'Twas the Night Before Christmas

Rankin-Bass Productions is probably best known for their stop-motion specials, which I've already revealed my distaste for, and for Frosty the Snowman. No matter the format, they seem to always have a featured star. Burl Ives was in Rudolph and the great Jimmy Durante in Frosty. Having a singer popular with adults narrating specials geared at children became the formula for years to come.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas, first aired in 1974, features legend of stage and screen Joel Grey. This meant nothing to my sisters and I, but we enjoyed this one annually[ref]They enjoyed it a lot more frequently. This one was on a homemade VHS compilation of Christmas crap, and they'd watch it all the time. It's not like we didn't have any other videos. We had real, commercially produced, store-bought tapes, and they'd watch this over and over again. The hell was wrong with you ladies?[/ref].

As an adult, I've come to really enjoy Grey's work. The filmed version of Cabaret is a landmark in cinema[ref]Tomorrow belongs to me![/ref] and I was fortunate to see him in Anything Goes on Broadway this year[ref]Missed Sutton Foster though, but her understudy was off the charts.[/ref]. So it was a small wonder to see his credit on this piece.

Grey voices a small-town clockmaker who, upon learning that Santa Claus will pass by his town, builds a massive clock to welcome the fat, jolly one on Christmas Eve. After an initial setback, the clock works and Santa shows up much to the delight of everyone. We're treated to a reading of "A Visit From Saint Nicholas" by Grey and the special ends. Time for bed because we still have school tomorrow. Dratted early Christmas specials.

While the clockmaker played by the Broadway legend should be the centerpiece of the show, it's really about a family of anthropomorphic mice[ref]IT was the 70's, man. Everything was talking animals.[/ref] who live below the clockmaker. The oldest son of this mouse family is a wonderful little skeptic who hasn't learned the finer points of being right just yet.

The mouse kid and his friends draft a letter to the local daily pronouncing that Santa Claus doesn't exist and they don't want anything to do with him. This is what sets Santa off. He's so butthurt that about a single letter to the editor in Smalltown, USA, that he returns the letters everyone in town wrote him[ref]Really, everyone. The adults in this craphole town write letters to Santa. Simpler times, I guess?[/ref] and refuses to deliver any presents there.

The mouse dad is rather pissed about this. He gives his son a speech about how much he's hurt everyone, even showing him the harm it's done to the town residents. He takes this to heart, mostly, along with the lesson that he still has a lot to learn. His dad was trying to get across the point that he'll learn that Santa is real, but the mouse kid does him one better.

He has to screw up again, of course. That setback with the clock? That was the mouse kid trying to see how it worked and eventually breaking it[ref]Told you he was a wonderful little skeptic[/ref], bringing shame to the clockmaker. Nobody will use his services or buy clocks from him, sure they will fail. 

The clockmaker and his kids try to fix the clock[ref]They have a musical number here that you've probably heard in "A Very Crappy Christmas," the fourth South Park Christmas episode.[/ref] to no avail. But the mouse kid comes to the rescue and the clock works and the day is saved!

The best line comes right before the mouse kid goes off to do the fixing. His father asks him if he now believes in Santa, and he give stye best possible response: "I don't know. I don't know, but I've learned i still got a lot to learn." That's the best possible answer to that question. 

Who'd have thought that the true moral lesson of a 1970's Christmas special would be "Be skeptical, be inquisitive, be free to admit that you don't know, just don't be a dick?"