Here’s the deal: There are a zillion Muppet Christmas specials, but ToughPigs has been around long enough now that we’ve pretty much covered all of them. You, the readers, already know how it is… Christmas Eve on Sesame Street is great, Letters to Santa is boring, blah blah blah.
So this Christmas, we decided to do something completely different to make things interesting. A bunch of TP contributors got together, and we were each randomly assigned two Christmas specials to write about. For the first special we were assigned, we have to explain why it’s The Best Muppet Christmas Special. It doesn’t matter how we actually feel about it — we have to explain why it’s the best. (We also have to explain why the other special we drew is the Worst Muppet Christmas Special, but we’ll get to that later in the week.)
By the way, we left out the most obvious classics like A Muppet Family Christmas, Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, and Emmet Otter, because it would have been way too easy to come up with praise for them. As you’ll see, the resulting list of specials provided some of us with a more challenging assignment than others. Now let’s get to it: What is The Best Muppet Christmas Special, everyone?
The Great Santa Claus Switch
Julia Gaskill
I shamefully admit that I had never watched The Great Santa Claus Switch before getting assigned it for this feature. To my great delight, I really did enjoy my first viewing of this Christmas special. It’s a simple story, to be sure, but the simplicity of the plot is kind of wonderful. Often Christmas specials nowadays get bogged down with pop culture references and over the top plots. This one was straight and to the point, which I found refreshing and fun. It’s incredibly Christmasy, taking place in the North Pole at Santa’s Workshop, and pretty entertaining to boot, which is no real surprise seeing as Jerry Juhl penned it himself. There’s humor to be found – elves slowly being replaced by Frackles and Santa being awful at magic tricks – and some catchy, festive songs.
Plus, not only does it feature Thog and the Frackles, but also the first ever appearance of Gonzo as Snarl! Big biased bonus points from me! I give this Christmas special a huge thumbs up and my vote for best Muppet Christmas watch of the season!
John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together
Matthew Soberman
Look, I’ve already said my piece about what the best Muppet Christmas special is, and my mind hasn’t changed. But for my money, John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together is certainly the most underrated Muppet Christmas special. The special, which (along with the album that inspired it) recently had its 35th anniversary, manages to be funny and heartwarming in a way that the Muppets do better than most. On a recent viewing, what stuck out to me was the special’s sincerity. It celebrates the traditional trappings of Christmas, like Christmas trees and toy soldiers, in a way that says, “sure, they might be a little corny, but we still love ‘em.” There’s also a lot of wonderful, sincere messages to be found, like “be good to one another,” “appreciate the ones you love for what they are,” and “don’t have Miss Piggy play an elf. It won’t end well.” The songs are timeless, just as they are on the album. And to cap it all off, it probably has one of the most beautifully done nativity reenactments I’ve ever seen. I was totally enthralled, and I’m Jewish! (I’m still waiting to see Baby Bear as Judah Macabee, though.)
The only reason why this hasn’t become an annual must-watch is because it’s never been commercially available, unlike its sister special, John Denver and the Muppets: Rocky Mountain Holiday. The only way to watch it now is to find it on websites like YouTube, which I’ve conveniently placed for you here. If you can stream YouTube videos on your television, I recommend watching it that way, as it was 35 years ago. So if you like specials that can make you laugh and touch your heart, you should give this special a place on your Christmas watch list, and enjoy the message of peace on Earth and goodwill towards men and women and chickens and bears and Dizzy Gillespie.
Letters to Santa
Jarrod Fairclough
Have you watched Letters To Santa? Maybe you remember it as that special that felt just a little too ‘made for TV’. Well, take it from me. Letters to Santa is way better than you remember. In fact, I’m willing to call it the BEST Muppet Christmas special. Why? Because it’s funny. Far funnier than Muppet Christmas Carol. It makes Fozzie’s bit with the snowman in Muppet Family Christmas look like the entirety of Muppets Wizard of Oz (you can appreciate the effort, but it just falls flat).
The real MVP of the entire special is Bill Barretta. Whether it be Pepe the King Prawn’s school boy crush on Uma Thurman, or Bobo the Bear’s impression of a bicycle bell, almost every line out of Bill’s mouth kills. Plus, there’s close to 10 minutes of bloopers, including Kermit going to Heaven and Bobo making advances on Nathan Lane, whose giggles rival those of Ricky Gervais.
Elmo’s Christmas Countdown
Danny Horn
Okay, get this: At the edge of the world, an elf describes the ritual that must be performed, in order to summon Santa Claus to the mortal plane. Christmas, it turns out, is not a date on the calendar as we understand it. Christmas must be created anew each year, forged from songs and stories and sentiment.
Elmo’s Christmas Countdown presents one cycle of the ceaseless journey that carries us through the dark winter each year. The show is aware that it’s not the first Sesame Street Christmas special. Oscar and the elf sing a new version of “I Hate Christmas” which only makes sense if you know the original song, from a show that aired decades ago. Even the show’s main theme — that Christmas may not come this year — is a distorted reflection of the plot from Elmo Saves Christmas. To hammer that point home, Lightning the reindeer appears, to remind viewers that all of this has been done before, endlessly repeating.
