Maybe it’s just because I’ve been sick as a dog and still wearing myself out running around chasing the boy, but somehow Christmas just hasn’t settled into my mental landscape as a reality this year. I know it’s only about a dozen days out, but for some reason this year it’s just not “real” for me. This isn’t a “bah humbug” thing, but more of an “oh well” thing. It’s there, I’m aware of it, but that’s about it.
If there’s one thing that has gotten me almost in the Christmas mood this year, it’s been ABC Family’s relentless showing of every Rankin/Bass stop-motion Christmas special…ever. They’re showing stuff that I’ve never even heard of, and here I thought I was a consummate fan of that particular sub-genre of Christmas special. Some of the stuff is just about Krofft Saturday Supershow trippy, shoehorning Christmas imagery into bizarre quasi-pagan-new-age storylines. I’ve seen no fewer than three completely different “origin stories” for Santa produced by Rankin/Bass. Heck, there was even one I’d never heard of before that jammed Leprechaun legends into a Christmas story – one begins to sense the faint sound of the bottom of the barrel being scraped. But it’s all good fun.
I’m not sure what to think of this new special airing tonight that’s supposedly produced in Rankin/Bass style; I’ll have to wait and see. If they pull it off without even a CGI assist, then I say bravo – they will have single-handedly resuscitated a style of filmmaking that, if it wasn’t already dead, was at least on life support. If it’s just CGI animated to look like stop-motion, then…bleh. At any rate, they’d be hard pressed to match this loving tribute to the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials that aired way back in the first season of MadTV in the mid-1990s – you know, the season when it was good.
I remember this being a big hit when I was working at the Fox station at the time; around Christmas time, Marty Houston and I would sing the “we’ll get even” song incessantly around the building, and didn’t give a crap who was listening in. Good times.
We’re the same age and I gotta tell ya, nothing puts me in the Christmas mood quicker than the Rankin/Bass specials. I bought the 5 DVD set a couple of years back and I see it’s a 6 DVD set now, but I’m not sure why I bought it as they get played day in/day out throughout the entire season.
I think I’ve downloaded all the Rankin/Bass parodies as well — not for kids, but Mad TV did one and I think SNL did another one. Not good viewing for the kids, but still entertaining.
I’ve really made an effort to quit buying toys (no more room) but those Rankin/Bass toys I’ve seen around town (Toys R Us has a ton of them) are really testing me. Nothing cooler than having a Yeti next to your monitor …