santa every year. The wish is granted when he finds an elf with a reindeer-driven sleigh waiting, to whisk him off to the North Pole.
This was an episode of The Twilight Zone, titled "Night of the Meek." Henry was played by Art Carney. In 1988, Carney would appear in my favorite Christmas-themed commercial of all time, despite it being for a product I don't like, Coca-Cola: "Grandpa's magic pinecone!" The grandson was played by Brian Bonsall, who played Andy Keaton on Family Ties and Worf's son Alexander Rozhenko on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He stopped acting while in high school, and has been in punk bands ever since.
Also on this day, in Mayberry, North Carolina, department store owner and resident Scrooge Ben Weaver demands that Sheriff Andy Taylor lock up local moonshiner Jim Muggins. Muggins' family, as well as Andy's, gather to celebrate the holiday with Jim. After witnessing how Jim and Andy and their broods can turn the jailhouse stay into a warm, inviting celebration, Weaver gets himself arrested so he can be part of the fun, and he ends the holiday by getting a nip of Jim's hooch himself.
This was the only Christmas episode of The Andy Griffith Show, and was titled "The Christmas Story." Andy was played by Andy Griffith, Deputy (and substitute Santa Claus) Barney Fife by Don Knotts, Ben by Will Wright, and Jim by Sam Edwards.
December 25, 1964: Rudolph, with his nose so bright, guides Santa's sleigh tonight, according to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, based on the 1947 song, the 1st animated holiday special by Rankin-Bass Productions.
Also on this day, the personal life of Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) gets messy. That of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) gets even messier than it already was. And a Christmas party at the ad agency goes very wrong. This episode of Mad Men, which aired incongruously on August 1, 2010, is titled "Christmas Comes But Once a Year."
December 25, 1965: Charlie Brown, the lead character of Charles Schulz' comic strip Peanuts, wasn't the 1st fictional character to wonder what Christmas was all about, nor the last. Nor was he the first nor the last to get his Christmas hopes laughed at.
But, as his best friend Linus Van Pelt (voiced by Chris Shea) points out (after quoting The Gospel According to Luke, Chapter 2, Verses 8 through 14, to remind us of "what Christmas is all about"), like the scrawny little tree that he'd found, ol' Chuck (voiced by Peter Robbins) just needed a little love. A Charlie Brown Christmas was the 1st Peanuts special, and it remains the best.
December 25, 1966: Agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin have to protect Chairman Georgi Koz, a foreign leader, who looks suspiciously like Nikita Khrushchev, at the United Nations. This episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was titled "The Jingle Bells Affair."
Solo was played by Robert Vaughn, Kuryakin by David McCallum, and Koz by Akim Tamiroff, who was born in the part of the Russian Empire that is now the former "Soviet republic" of Georgia, but was of Armenian descent. Vaughn died in 2017. He was the last surviving member of the titular heroes in the 1960 film The Magnificent Seven.
Also on this day, as aspiring actress Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) ends her shift as an elf for a department store Santa Claus, she tells her boyfriend Donald Hollinger (Ted Bessell) about her stint as a teacher in a boarding school trying to bring good tidings and joy to a boy who won't be able to go home for Christmas. This episode of That Girl was titled "Christmas and the Hard-Luck Kid." It was written by James L. Brooks. (Remember that for a few moments.)
That Girl premiered on September 8 of that year -- as did Star Trek.
December 25, 1968, 50 years ago: The Arnold family of The Wonder Years -- the location is never specified, although show writer Neal Marlens wanted it to be set in his hometown of Huntington, Long Island, New York, hence Kevin often wears a Jets jacket -- is disappointed that family patriarch Jack (Dan Lauria) didn't take the opportunity of Christmas to buy the family's 1st color television set.
Kevin (played by Fred Savage, adult Kevin's voiceover by Daniel Stern) says that said set was bought in 1970 -- meaning the writers did their research, because that was the 1st year in which more than half of all American households had color TV.
