We’re back to the regular entries, but not for very long. Hopefully you enjoyed yesterday’s entry on old Emmet Otter, but we’re ditching the puppets today in favor of traditional, 2D, animation. Well, for the most part. We do have one CG entrant for today to wreck the party, but since we’re talking about a top 40 Christmas special I guess it can be forgiven. Today’s entrants are all of the nice, or genuine, variety as I classified them when sorting my list. It’s also a solid mix of 90s and 2000s cartoons with one extreme outlier so this isn’t a chunk of the list being driven by nostalgia, for the most part. My nostalgic attachment is mostly pre 90s with a few exceptions. In general, if I am allowed to toot my own horn for a second, I’m impressed with my own ability to set aside nostalgia when compiling these rankings. Oh sure, some of it plays a role. Is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer really as good as I’m going to rank it? Probably not, but I’m also not out here to formulate hot takes. You just have to find that happy medium between genuine quality and cozy nostalgia. With Christmas specials, it can be hard to separate the two and in some cases downright impossible. One Christmas episode that I have zero attachment to is leading us off today, and it might be the Christmas special that surprised me more than any other.

42 – Buzz Lightyear of Star Command – Holiday Time

I don’t say that Buzz Lightyear of Star Command surprised me because I expected it to be crap, I just didn’t really have any expectations going in at all. I had zero interest in the universe Buzz Lightyear hailed from. Like the unsuccessful film of a few years back, this show depicts the fictional show the toy in Toy Story would be based on. I guess this is the cartoon Andy might have watched while sitting in front of the TV with his action figure. It’s a 2D animated show that actually looks pretty good for something that aired in 2000. What really works though is the casting of Patrick Warburton as Buzz and Wayne Knight as Zurg. Those two Seinfeld alum are fantastic in their roles and the show is fast-paced, witty, and full of action as Buzz and his fellow members of Star Command have to aid a guy claiming to be Santa in order to save their “holiday.” That might have been my one critique here is that the show is clearly avoiding the term Christmas which feels overthought. I get it, it made no sense for the Flintstones to say Christmas since they predate Christ, but if you’re going to replace the term then come up with something better than “holiday.” That’s a very minor complaint though as this episode was a lot of fun. It’s just a shame Disney has no interest in preserving it or making it available as in the five years since I first wrote about it the show has still not been added to Disney+. I’m blaming the failure of Lightyear for that.

41 – Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! – Scary Christmas

Scoob and the gang didn’t mess with Christmas a whole lot. Perhaps it was because their vibe was more in-line with Halloween, but the remnants of Hanna-Barbera started to rectify that in more recent times. Be Cool, Scooby-Doo might be the best Scooby-Doo show that’s ever been produced. I can’t really claim to be an authority on that as I have long since lost track of the franchise. The earliest works are kind of bad though, even though I watched a ton of them. I did enjoy A Pup Named Scooby-Doo as a kid and can appreciate it still on some level and through my kids I’ve been exposed to some of the movies and other modern shows. Of them all though, this is the only one I’d sit down and actually enjoy as it’s pretty funny. It’s kind of like a very tame version of The Venture Bros. as we have the usual mystery solving gang dealing with some supernatural element each episode that’s probably a robot or something. In this one, it’s a robot dinosaur that’s plaguing a town at Christmas and looking to mess up an annual celebration. The show is able to create comedy without really dumbing down the characters. Fred is a bit like the character from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo in that he’s more stubborn than dumb. The only real negative is the show isn’t as fun to look at as some others. It’s not terrible, but I’d put it on par with an adult animated sitcom like Family Guy or Bob’s Burgers. There’s a flatness to everything, but it mostly animates well. I might be ranking this one a bit too high, but it feels more impactful given that it’s a venerable franchise finally getting a good Christmas special.

