It has been said before and so it shall be said again, but Christmas is the holiday that is the most commercialized of all. A massive component of that commercialization has been The Christmas Special, that one-off theatrical short, television event, or just a Christmas-themed episode of a popular (or not so popular) show. These often take the form of animation, but are not limited to that. Certainly, there are many live-action sitcoms out there that have made Christmas the subject of an episode or two and there’s no shortage of movies centered on the holiday. It’s impossible to know at this point how many such specials exist. I’m sure folks have tried to catalog them all, but such a task seems futile at best.

Here at The Nostalgia Spot, every December has been turned over to the Christmas holiday. And for the last decade that has meant an advent calendar style rundown of many popular and not so popular Christmas specials. Last year, when the countdown concluded I revealed that I intended to retire The Christmas Spot as an advent calendar countdown and I’m sticking to that. It’s a lot and I feel like I’ve said almost all that I have to say on the subject of Christmas specials in this space, but not everything.

This year, we’re going to go back through them – yes, all of them! It’s time to take the specials that have been covered here and sort them out. The Christmas season is only so long and if you’re in what I consider a typical Christmas-celebrating household, the season begins on the Friday after Thanksgiving. This year, Thanksgiving fell on the 27th of November which is almost as late as it can fall in a calendar year. This is an especially short season – how can one possibly fit all of this essential Christmas viewing into such a short window of time?! And it’s already December 1st!

Fear not, for I am here to help guide you and your viewing schedule. Well, kind of. Since we’ll be unveiling this list in 10 special increments each day that means we won’t get to the good stuff for awhile. I guess this will be more helpful in the years that follow. It obviously can’t be all inclusive. I just said cataloging all Christmas specials would be a futile activity. However, there are a few that I’ve declined to report on in this space that feel like major omissions. When we get to them in the countdown, we’ll do an old school style write-up to make sure a wrong has been righted. I will almost surely miss someone’s favorite or one that simply stands out, but we can’t hit them all. I feel good about this body of work though and if I was only allowed to watch holiday specials from this list for the rest of my life I’d be okay with that.

Before we can get to the good stuff though, we have to talk about the bad stuff. Figuring out the best Christmas special of all-time is easy. It’s the Grinch (sorry, spoiler?), but what’s the worst Christmas special of all time? Now that’s a question with many answers. I’ve seen my share of crap throughout the years, and this dubious honor has more than one contender, but when the dust settled and I looked at my list there was really only one worthy of this title:

209 – Mega Babies – A Mega Christmas

What a diaper-filled crap-fest! I wasn’t harsh enough in my rundown of this one back when it was covered. I think because it was so early in the season and I wasn’t feeling run down just yet. This show is brutally ugly, almost offensively so. I’ve seen and laughed at plenty of gross cartoons, but this is too much for me. It’s not particularly funny nor is it memorable. If I have to say one nice thing about it then it’s that it didn’t parody a popular Christmas special. That’s a low bar though and plenty of dreck at the end of this list can claim the same.

208 – George of the Jungle – “Jungle Bells”

This special featuring semi-famous character George of the Jungle isn’t as offensively bad as some others, but I loathe its visual style. It has little to say or do to hold my attention and the art is just gross. It’s so cheap looking and comes from an era where everyone was cutting costs when it comes to animation. It’s basically Newgrounds quality and it makes me mad someone thought this was acceptable to put on television. Granted, I think it was on the equivalent of Canadian PBS, but the point stands. It has no reason to exist.

207 – Chucklewood Critters: T’was the Day Before Christmas

Chucklewood Critters represent something we’ll be seeing more of on this list. It’s a very bland, very boring, inoffensive sort of Christmas special. Well, inoffensive if you’re not offended by having your time wasted. There’s a bunch of stuff like this, but a lot of it is relegated to shorts where not much happens but at least it happens fast. And those shorts mostly look good since the shorts I’m thinking of were theatrical shorts. This is just an ugly, cheap, cloyingly sweet half hour of television. It probably won’t enrage you or anything, but it might put you to sleep. And these little bastards had a whole series of television specials! It’s crazy to think about and those poor children that were forced to watch them. I somehow dodged that bullet, but I took in this one in the interest of Christmas viewing as an adult. In that, I feel I was a worthy sacrifice.

206 – Christopher the Christmas Tree

Speaking of sacrifice. Here we have the story of a tree that just wants to be given a purpose. And that purpose is to be cut down and put on display in front of the UN. Or White House, it depends on what version you saw. This is one of those specials that wants to put the Christ back in Christmas, or at least it appears to, but then it does this weird pivot to putting the Christopher back in Christmas. As in, Christopher Columbus. What an odd thing to insert into a Christmas special. And inappropriate. It’s a dumb special, but I place it slightly higher than something like Chucklewood Critters because it has moments where the animation looks nice. Basically, they blew the budget on the tree and some select sequences while side characters and backgrounds look like trash. I’m guessing there’s not a lot of websites out there that have dedicated as many words to Christopher the Christmas Tree as I have as this one is actually one of my most viewed Christmas entries. Weird, right? I guess it makes sense since there’s tons of places talking about Mickey, Frosty, Popeye, and so on, but what fool wants to waste their time on the tree that gave its life for Christmas? Me. I’m that fool, and because of my sacrifice you don’t have to be too.

