Christmas Classics

An animated, magical, musical version of Dickens' timeless classic "A Christmas Carol." The nearsighted Mr. Magoo doesn't have a ghost of a chance as Ebenezer Scrooge, unless he learns the true meaning of Christmas from the three spirits who haunt him one Christmas Eve.

Sam the Snowman (Burl Ives) narrates this stop-motion animated classic about little Rudolph, who yearns for a coveted spot on Santa's team of reindeer. But Rudolph's strangely glowing red nose makes him a joke to everyone at the North Pole. Feeling like a misfit, Rudolph runs away and teams with Hermey the elf and prospector Yukon Cornelius; the trio face down the dreaded Abominable Snow Monster and gain the respect of Santa and the others.

Animator Chuck Jones collaborated with Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) to bring his classic children's book to life. Embittered, green-haired hermit the Grinch (voiced by Boris Karloff) lives in the mountains above the village of Whoville. The Whos love Christmas, and the Grinch hates the Whos, so he conspires to keep Christmas from coming. How the Grinch Stole Christmas is enjoyable on every level.

A delightful, animated musical version of Charles Dickens' classic tale. A Cricket on the Hearth, tells the story of a poor toymaker and his daughter whom a helpful Cricket named Crocket befriends on Christmas morning. When tragedy strikes the family, it's Crocket who comes to the rescue and restores peace and happiness.

In this touching Christmas classic, an evil man kidnaps an orphaned drummer boy. After he escapes, he searches for his camel and finds him at the birthplace of the baby Jesus. Having no gift for him, he gives the only gift he has--a song on his drum.

In Frosty the Snowman, a magician's discarded hat gives life to a snowman, who quickly wins the hearts of all the town's children. Jimmy Durante narrates the yuletide classic.

Hollywood legends Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney lend their voices to this holiday classic shot in charming stop-motion animation. A friendly postman (Astaire) tells the story of Kris Kringle (Rooney), an orphan taken in by a family of toymakers. Despite the grouchy protests of Burgermeister Meisterburger (Paul Frees) and the Winter Warlock (Keenan Wynn), Kringle decides to bring some yuletide joy to the children of Sombertown.

Originally produced as a 1971 television special, A Christmas Carol was considered so well done that it was subsequently released theatrically (thereby rendering it eligible for Oscar consideration). The film did in fact win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for 1972 and to this day remains the only film adaptation of Dickens' story to be so honored.

Santa won't visit the town of Junctionville because of a caustic letter printed in the local newspaper.

This Christmas, visions of sitting by the fireside dance in Santa's head. Tired of a world where children have lost the Christmas spirit, Santa decides to sit out the Yuletide. Can Mrs. Claus and the elves convince Santa to load up his sleigh? Produced and directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. (Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer), The Year Without Santa Claus is fun for the whole family.

A young shepherd, Lucas, is blinded by lightning, and some kindly nuns at a nearby abbey take him in. Sister Catherine describes snow to Lucas, who has never seen it. Lucas gets chosen to play an angel in the abbey's Christmas pageant, and the Christmas snow that falls during the pageant works a small miracle.

While Santa Claus is recuperating from his December sleigh ride, he receives a letter from an old friend, Father Time. Seems that Baby New Year is missing, and if the little tyke isn't found, Old Year will continue forever--a catastrophe for Father Time, whose job it is to keep things moving forward. A search party is essential, yet with such thick fog, there's only one reindeer fit for the job. "Rudolph with your nose so bright, you've six days left to set things right," says Santa. Trouble hits immediately when Rudolph discovers that Aeon the Terrible, a big-beaked monster bird, is also searching for the missing baby. Rudolph gets help from a giant whale and a good-natured caveman, who dish up plenty of song and dance in between narrow escapes in their race against the end of the calendar year.

Frosty's friends decide to create a "snow wife" named Crystal for their favorite snowman … much to Jack Frost's chagrin.