December 25, 1969: Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) loses her voice, just days before a lucky chance to sing a solo at her suburban Los Angeles church's Christmas service. Youngest daughter Cindy (Susan Olsen) hears the kid in front of her in line ask Santa Claus for a jillion things, so she tells Santa that all she wants for Christmas is for her Mom to get her voice back. She does, singing "O Come, All Ye Faithful," making this episode of The Brady Bunch, "The Voice of Christmas," a happy one.
This was also the year that Rankin-Bass debuted their special Frosty the Snowman. Had the character not already had his song -- which doesn't mention Christmas at all -- played endlessly at Christmastime, this special would have been enough to irrevocably link him with the holiday.
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December 25, 1970: Felix Unger, a commercial photographer -- portraits a specialty -- asks his roommate, New York Herald sports columnist Oscar Madison, to play Ebenezer Scrooge in a neighborhood production of A Christmas Carol.
Oscar bah-humbugs the idea, until his awful diet produces a nightmare in which he actually is Scrooge, Felix becomes Jacob Marley, and "Ebenezer Madison" sees his Christmas Past, his Christmas Present, and a possible Christmas Future. This convinces him to do the play.
This episode of The Odd Couple was titled "Scrooge Gets an Oscar." Felix was played by Tony Randall, and Oscar by Jack Klugman. Sadly, Klugman died on a Christmas Eve, December 24, 2012. Randall died in 2004.
Also on this day, Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) has to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at Minneapolis TV station WJM-Channel 12, and so it seems that her favorite holiday is completely ruined.
However, on her Christmas Eve shift, her coworkers come to the rescue, bringing the holiday spirit to her, and proving that even if the holiday isn't in line with tradition, it can still be a wonderful night full of bright spirits.
This episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show is titled "Christmas and the Hard-Luck Kid II": It was a reference to the aforementioned episode of That Girl, written by James L. Brooks. Brooks also wrote this episode, or rather co-wrote it with Allan Burns.
This is also the year of Rankin-Bass' special Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, with an origin story for Big Red, totally unconnected to any that had previously appeared.
December 25, 1971: "Christmas Day at the Bunkers'" in Flushing, Queens is not merry, as Archie (Carroll O'Connor) makes a mistake at work, sending an order to London, England when it should have been sent to London, Ontario. This costs him a Christmas bonus. This was the 1st Christmas episode of All In the Family.
December 25, 1973: In another All In the Family Christmas episode, titled "Edith's Christmas Story," Archie's wife Edith (Jean Stapleton) tries to keep the holiday going despite knowing that the doctor found a lump in her breast.
I don't know if this was the 1st time the word "breast" was used in prime time. Edith did survive the scare -- although Stapleton left the show (by then renamed Archie Bunker's Place) in 1980, and Edith's death was written into the series. No cause was given.
December 25, 1974: This was almost The Year Without a Santa Claus. Mickey Rooney, who voiced Kris Kringle in Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, reprises the role in this Rankin-Bass special, but he's not feelin' it this year. Shirley Booth, in what turns out to be her final acting role (she retired, and lived a few more years), narrates in character as Mrs. Claus.
This special also, many years before the Santa Clause movies did so, introduces Mother Nature into the Santa legend, and her sons, Snow Miser and Heat Miser.
December 25, 1976: Office of Scientific Intelligence Agent Steve Austin (Lee Majors), a former U.S. Air Force Colonel, test pilot and astronaut, discovers that an OSI project is being tampered with by a modern-day Scrooge. So The Six Million Dollar Man uses his enhancements to create the episode's title, "A Bionic Christmas Carol," and gets the man to mend his ways. Factoring in inflation, the $6 million it cost to "rebuild" Steve in 1973 would be about $33.4 million today.
Another superhero, Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter), faces down a holiday-season saboteur in the episode "The Deadly Toys."
Meanwhile, across the country, in Queens, it's Christmas dinner at the Bunkers' house on All In the Family. Gloria and Mike Stivic (Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner) invite David, an old friend of Mike's living in Canada, but choose not to tell Gloria's parents Archie and Edith that the reason David went to Canada is that he is, as the episode's title states, "The Draft Dodger." He was played by Renny Temple, who has mostly directed since the late 1980s.
