First to Last: Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials
First to Last is a biweekly column where the pilot episode and series finale of a TV show are examined. This week’s show: Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials.
Despite being an unabashed Grinch, I decided to get in the spirit and write this week’s column about the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials. Even if the name doesn’t ring a bell, you’ve seen them: they’re those old Christmas specials that don’t quite look like any claymation you’ve ever seen. Produced by Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass between 1964 and 1985, their work is as much a staple of December television as commercials telling you to go buy more shit.
I began with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), which was readily available on YouTube. Although even if it weren’t, the story is so engrained into the public consciousness that I could have written about it from memory. The tale is hosted/narrated by Burl Ives performing as Sam, a snowman who dresses better than anybody I know and inexplicably carries an umbrella (wouldn’t accumulating more snow only make him stronger?).
If you’re somehow unfamiliar, I’ll give you the gist of the story: Santa Claus’s lead reindeer fathers a son, Rudolph, who is born with a glowing bright red nose, and he is lauded for his unique individuality. Just kidding—it was the 1960s and everybody hated the shit out of him. We soon meet the Abominable Snow Monster, who is hellbent on Christmas genocide. Nonetheless, the young reindeer are more interested in mocking Rudolph. If one of them had called him the n-word, it wouldn’t have felt out of place (again, it was the ‘60s). Rudolph’s parents force him to wear a fake nose, at which point he decides to run away from home with an elf named Hermey.
Hermey didn’t fit in because he wanted to be a dentist instead of a toymaker, and Rudolph, according to Santa, his peers and even his own parents, was a literal piece of shit because of his discolored nose. So they go to the Island of Misfit Toys, which is the North Pole’s version of Hot Topic, where they meet a bunch of mangled, asinine or otherwise undesirable toys. The most troubling of which, by far, is the water pistol that shoots jelly. First off, the water pistol looks just like a real gun, not like the translucent neon-colored water pistols I grew up with. And the jelly, in this context, seems a lot like blood. But what bothers me most is that you could just clean the pistol out and fill it back up with water. This is a perfectly good toy, just accidentally full of jelly! I’m pretty sure this was cut out of later broadcasts, because I don’t remember seeing that as a kid in the ‘90s.
Anyway, Rudolph eventually returns home and… well you know exactly what happens. He guides the sleigh tonight and all that. Everybody knows that. By 1985, though, the Rankin/Bass specials would become less “everybody knows that” and more “wait, what the hell was that?”