40 Batman: The Brave and the Bold – Invasion of the Secret Santas

Speaking of a venerable franchise getting a good Christmas episode, here’s the caped crusader himself – Batman! I dismissed Batman: The Brave and the Bold when it aired in the 2000s because I had heard it was a kid-focused show. I wasn’t mad or anything, I just figured it wasn’t for me. I may have been wrong. This is a softer take on Batman, but the show is really well-animated and Diedrich Bader is a fantastic Batman. It has a dry humor and there’s a subversive element at play and it’s on display in this episode. Especially when a robot Santa goes up in flames revealing a robotic skeleton underneath it. The show had a team-up format where Batman would partner up with another hero in the DC Universe and this one includes Red Tornado. As an android, he has to try and figure out this whole Christmas thing which is pretty humorous all the while Fun Haus is wreaking havoc on a small town and attempting to steal Christmas. There’s some flashback stuff as well to Batman being a little dick at Christmas when he was a kid just adding another layer of guilt to the trauma-laden character. The episode finds time for some sweetness at the end too, which honestly surprised me a bit just given the overall tone of the episode up to that point. More surprising, is that this is probably my favorite Batman Christmas special. It’s more enjoyable than either of the episodes from Batman: The Animated Series and I’m also ranking it above Justice League. That’s definitely not something I expected going in.

39 – Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too

As something of a last hurrah for The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh comes this Christmas special, Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too. These days it goes by a different name, A Very Merry Pooh Year, which sounds kind of gross, but the special is the same. Disney just added some wrap-around plot and a new cartoon to basically fill out an hour. This entry is just for the original though and it’s a very gentle, sweet, Christmas episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, as one would expect. The Winnie the Pooh franchise is definitely one more aimed at young children, but it’s so charming that adults can certainly enjoy it on some level. This one has Pooh forget to ask Santa for a Christmas present, but when he and Piglet try to retrieve the list it gets all messed up. They take it upon themselves to try and play Santa and make sure their fellow denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood have a merry Christmas, but they’re not exactly successful. It’s cute and has a familiar message of not focusing on the material aspect of the holiday and it’s lovingly animated. It’s very much a nice, feel-good, Christmas special you can watch with your kids.

38 – The SpongeBob Christmas Special

The SpongeBob generation is not one I’m connected with, but damn if that sponge doesn’t make good Christmas specials! This is the original where SpongeBob learns about Christmas from Sandy and makes it a point to share the news about the holiday and Santa with all of the people of Bikini Bottom, much to the annoyance of Squidward. He finds everything about the holiday repugnant, but when Santa passes them over the guilt of how much he enjoys their misery is too much and Squidward basically assumes the persona of Santa and gives all of his possessions away. Ordinarily, I’d be annoyed with a Nickelodeon show denying the existence of Santa Claus, but here it’s rather believable that he could miss a village of fish. Plus, he makes an appearance at the end to make things right. Though I should point out, the Santa in this one is a live-action Santa whereas future holiday episodes will make him something of an elf. It’s honestly not the most flattering depiction of the big guy that I’ve ever seen, but at least it’s unique. This one is charming and pretty funny. There’s a great musical segment in the middle and if this is a show you grew up watching you probably have it ranked higher. I’m not sure if I’m at risk of angering the SpongeBob fanbase for having it ranked behind a later Christmas special, but it’s my list and I say this is the second best SpongeBob Christmas.

37 – Have Yourself a Goofy Little Christmas

This Christmas episode of Goof Troop is another example of Disney using a Christmas special as a series finale. It’s considered by the company to be a stand-alone holiday special so if you go to Goof Troop on Disney+ you won’t find it. I find this extremely annoying since it means this Christmas episode has been missing ever since the service launched and it’s a damn shame. While I felt slightly let down by this one, it’s still a great Christmas episode of a solid cartoon. It’s another tale of Goofy trying to do something right, but he goes way above and beyond what he’s capable of doing when it comes to Christmas and he “goofs” it up. Along for the ride is Pete and his family who thought they were getting away from the Goofs, only to find out they rented the cabin next door for their Christmas too. This one doesn’t dive into the Goofy and Max conflict like A Goofy Movie does or even like the segment from Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas. If the Goofy segment in that were a stand-alone special I’d be curious to see if I would place it higher than this one. The fact that it lacks some of that more emotional material is why I’m not as high on this one as perhaps I thought I’d be, but it’s still an annual tradition in my home.