Unlike most of these Christmas episodes, this one actually did air on a December 25, a day on which networks usually show reruns, thinking families will be eating Christmas dinner at the time, or show "family entertainment" films and specials.
Archie had also invited a friend, Pinky Peterson (Eugene Roche), whose son had asked him whether he should accept being drafted into the Army and fight in Vietnam, or run away to Canada. Pinky advised him to obey the law, and accept being drafted. Pinky's son was killed, making Pinky a "Gold Star Father." Also a widower, Pinky was thus alone on Christmas, and Archie, in a gesture of humanity not often seen from him, thought Pinky could use the company.
When Archie finds out about David, he rants and raves, until Pinky asks if his opinion means anything. Archie, citing Pinky's circumstances, says his opinion means more than anyone else's. Pinky tells his son's story, and offers David the handshake that he says his son would have given. As usual, Archie does not take defeat well.
December 25, 1978, 40 years ago: Or, rather, on the 24th: It's Christmas Eve On Sesame Street. Bert doesn't have enough money to buy a Christmas present for Ernie. So he sells his beloved paper-clip collection to Harold "Mr." Hooper, and uses the money to buy a soap dish for Ernie's beloved Rubber Duckie.
But Ernie doesn't have enough money to buy a present for Bert, either, so he sells his Duckie to Mr. Hooper, and uses the money to buy a cigar box, which he thinks would be perfect for storing Bert's collection.
Then Mr. Hooper comes over and gives them presents: Bert gets his paper clips back, and Ernie gets his Duckie back. The boys, feeling guilty, tell Mr. Hooper – who's Jewish, and has been wished a Happy Hanukkah by Bob – that they're sorry they didn't get him anything. He tells the boys, "I got the best Christmas present ever: I got to see that everybody got exactly what they wanted."
Another main plotline is Oscar the Grouch's cruel question to Big Bird: How does big fat Santa Claus get down those skinny chimneys? As it turns out, it doesn't matter how: Apparently, he does it.
The other, much funnier subplot, tells of Cookie Monster trying to contact Santa Claus, to ask Big Red to bring him cookies for Christmas. The problem is, Cook keeps eating his means of communication. First, he ends up eating his pencil. Then he tries to type, but the typewriter keys remind him of raisins, and then the paper reminds him of fortune cookies. Finally, he tries to call Santa on the phone, but the ends of the receiver look like "cuppy-cakes" to him. Oddly, he claims to be allergic to peanut butter cookies and hazelnut cookies.
Bert and Cookie Monster were puppets operated by Frank Oz, Ernie by Muppets creator Jim Henson. Mr. Hooper was played by Will Lee, and Bob by Bob McGrath. And Carroll Spinney played both Big Bird and Oscar. He turns 85 on the day after this Christmas, and has finally retired from wearing the Big Bird costume. But he still voices both characters.
Also on this day, Mindy McConnell (Pam Dawber) has to explain Christmas to alien Mork from Ork (Robin Williams). This episode of Mork & Mindy is titled, naturally, "Mork's First Christmas." Morgan Fairchild guest-stars.
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December 25, 1980: Hazzard County Executive Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg (Sorrell Boke) hires a trio of criminals to hijack a load of Christmas trees bound for the Georgia locale, knowing that Bo and Luke Duke (John Schneider and Tom Wopat) were responsible for the deliveries, and for the receipt of a $500 down payment. (About $1,460 in today's money.)
With the community convinced that the Duke Boys had stolen the funds, the crooks each dress as Santa Claus and break into Hogg's safe to retrieve the stolen money. Bo, Luke, their cousin Daisy (Catherine Bach) and their mechanic friend Cooter Davenport (Ben Jones) eventually team to give Hogg and the bad guys a lesson in confusion.
In the end, Hogg -- who has been Scroogelike throughout the episode -- gets a lesson in the meaning of the season. This episode of The Dukes of Hazzard is titled "The Great Santa Claus Chase."