In Countdown‘s most challenging, avant-garde sequence, we see that Ernie and Bert are filming their own Christmas special, and they’ve hired two actors to fill the roles of Ernie and Bert. The puzzled actors are out of place, playing roles that they’re not prepared for and only vaguely understand. This is what Christmas is really like.
Lady Gaga & The Muppets’ Holiday Spectacular
David Beukema
You know what I’ve always hated about Muppet Christmas specials? The Muppet and Christmas parts. Thankfully, Lady Gaga has done away with those things (for the most part), and the holiday season is all the better for it! I’d much rather see an hour-long infomercial for Lady Gaga’s new album! Oh, fine, we’ll let the Muppets pop up every now and then, like when Lady Gaga and Kermit have a far more charming and natural conversation than Kermit ever had with that hack Julie Andrews! Don’t give too much time to the Muppets, though, because the true meaning of the season is found by watching a grown woman sing songs with a drag queen while dressed as a giant sparkly condom. If I had to choose a Muppet MVP, it would obviously be Pepe, whose impish sexual harassment just warms the heart. Move over, Muppet Family Christmas; I have a new tradition to watch every Christmas day!
A Special Sesame Street Christmas
Joe Hennes
We’re all having a good time on ToughPigs today, but no joke: A Special Sesame Street Christmas is one of my favorite Christmas specials. Yes, it’s the neglected little brother (or more like the locked-away third cousin with a weird hump on his back) of Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, and yes, it’s nonsensical with the strangest collection of celebrities and non-Christmas songs, and yes, the production quality is so cheap and lazy it’s practically unwatchable, but I love it, and not even in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of way.
Where else can you see Oscar the Grouch passing “Yakkity Yak” off as a Christmas carol? Or Michael Jackson casually walking down Sesame Street reading a book about ghosts? Or Ethel Merman calling Imogene Coca an idiot to her face? Or Henry Fonda stumbling out of his dressing room to mumble one line of incomprehensible dialog? Or Leslie Uggams wearing a far-too-inappropriate sweater for a kids’ show? You can’t tell me that any one of those examples wouldn’t get you to tune in during the holiday season.
Okay, so it’s not quite as sentimental as Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, and it doesn’t have Cookie Monster eating a telephone or Grover asking kids how Santa gets down the chimney or a heartfelt plot about Big Bird discovering the true meaning of Christmas, but A Special Sesame Street Christmas is bizarre and amazing and loud, all of which are adjectives that describe my perfect Christmas.
Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree
Whitney Grace
Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree is the perfect Christmas special. It opens with our traditional narrator, Kermit the Frog, who announces that Mr. Willowby is holding another annual Christmas party. If you’re scratching your head and wondering who the heck Mr. Willowby is, you have my condolences. Every year he opens his home to all notables and potent potables to welcome his perfect Christmas tree or arboretum arborvitae as he celebrates giving and sharing. This entire half hour is a musical and it doesn’t wait to start the joyous songs. The famous Robert Downey, Jr. sings and prances around his living room and acts very much like an eccentric, which surely served to inspire his Sherlock Holmes role.
The mice ensemble cast serve to convey the season’s message as their persistence to obtain their own tree is a metaphor for everyone’s struggle to find the best gift for a loved one. The father mouse is the perfect symbol as he is consistently interrupted singing his refrain of “Look and you will see, this is how we cut the perfect tree.” The interruptions serve as all the constant banter that fills the Christmas season and masks the true meaning. This is also the first and only Christmas special that honors two other overlooked holidays: those celebrated by bears and owls. The owls and bears have their own celebrations this time of year. Bears gather around the honey pot and dance the Honeypot Waltz, while owls play icicle xylophones and sing.
Meanwhile, Stockard Channing and Leslie Nielsen serve as the story’s romantic angle. Both characters are lonely and eager to celebrate Christmas. They resolve their loneliness together and find love. The special ends with the mice finally getting their tree, true love being satisfied, and Mr. Willowby singing. How can you beat a special like that?
Dinosaurs: “Refrigerator Day”
Evan G.
For years, paleontologists debated what religion dinosaurs observed, until they watched the “Refrigerator Day” episode of Dinosaurs and learned that these terrible lizards had a religion that focused entirely on food storage. At that moment, they also learned just how good holiday specials could be. In this episode, our favorite puppet characters ever, the Sinclairs, learn that the true meaning of the season involves family, tradition, and return policies. Seeing those dinosaurs return their presents, wear silly hats, and hit each other with frying pans just makes me tear up every time. If you like your holiday specials to be grim, kind of illogical, and full of cynical jabs at the free market, you too will find “Refrigerator Day” to unquestionably be the greatest holiday special the Muppets have ever participated in. I mean, there are dinosaurs and jokes about paint! The Muppet Christmas Carol doesn’t have either of those.