Aaron, after playing his song, helps Melchior to spread the word by ringing Simeon's silver bells. But when the Romans take the bells for taxes, it's up to Aaron and his animal companions to rescue them.

When Nestor is thrown out into the cold because of his long ears his mother dies trying to save him. After this Nestor feels unwanted but it all changes when he meets an angel who tells him he is needed in the future and he will know what to do when the time comes.

It is Life Day (a Wookiee holiday similar to Christmas). Chewbacca, accompanied by Han Solo, is headed home to see his family. Along the way, the duo are chased by two Star Destroyers, but they escape into hyperspace.

Big Bird tries to stay awake to see Santa in this classic PBS Christmas special.

In 1977, Muppet creator Jim Henson produced a one-hour television adaptation of the story filmed in Toronto for HBO in the United States, and CBC in Canada.

This cartoon version of A Christmas Carol hails from the production house of Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass--the team that brought you just about every other Christmas special you saw as a kid (including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). Reinvented as a 49-minute musical ghost story, Stingiest stars the voice of Walter Matthau as the bedeviled Scrooge and Tom Bosley as the Jiminy Cricket-type narrator, B. Humbug, Esq. The 1978 animation is serviceable and the songs are sometimes catchy and clever (a reformed Scrooge tunefully ponders "Man's happiness should be my profit / His suffering my loss"). But since the cartoonists downplayed the scariness of the ghosts and the cute songs just slow the action, the cartoon's intended youthful audience may be end up feeling a bit restless.

Mickey Rooney, Ethel Merman, Red Buttons and Shelley Winters voice the characters in this charming animated tale about how Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer got his shiny nose and how he befriended Frosty the Snowman. When the cheery duo tries to help a needy circus get back on its feet, their archenemy, a wicked wizard named Winterbolt, will stop at nothing … to stop them!

John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together is a 1979 Christmas television special starring Jim Henson's Muppets and singer/songwriter John Denver.

Buddy Hackett narrates this classic animated feature from stop-motion masters Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin. The whimsical tale follows winter's sprightly spirit Jack Frost as he falls in love with a lovely lady named Elise. Father Winter turns Jack into a human so he can win Elise's heart, but alas, she's already engaged to a knight. When Evil King Kubla Kraus kidnaps Elise, Jack changes back into a spirit to rescue her.

It's Pinocchio's first Christmas, and he sells the book Geppetto gives him for present money, but Cat and Fox trick him out of it. So, Pinocchio becomes part of a (Christmas) Marionette show to make present money. He steals a girl puppet when he leaves, and the gendarmes chase him into the Forest of Enchantment. There, he meets Azora, a fairy with a cricket who try to fix Pinocchio's lying and set him on the right track. But then he's sold to a Duke, whom Pinocchio convinces to spend time with his children. And only Santa's reindeer can get Pinocchio home in time for Christmas.

Dinty Doyle, a leprechaun, goes to find a Christmas tree for his family. He finds an island off the coast of Ireland and gets a tree to bring home to the land of Wee People. The tree ends up being a prison for a banshee and she escapes and wrecks havoc on the the land of the Wee People, intent on ruining Christmas.

The cartoon is an adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol with Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit and Scrooge McDuck as his namesake and inspiration, Ebeneezer Scrooge.

The Great Ak calls a council of the Immortals to ask that Santa Claus be given immortality. And to justify it, he tells the history of Santa Claus. The Ak found an abandoned baby and gave it to a lioness and a fairy to raise, who named him Claus. When Claus grew up, the Great Ak showed him the evil and hardship in world and Claus decides to live there and relieve some of the suffering. He decides to make toys for orphans, but King Agua, the ruler of the valley where Claus lives doesn't want the chidren to be happy. and there is a great battle among Immortals.

This is one of the very few Muppet productions to feature Muppets associated with all four of the major Muppet franchises: The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and Muppet Babies (who are seen as actual puppets here instead of cartoon counterparts).