December 25, 1982: Chicago Police Detective Neal Washington (Taurean Blacque) tries to make amends with the widow of a liquor store owner that he accidentally killed while trying to foil a robbery. Another Detective, Michael "Mick" Belker (Bruce Weitz), goes undercover as Santa Claus. This episode of Hill Street Blues is titled "Santaclaustrophobia." That title would also be used for a 2003 episode of The King of Queens.
Also on this day, Philadelphia commodities broker Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) learns of the scam pulled by Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche); and that his apparent tormentor, Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy), is also about to become a victim of the scam.
He teams up with his butler Coleman (Denholm Elliott) and his prostitute girlfriend Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), so that he and Billy Ray, and the Dukes (definitely richer and meaner than the "Duke Boys" of Hazzard), will be Trading Places.
December 25, 1988, 30 years ago: New York Police Detective John McClane goes to Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife Holly, at the same time that Hans Gruber and his terrorists decide to rob her company of $640 million in bonds -- about $1.34 billion in today's money. The film is Die Hard. Ho ho ho and yippie-kai-yay.
I've gotten into debates as to whether Die Hard is "a Christmas movie." I say it isn't, because, while it takes place on Christmas Eve, and Christmas decorations are shown, almost none of the usual Christmas tropes are used. There's no reference to the Nativity, or to Santa or any of his entourage, and the only Christmas song played is "Christmas in Hollis" by Run-DMC, near the beginning. Vaughn Monroe's version of "Let It Snow" plays over the closing credits, but, as I've noted before, that song has nothing to do with Christmas.
Also on this day, the extended Tanner family of San Francisco gets stuck at the snow-covered airport on Christmas. Middle daughter Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) is convinced that she won't get any Christmas presents, because now, Santa Claus won't be able to find her. But Santa shows up at the airport. At first, she thinks it's actually "Uncle" Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier) in disguise. It isn't.
This episode of Full House is titled "Our Very First Christmas Show," and it also features the first kiss between actual uncle Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos) and Rebecca Donaldson (Lori Loughlin), co-host of the show-within-the-show Wake Up San Francisco along with Stephanie's father Danny (Bob Saget). Jesse and Rebecca, of course, eventually get married. Sorrell Booke, who played Boss Hogg on The Dukes of Hazzard, guest-stars.
December 25, 1989: Married... with Children does a takeoff on It's a Wonderful Life. Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) gets shocked into unconsciousness while working on his Christmas lights, and is visited by a rather unlikely guardian angel, played by Sam Kinison. He gets to see what the world would be like if he had never been born. As it turned out, much better for Peg (Katey Sagal). Unable to stand the thought of his family happier without him, Al wants to live again.
And the 3rd film in National Lampoon's Vacation series, Christmas Vacation, takes place. Chevy Chase again leads the Griswold clan of Chicago, but, this time, they're staying home for the holidays.
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December 25, 1990: The film Home Alone takes place. Compared to Nicolae Ceausescu and Billy Martin the year before, the Wet Bandits, played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, get off considerably easier, despite being tormented by Kevin McCallister, the child protector of the home they were invading in Shermer, Illinois. Kevin was played by Macaulay Culkin.
Also on this day, on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will Smith (played by Will Smith) spends his 1st Christmas in the Los Angeles suburb of Bel-Air. He wants to make himself feel a little more at home, and give his cousin Ashley Banks (Tatyana M. Ali) a taste of a real Christmas, so he decorates the Banks home in flashy, non-Home Owners Association approved decorations.
Naturally, the whole neighborhood -- which includes the newly-crowned Heavyweight Champion of the World, Evander Holyfield, who plays himself -- comes out in protest. Eventually, a group of neighborhood kids comes by to bestow an award for the best Christmas decorations in Bel-Air to the Banks and their "eyesore," because it has the whimsy of a child's idea of Christmas. The HOA gives up the fight, and Will chips away at another snobby Bel-Air tradition.
December 25, 1993, 25 years ago: New York Police Detective Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) is not the first man you would think of to play Santa Claus at a Christmas party, but he does it. James Martinez (Nicholas Turturro) gets his shield, promoting him to Detective.
And Detective John Kelly (David Caruso) visits his mother at a nursing home. Her Alzheimer's-affected mind has her going back and forth between seeing her son as the man he is, and also as her husband, also a detective named John Kelly, who'd been killed in the line of duty years earlier.
