Christmas Special: Difference between revisions

A mostly American subgenre—special television shows, often one-shots, created with a winter or holiday theme for broadcast during the month of December. MostMany prominently feature [[Santa Claus]] and his associated mythology, as they try to preserve political correctness. Some try to elucidate to us on the [[True Meaning of Christmas]]. Most, as pointed out by ''[[Wrong Hands]]'' [https://wronghands1.com/2021/12/03/tv-christmas-movie-essentials/ here], are [[Strictly Formula]].

Perhaps the best-known '''Christmas Specials''' are the animated ones (including the stop-motion animations produced primarily by [[Rankin/Bass Productions|Rankin/Bass]]) from the 1960s through the 1970s that rerun annually. Far more numerous, though, are the various celebrity specials, which usually take the form of a low-key holiday-themed [[Variety Show]]. Usually the latter are rather forgettable by virtue of their one-off nature, but sometimes they can generate moments that survive decades. A case in point would be the [[Bing Crosby]]-[[David Bowie]] duet of "The Little Drummer Boy", which has taken on a life of its own above and beyond the 1977 Crosby special from which it sprang.