In a brightly decorated house, Garfield is awakened by Jon dressed as an elf, who says it is Christmas and Garfield must be treated to a large amount of lasagna before opening his gift, which consists of a robotic Santa Claus which reads minds and produces whatever Garfield wants, pleasing him until Jon actually wakes up Garfield, who realizes he was dreaming.

The story centers on Opus the Penguin (who was at the time one of the main characters in Breathed's comic strip Outland). Opus is downhearted because, as a penguin, he cannot fly.

In Frosty Returns, Frosty (voice of John Goodman) and his friends must stop an inventor's plot to go public with his diabolical creation: an aerosol spray that can melt massive amounts of snow.

Stuck On Christmas - Huey, Dewey and Louie wake up on a Christmas morning and open up their presents, even though they are supposed to wait. After the boys took their new sleds from Uncle Donald (not reading the included gift card) and went sledding, had a Christmas dinner, and sang carols, it was time for them to go to bed. Having enjoyed the day immensely, the boys then wish that it would be Christmas every day. Their wish is granted, however, after a few days they begin to get sick of Christmas. A Very Goofy Christmas - Goofy and Max are mailing out a letter to Santa Claus. However, as soon as they get home, Pete, the neighbor, tells Max that Santa doesn't exist. Things get worse when Goofy poses as Santa for some kids and Max finds out that he tricked him. Goofy is determined to prove to Max that Santa does exist and even stays up all Christmas Eve to keep an eye out for him. Mickey and Minnie's The Gift of the Magi - Mickey wants to get Minnie a gold chain for her one heirloom, her watch, so he works at Crazy Pete's Tree Lot. Minnie wants to give Mickey something special for Christmas as well, so she works hard to get her special bonus. However, Pete takes all of Mickey's money when he ruins his chance of selling an expensive 10-footer to a poor family and Minnie's bonus proves to be nothing but a fruit cake.

Wayne, a Christmas elf, is part of an elite organization known as "Prep & Landing", whose job is to ready Santa Claus's visit to millions of homes. After working with "Prep & Landing" for 227 years, Wayne looks forward to getting promoted. Instead, his former partner gets the promotion, and Wayne is introduced to Lanny, a rookie whom Wayne has to train. Wayne is still bitter about the promotion, and decides to slack off during a mission. He permits Lanny to do all of the work, which is disastrous. Meanwhile, Santa is informed mid-flight of a massive snow storm and that Wayne and Lanny haven't fully prepared the house yet. He is told to cancel the landing, which has never happened before; they promise to make it up for Timmy, a boy living at the house. Wayne and Lanny discover that the re-routing was a final decision, but after hearing Timmy thank them in his sleep, Wayne decides to fix it. He calls up Santa, telling him that he must land at Timmy's house. Wayne and Lanny then work together to land Santa safely on Timmy's roof. On Christmas morning, Santa shows Wayne that Timmy had a merry Christmas. Santa offers a promotion to Wayne, but he turns it down so he can work with Lanny.

Wayne and Lanny, now partners, are called by Magee to meet with a secret contact – Mrs. Claus, who sends them on a new mission to retrieve a box from Santa’s secret workshop. Later they sneak into Santa’s office while he is asleep, using their high tech equipment from the previous film. Lanny’s expertise at dressing the tree enables them to enter the hidden workshop where they recover the box and escape just in time. Mrs Claus reveals the contents of the box to be the last part of the first toy that Santa ever made, and gives the complete toy back to him as his Christmas Present.

The yuletide adventures of Christmas elves Lanny and Wayne continue in an ABC holiday special for 2011 in Prep & Landing: Naughty vs. Nice. With the Big 2-5 fast approaching, Wayne and Lanny must race to recover classified North Pole technology which has fallen into the hands of a computer-hacking Naughty Kid! Desperate to prevent Christmas from descending into chaos, Wayne seeks out the foremost Naughty Kid Field Expert to aid in the mission: a bombastic member of the Coal Elf Brigade who also happens to be his estranged brother, Noel.