This episode of NYPD Blue was titled "From Hare to Eternity," for a subplot in which Detective Greg Medavoy (Gordon Clapp) discovers that a cat living in the 15th Precinct house has eaten a rabbit he'd wanted to bring home to his kids.
Also on this day, Chicago-based toy company executive Scott Calvin accidentally causes the death of Santa Claus, and finds a note in Big Red's pocket: "If something should happen to me, put on the suit. The reindeer will known what to do." Scott does this, and gets taken to the remaining houses, and puts the gifts in the stockings. He is then taken to the North Pole, where he is told that, now, he is Santa.
Soon, he finds he is putting on a lot of weight, his hair is turning white, he can't stop himself from growing a beard, and he begins to develop Santa's powers. This is told in the early part of the film The Santa Clause. Scott is played by Tim Allen.
December 25, 1994: It's been a year since Scott Calvin became Santa, and now, he's fully prepared to go on his 1st real run. But he ends up getting arrested, and the elves have to, figuratively and literally, bail him out. This enables him to reconcile with, if not win back, his ex-wife, and concludes The Santa Clause.
Elsewhere in Tim Allen's ouevre, Tim Taylor has to tell his son Randy, who wants to spend Christmas at a ski lodge with his friends, "Christmas isn't about being with people you like! It's about being with your family!" The show was Home Improvement, Randy was played by Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
"Tim the Tool Man" could use some of Superman's invulnerability. However, on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Big Blue (Dean Cain) has his hands full. This episode, titled "Seasons Greedings," adapts the Superman villain Winslow P. Schott, the Toyman, for the small screen. Instead of the Ben Franklin-ish appearance of the comic book villain, this Toyman, a man fired from his job designing toys, is played by Sherman Hemsley. So he invents toys that spray a substance that makes people greedy, and makes adults act like children -- and, as it turns out, Kryptonians are not immune.
With help from Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher), things get straightened out, Schott sees the error of his ways, and he even gets a date -- who is played by Hemsley's former TV wife, Isabel Sanford. Dick Van Patten (as a Santa), comedian Dom Irrera, and Dean's mother Sharon Thomas Cain also appear.
In the fictional Chicago satellite town of Lanford, Illinois, Becky Healey (Sarah Chalke, having replaced Lecy Goranson in the role), daughter of title character Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr), gets a job at Bunz (a ripoff of Hooters) to help put her husband Mark (Glenn Quinn) through college.
Becky's father Dan (John Goodman) and husband have never really gotten along, but, together, they put up Christmas decorations in such a fashion that it gives this episode its title: "White Trash Christmas." Why? To protest the neighborhood's newly-installed "white twinkle lights only" rule. That this plot was a twist on the aforementioned Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode seems to have escaped the Roseanne writers and producers.
December 25, 1997: We find out what Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) did when he, you know, actually worked. He worked at H&H Bagels -- which existed in real life, until going out of business in 2012. He and his fellow employees went on strike 12 years earlier, demanding an hourly rage that has now become the New York State minimum wage. Kramer goes back to work, but soon quits.
The Seinfeld gang's, uh, friend, dentist Tim Whatley (Bryan Cranston, breaking naughty if not outright bad), hosts a Hanukkah party. Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who has an on-again-off-again relationship with him, can't believe Tim is still Jewish. Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld) says, "It's a breeze without the parents."
In a previous episode, Jerry came to the conclusion that Watley had converted just so he could tell Jewish jokes and use Yiddish words with impunity. Asked by a priest, "This offends you as a Jew?" Jerry says, "No, it offends me as a comedian!"
And George Costanza (Jason Alexander) has to deal with his father Frank (Jerry Stiller) reviving, upon urging from Kramer, his former, noncommercial December holiday. "This is the best Festivus ever!" he yells during "The Feats of Strength." This episode is titled "The Strike."
December 25, 1998, 20 years ago: Just Shoot Me! airs "How the Finch Stole Christmas," narrated by Kelsey Grammer (Frasier Crane on Cheers and Frasier), who uses his basso profundo voice to sing "You're a Mean One, Mr. Finch." But Dennis Finch (David Spade) has (roughly) the same thing happen to him that the Grinch did.