A Sesame Street Christmas Carol
Ryan Roe
There are only so many hours in December, and way too many Muppet and Sesame Street Christmas specials to watch. A Sesame Street Christmas Carol saves you time by condensing several previous specials into one convenient, direct-to-DVD clip show. Who has time to watch the entirety of Christmas Eve on Sesame Street? Nobody! So Christmas Carol just shows you the Bert and Ernie “Gift of the Magi” story — you don’t need to bother with Big Bird wondering about chimneys, Cookie Monster writing his letter, or “True Blue Miracle” anyway. On the other hand, there are plenty of clips from Elmo’s World: Happy Holidays, which is sure to delight the youngsters in your household who have no need for nostalgia.
The framing device joining all these clips together features Oscar playing the Scrooge role, with the obligatory ghosts dropping by to give him glimpses of Christmas past, present and future. But rather than casting boring old characters like Grover or the Count as the ghosts, this Christmas Carol gives us a cast of all-new animated characters in Rhubarb the Grouch, Christmas Carole, and SAM the Super-Automated Ghost of Christmas Future! All of whom are guaranteed to go down in Christmas history, just like Rudolph.
The Christmas Toy
Carolyn Wiesner
Imagine my surprise when our completely random randomizer assigned my actual favorite holiday thing of all time for me to defend as the best Muppet Christmas Special. I was expecting Lady Gaga (sorry, David)! And honestly, it might have been easier for me to pick out the good bits from a less-than-stellar special than to try to put into words why I find The Christmas Toy so beautiful. My mom recorded the special for us during its original airing, and my sister and I have watched it nearly every Christmas (and other times of the year) since. This special is like a part of my DNA at this point, and how do you defend your DNA? It just is.
This special just feels like Christmas. The soft, sparkling lights of the Christmas tree, the warm, vibrant color palette, the joining together of family and friends in song. It’s all there. Christmas, for those of us who had a somewhat happy childhood, is a nostalgic time. And what could put you more in touch with your inner child than being surrounded by a bunch of adorable, magical talking toys? Even if you never saw The Christmas Toy growing up (or that other movie that stole its plot), I guarantee you thought your toys were getting up to shenanigans when you left your room. And you were right! Because Christmas specials never lie.
Elmo Saves Christmas
Matt Wilkie
How many times have you wished it could be Christmas every day? Those warm feelings of love. The joy of seeing someone’s face light up when you give them the perfect gift. The giant plate of Christmas cookies. Who could resist a wish like that? Not Elmo! In Elmo Saves Christmas, our furry red friend saves Doc Hopper – excuse me, Santa Claus, as played by Charles Durning – from the chimney and is rewarded with a magic snow globe that grants three wishes, as well as a new best friend in the form of a reindeer named Lightning. With his second wish (his first wish being a glass of water because he was thirsty, naturally), Elmo ushers in 365 days of Christmas. But the time-traveling Lightning helps Elmo see that there is a huge diminishing returns problem. Broken toasters pile up at the perpetually closed Fix-It Shop and Snuffy never returns home from visiting his grandmother in Cincinnati, leaving Big Bird extremely sad. He can’t even send Snuffy a letter because there’s no mail on Christmas!
But that heartbreak is only one side of the coin of this fantastic Christmas special. There’s also great fun in seeing Grover selling more and more gross-looking trees (or coat racks, when he runs out) to poor Mr. Johnson. Or when Bob and his caroling friends change the lyrics to the special’s showcase song, “It’s Christmas Again” with every holiday Elmo visits, eventually losing their voices from too much caroling and sounding like The Tom Waits Christmas Troubadours. The celebrity cameos, including a narrating Maya Angelou and the terrific Harvey Fierstein as the Easter Bunny who wants Elmo to buy some Christmas Eggs. And the music is well done, including a new rendition of one of the best Christmas songs ever, “Keep Christmas With You All Through The Year.” Yes, one might say that Elmo Saves Christmas is the best Muppet Christmas production ever!
(If one had a concussion: We all know the best one ever is A Muppet Family Christmas, duh.)
It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie
Anthony Strand
If you’re anything like me – and you probably are if you have a brain in your skull – you probably spent the 90s wishing the Muppets would stop being for stupid babies and start being totally brash and edgy and IN YOUR FACE! In 2002, the Muppets finally became relevant and exciting and TOO HOT FOR TV!
It’s just like we all wanted back in the 90s – hip, timely jokes about hot-tubbing with Ricky Martin! Cameos by awesome dudebros from the movie Scream! A bunch of scenes about Pepe – the most daring, outrageous and hilarious Muppet – wanting to touch Joan Cusack’s butt! Finally the Muppets grew the massive cojones to make jokes about sex and butts! This isn’t your Grandma’s boring, stupid Muppet movies with banjos and lessons and old people – it’s a thrilling, nonstop, laugh-filled KICK TO THE GROIN of Christmas Raditude!
Stay tuned for more Christmas fun this week. And click here to hit each other with frying pans on the Tough Pigs forum!