36 – Life with Louie – A Christmas Surprise for Mrs. Stillman

The first episode of Life with Louie is basically the only one I remember. Well, it and the other Christmas episode since I watched it somewhat recently. This was our introduction to the Anderson family in toon form and it’s a funny and sweet little Christmas episode about a neighborhood coming together to surprise a widow on Christmas. The humorous bit is that she’s actually Jewish, but it’s the thought that counts, right? A lot of the humor comes from the Andy character, Louie’s dad, who is the one most put out by helping the old lady out, but despite his grumbling we get to see he’s actually a good guy. Louie, for his part, provides a dry wit and there’s plenty of physical comedy as well as situational comedy like when a pair of cops mistake Andy for a prowler. The Fox Kids shows produced some good Christmas episodes, and this is one of the better ones.

35 – Olaf’s Frozen Adventure

For a time, Disney’s Frozen was inescapable and the company wanted it that way. The 2013 film was a bit of a surprise hit. I’m sure the company expected it to do well, it just was so big that such success could not be predicted or counted on. To keep the franchise in the cultural zeitgeist, Disney commissioned a pair of theatrical shorts. One was indeed short while the second was certainly not. Olaf’s Frozen Adventure was clearly developed as a network special because that’s what the runtime would indicate, but that didn’t stop Disney from attaching it to the Pixar film Coco. Sure, Mickey’s Christmas Carol had the same runtime and was released in the exact same manner, but it was attached to a re-release of The Rescuers, not a completely new film going for a very different vibe. Some found it annoying, but remove it from that context and this special starring the world’s second most popular snowman is quite delightful. At least, when he’s allowed to be the star, but in order for Olaf to go on his quest to discover new Christmas traditions we first have to deal with the lack of them in the castle. Elsa has to make every problem all about her so she goes back to being mopey and blames herself for their family’s lack of holiday traditions. It’s a stretch and something the special didn’t need. She and Anna could have just said “Oh yeah, we don’t really do anything, do we?” and left it at that for Olaf to make a big deal out of. As a result, this is the one I’m sure to question my placement of on this list for years to come. And like it or not, this is one of the few Christmas specials that receives an annual showing on network television thanks to Disney owning ABC.

34 – Tweety in “Gift Wrapped”

Here’s a nice, simple, cartoon from the golden era. It’s a Sylvester and Tweety short where the cat is out to eat the little, yellow, canary, only this time it’s set at Christmas. That’s it. And you know what? That’s all it has to be. Adding Christmas to the usual dynamic is enough to spice up the old formula and make this a fun viewing around the holidays. Tweety is a gift from Santa for Granny, but Sylvester gets to the tree first on Christmas morning so he tries to swap his gift (a rubber mouse) with Granny. She, of course, catches him which sets the stage for more attempts at the bird. Unfortunately for Sylvester, Granny also got a dog from Santa so we get to add a big bulldog into the mix (he’s basically Hector from The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, but I don’t know if he actually had a name in 1952). There aren’t a lot of Christmas cartoons in the Warner library from this era and this one is the best one. We would have to wait many years for Warner to top it.

33 – Taz-Mania – No Time for Christmas

51 years to be exact! That’s how many passed between the release of Gift Wrapped and this episode of Taz-Mania, the Fox Kids show starring everyone’s favorite devil from down under. I didn’t watch a lot of this show growing up. I don’t know why, but it just didn’t appeal to me. I found it a little slow as the episodes felt like they went on and on. I think I was just at an age where I was losing interest in comedies and was ready for a show like Batman to come along. When I returned to this one in 2018 I wasn’t expecting much, but damn did I enjoy it! This episode centers on Taz who is really excited for Christmas only no one else seems to share in his enthusiasm. Or, they’re more concerned with their own selfishness. As the title implies, all of the characters just don’t have time for Taz and his Christmas. He interacts with a lot of the cast of the show and they’re all preoccupied with something else. Some try to use Taz for their own needs while others just kind of ignore him. It wares down the devil and we even see him have a sad cry. The town rallies in the end as they realize what’s been going on and it’s a nice moment. Did I cry? I might have, it was seven years ago that I watched this thing. I’d love to watch it some more, but Taz-Mania is a hard show to track down these days because the Warner company absolutely sucks. If you do put in the work to find this one I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.

That does it for today, but even though we just returned to the countdown format tomorrow we’re switching it up again! For the final time in 2025, we will be doing a traditional write-up of a holiday classic. And tomorrow’s entry is unique in that it’s actually the one redo I mentioned way back in November. What special is it that I felt was so important that I needed to expand on what I wrote back in 2014? Well, you’ll have to come back tomorrow and find out.