The episode also has references to It's a Wonderful Life and, with Elliot DiMauro (Enrico Colantoni) looking a lot like ol' Chuck thanks to his bald head and his shirt, A Charlie Brown Christmas.
December 25, 1999: White House Director of Communications Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) discovers that a homeless man, who'd received a winter coat that Toby had donated, has died, and is a Korean War veteran. Toby uses his position to get him a military funeral and burial at Arlington National Cemetery. President Bartlet (Martin Sheen, as stated earlier) isn't happy about how it was done, but allows it.
His secretary, Delores Landingham (Kathryn Joosten), attends the funeral, and tells Toby that her late husband had also served in the Korean War, and that their twin sons Andrew and Simon had been killed in Vietnam -- on Christmas Eve, 1970. The episode of The West Wing is titled "In Excelsis Deo."
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December 25, 2000: A darker episode of The West Wing, titled "Noel," telling of how Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Lyman was dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, after being the person most seriously hurt in the recent assassination attempt on President Bartlet. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma appears as himself, and his performance triggers the memory of the police and ambulance sirens from the attempt.
Bradley Whitford won an Emmy for playing Josh in this episode. Near the end of it, Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer) tells Josh the story about a man who falls into a hole, and puts Josh at ease by saying, "As long as I got a job, you got a job."
December 25, 2001: Or, rather, 2 days before. In "Bartlet For America," a Congressional hearing into whether President Bartlet committed any crimes in keeping his multiple sclerosis from the public focuses on Leo, who flashes back to the 1st Bartlet campaign.
Before a shocking truth can be revealed, the Republican Counsel on the committee, Cliff Calley (Mark Feuerstein), recommends that they break for Christmas. This buys time for a solution, and both the President and Leo end up keeping their jobs, at least through the end of the 1st term.
Also on this day, it's been 8 years since Scott Calvin became Santa Claus, and he's doing very well at it. But he begins to lose his powers, and even his look. It turns out that Santa has to be married. It's "The Mrs. Clause."
This is confirmed at a meeting of The Council of Legendary Elders: Aisha Tyler as Mother Nature, Peter Boyle as Father Time, Jay Thomas as the Easter Bunny, Kevin Pollak as Cupid, Art LaFleur (Babe Ruth in The Sandlot) as a rather masculine Tooth Fairy (preceding Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the role by a few years), and Michael Dorn (Worf in Star Trek) as The Sandman.
This brings up the question: What happened to all the previous Mrs. Clauses? Including the wife of the Santa that Scott accidentally killed on Christmas '93? Was he already a widower? Or is his wife out for revenge?
Actually, that plot, with her attempt to sabotage Scott's attempt to woo his son's principal, Carol Newman (Elizabeth Mitchell), would have been a better story for The Santa Clause 2 than his attempt to build a robotic substitute Santa to stand in for him, resulting in near-disaster, actually was.
December 25, 2002: Now re-elected -- it was never explained on the show why Presidential elections were now taking place in even-numbered non-leap years -- Bartlet has an old problem crop up.
Washington Post White House correspondent Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfield), who has a flirtatious relationship with White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney), arrives in a Santa Claus suit, and tells her he knows about the assassination of a foreign defense minister (and brother of the prime minister) who ran a terrorist group that intended to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge -- except that, in West Wing World, "their 9/11" was prevented. (The series would close by showing C.J. and Danny married with a baby.)
Meanwhile, we discover that Toby was born 2 days before Christmas 1954, and his father, Julius "Julie" Ziegler (Jerry Adler), an ex-con due to having worked for the long-defunct Brooklyn-based Jewish organized-crime outfit Murder, Incorporated, visits -- Toby can't figure out how, with a criminal record, his father got past White House security -- and they have to tie up loose ends. The episode is titled "Holy Night."
Also on this day, The Santa Claus 3: The Escape Clause takes place. Martin Short plays Jack Frost, who tricks Scott Calvin, whose wife Carol (who became Mrs. Claus at the end of the 2nd film) is about to have a baby (And where are all the children the various Santas have had through the ages?), into renouncing his post.