205 – Popeye the Sailor – “Spinach Greetings”

And speaking of Popeye (we’re just mastering transitions today), here’s a terrible Christmas cartoon starring the famous sailor! I like Popeye, he’s the reason I ate my spinach as a kid even if I thought it was terrible. We’d get that frozen kind that smells like garbage after it’s cooked so you can’t blame me for not liking it. As an adult, fresh spinach all the way! Anyway, this cartoon sucks, but at least it’s mercifully short. It’s just a dumb Popeye saves Santa bit, but it’s so nonsensical and for some reason Santa flies around in an airplane shaped like a reindeer. It’s the most ludicrous visual I think I’ve seen in a Christmas special yet and that’s saying something because we already talked about Mega Babies. This series is from Popeye’s dark ages, best not to revisit them.

204 – Tennessee Tuxedo and his Tales – “The Tree Trimmers”

These 1960s cartoons tend to all have one thing in common: sucky animation. Tennessee Tuxedo is one the biggest offenders as characters barely move. Worse though, the whole thing feels incredibly lazy. Nothing happens! This is the Christmas special about nothing, they just have to decorate a stupid tree, but since they’re zoo animals they’re all dumb. We even have to pause so a character can teach us how to make the worst Christmas ornaments around. I don’t blame this thing being bad on whoever wrote it, they were probably charged with writing a whole series in a weekend or something. The only somewhat charming thing about this show is hearing Don Adams in the lead role. It’s just fun hearing the Get Smart/Inspector Gadget voice again.

203 – The Soulmates in the Gift of Light

I tried to leave this one out of here until at least the next entry just because of the whole story surrounding it, but I just couldn’t do it. It sucks too much. This is another one of those inoffensive holiday specials that’s trying to launch a franchise, but it’s so inoffensive that it’s boring and no one cared about it. Really, like at all. This thing was lost media for a long time, but now it’s back. Sort of. I suspect it was really only back for that one magical moment in 2022 and now it’s rightfully forgotten again. The song might get stuck in your head though, so it has that going for it.

202 – Pillow People Save Christmas

Okay, I have this thing way back in the rankings and yet I’m not sure if it’s far enough. That’s the thing with rankings, they’re pretty subjective unless there’s some sort of math behind it. And even then, you may just be using a subjective component to create an objective outcome. That’s probably way more thought already than Pillow People Save Christmas deserves. This thing is awful and it’s a garbage one-off special designed to sell dumb pillows. Watching it made me mad at my mom more than 30 years later for buying me one of those pillows. There is zero subtlety to this one as it’s just a big commercial complete with a tour of available products you can buy now. Well, now when it aired, today no one cares about Pillow People. If you still have a Pillow Person in your possession might I suggest burning it? It won’t take away the stink of this special, but it would make me feel a little better and it would probably do the same for you.

201 – Santabear’s High Flying Adventure

Pillow People is just plain bad, while Santabear commits a different sin: boredom. A lot of these backend specials are going to be placed here because they’re just so boring. The ones that are dull and combine it with bad music and visuals are the biggest offenders. Here we have Santabear, better known for his television spots in a Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercial. It probably would have been better if that’s all he was confined to because “high flying” this one is not. The cast is solid too, but everything is dialed down to a sleepy pace. I don’t want to hate you, Santabear, because you are cute, but I really hope to never watch your Christmas special again.

200 – George & Junior’s Christmas Spectacular

We end today’s entry with a cartoon that is not exactly sleepy and would prefer to announce its presence with a scream. Well, except for Santa who just kind of strolls in. This is a What a Cartoon original from Cartoon Network’s early days. An attempt to revive the duo of George and his gigantic son Junior. They’re a bit of a rip-off of the bears from the Warner Bros. shorts just minus the mama bear character. This one I actually liked as a kid, but now I can barely watch it. It’s so offensively ugly and the animation is so minimal. I can’t decide if that’s by design or by budget, but it’s bad. The gags are tired and lazy and about the only good thing I can say about it is that it’s brief. When I revisited this one way back in 2017 I wasn’t really expecting to like it, but I definitely didn’t think I’d hate it.

Well, that about covers the worst of the worst. Unfortunately, we still have some crap to get through before we can start talking about the actual good Christmas specials. At least now you know the ones to absolutely avoid. See you tomorrow!