five christmas cartoons of note.

#1 Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown.

not a huge fan of the dialog, liked the general plot idea ok. Loved the music, of course.
The thing about this, and some of the other peanut cartoons, that I really liked?
The quiet.

This was a slow, peaceful cartoon, with emphasis put on what was being said. screen time actually given to the characters simply walking from point A to point B.
For want of a better term, this cartoon is..... relaxing.


#2 The Tick vs. Santa Clause (AKA: The Tick Loves Santa)

A petty thief dressed as Santa gets electrocuted, and finds he can reproduce himself. He creates an army of criminal santas and goes on a crime spree in The City.
Only the Tick can stop his nefarious plans, but can't bring himself to hurt Santa Clause...
He discovers that a static electric shock causes the replicants to dissolve, when he rubs one of them on the head.

Yep. Noogies save christmas.

Hey, it's the Tick, for christ's sake. If you've never seen this animated series from the early 90's, you need to. It was brilliant.
The Tick - huge, strong, nearly indestructible, a little dim and child like.
Arthur - His doughy, accountant-turned-moth-man sidekick. Throw in some crazy supervillains with equally odd nefarious plans, and some secondary superhero characters, and it was entertaining as hell.

The Tick: Lowly wretch! This is the last time you make epic naughty in Santa threads!
The Tick: Like a great blue salmon of justice, the mighty Tick courses upstream to the very spawning grounds of Evil!


#3 How The Grinch Stole Christmas

duh. great direction, courtesy of Chuck Jones, and truly inspired casting of Boris Karloff as the voice of the Grinch, and the narrator.

A great adaptation of a teriffic book by Dr. Seuss. There are many good cartoon adaptations of his books, and not a single good live action adaptation.

Christmas day IS in your grasp, as long as you have hands to clasp.

# 4: Pinky and the Brain's Christmas special.

Pinky and the brain. One's a genius, the other's insane.

And that's the brilliance of this cartoon series. You get to decide who's which.

The christmas episode won an Emmy, by the way.

Pinky and the Brain travel to the north pole. Pinky wants to meet Santa, the Brain's created a toy that hypnotizes people, and wants Santa to (unknowningly) distribute the toy worldwide, so The Brain can hypnotize everyone, and finally achieve his goal of World Domination.

#5 is a combo, cuz you put 'em both together and you almost have one good cartoon.
Year without a Santa Claus
Ok. This was actually crap. As were all the Rankin Bass Stop-Action animation cartoons (Rudolph, Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July) It's probably un-american to say so, but - crap.
Visually interesting, as you don't see stop-action animation anymore. Storylines, etc.... dodgy. And big on sentimental.
The adult me doesn't like gooey sentimentalism in my entertainment choices.
And why was Mickey Rooney always doing one of the voices? There had to be a lot of actors looking for an easy paycheck when these were made. Did he own stock?

While they were all largely crap, a couple of them were partially redeemed by fun characters, or at least a fun song.

Heat Miser and Cold Miser were whiny, mama's boys. But I liked their songs.
Like 'em? They stick in my head like a deer tick on a camping trip.

You can take the rest of the cartoon: the two dim elves, the sickly baby reindeer, the whiny sniffly santa clause, the doe-eyed, buck toothed boy and stuff them in a stocking or something else suitably tied in with the holiday theme of this post.


Santa Clause is Coming To Town

See above rant about Rankin Bass cartoons. What saves this one? Burgermeister Meisterburger, of course.
and the catchy "Put one foot in front of the other".

It's a story about the origin of Santa, how a young Kris Kringle built toys as an act of civil disobedience, corrupting the town's children, in direct violation of the law, grew a beard to disguise his face, and then got old and fat.

Oh, and an evil winter warlock finds a few kernels of magic corn in his pockets, after a gift of a toy makes him the goodhearted winter warlock, feeds them to some deer, who in turn bust everyone out of jail.
Now you know the origin of the eight flying reindeer. They ate some "magic" corn, and then became accessories to several felonies.

Mrs Clause is explained as well. She's the hot, single, good hearted school teacher of course.
She has a thing for bad boys, apparently, and is smitten with the rebellious, toy-making rabble rouser. She quits her job, leaves her home, and goes off to live with him and his midget friends in the woods. And then got old and fat.
The End.
And damn if Mickey Rooney's not the voice of Santa Clause again.


Hey, I know 40 year old me is not the audience at which the Rankin / Bass cartoons were aimed.
I mock because I can.

Kids still love 'em, my daughter will doubtless enjoy them when she's a little older, and my wife still loves 'em; even though she'll joke along with me the whole time about their relative cheesiness.

And that's why they made my list, really.