This creates an alternate timeline where Scott is now boss of his toy company, but his family is in ruins, and Jack is Santa, doing to the North Pole what Mr. Potter did to Bedford Falls. Things do get fixed, though.
December 25, 2003, 15 years ago: The Bartlets, President Jed and First Lady Abbey (Stockard Channing), are still dealing with the repercussions -- including with each other -- of the kidnapping of Zoey (Elisabeth Moss) the preceding Spring. It is not clear whether daughters Liz (Annabeth Gish) and Ellie (Nina Siemaszko) will come to the White House for Christmas. In the end, they all do.
Jed remembers a trip to Egypt: "Saw the Pyramids and Luxor, and then headed up into the Sinai. We had a guide, a Bedouin man, who called me 'Abu el Banat.' And whenever we'd meet another Bedouin, he'd introduce me as 'Abu el Banat.' And the Bedouin would laugh and laugh, and offer me a cup of tea. And I'd go to pay them for the tea, and they wouldn't let me. 'Abu el Banat' means 'Father of daughters.' They thought the tea was the least they could do." "Abu el Banat" is also the title of the episode.
In the Los Angeles suburbs of Orange County, California, the setting of the teen angst drama The O.C., mixed Christian and Jewish families celebrate a combination of Christmas and Hannukkah, which they call "Chrismukkah," which is also the title of the episode. The way it's explained is supposedly hilarious. I say, "supposedly," because I've never seen it.
December 25, 2005: The West Wing skipped over an entire year of the Bartlet Presidency, and jumped ahead to the end of Year 7 for an episode titled "Impact Winter." While the President suffers a paralyzing multiple sclerosis attack on a state visit to China, there is concern that an asteroid might hit Earth, resulting in the worst-case scenario, the phenomenon described by the episode's title.
While both crises are averted, Josh realizes that Year 8 is going to be an election year, and someone has to take the baton for Year 9. He thinks he's found his man, Congressman Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits), and shows up on Santos' doorstep in Houston, as a "ghost of Christmas yet to come." There was no Christmas episode for Season 7/Year 8.
Elsewhere in Washington, The Jeffersonian Institute is quarantined due to an outbreak of Valley Fever. (This is a real fungus-borne disease, which affects plants, but can affect people as well.) This forces Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) to focus on a murder.
Also, the Jeffersonian gang finds out that Billy Gibbons of the band ZZ Top (who plays a fictional version of himself) is the father of one of their own, Dr. Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin). This episode of Bones is titled "The Man in the Fallout Shelter."
Christmas 2008, 10 years ago: For the 1st time, NCIS airs a Christmas episode. The Gibbs team is asked to investigate a long-ago murder, of a sailor whose death certificate had been signed by Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum). Guest stars include Peter Coyote, Kay Lenz, and Eric Stonestreet, in the role that likely got him hired as Cameron Tucker for Modern Family.
December 25, 2012: Mystery writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and New York Police Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) spend their 1st Christmas together as a couple, after finding out who killed a man dressed as Santa Claus, on Castle.
December 25, 2265: A Christmas party is held about the starship USS Enterprise. Captain James T. Kirk, (William Shatner) hooks up with a scientist, the aptly-named Dr. Helen Noel. This was referenced in the Star Trek episode "Dagger of the Mind," taking place the following year.
So Christmas does survive all the trouble of the 21st, 22nd and early 23rd Centuries in the Star Trek timeline. But this is the closest the Trek canon has ever come to having a "Christmas episode."
Dr. Noel was played by Marianna Hill, born Marianna Schwarzkopf. Still alive at age 77, she was a cousin of Norman Schwarzkopf, the leading field General in the U.S. Army in the Persian Gulf War.
In the 1994 film Star Trek: Generations, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) ends up trapped in the Nexus in 2371. The Nexus shows him a fantasy of a family, meant to be an alternate version of his own, at Christmas in his hometown of La Barre, France. But it wasn't real, and he got out, and saved the Veridian solar system.
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