Getting Into the Christmas Spirit, One Cartoon at a Time

Do you watch the animated/claymation Christmas specials on TV? Did you as a kid?

Miss Conduct wrote about Rudolph today, and it got me thinking...

My favorites are:

• A Charlie Brown Christmas
• The Year Without A Santa Claus*
• Santa Claus is Comin' to Town
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Frosty the Snowman
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• Twas the Night Before Christmas
  

*This plays these days, but there was a long period there when it wasn't aired, and one year I made a friend very happy by not only knowing which obscure special she was talking about, but having it on video.

I think that's all of them, my favorites. Am I forgetting any? This is essentially what played every year in the 70s*, in those dark days when you had to watch it when it came on TV, since that was your only chance because there were no DVDs or videos**. Yes, old fart alert, I am that old (and my mother is wincing just to read this). Once a year, The Wizard of Oz or The Sound of Music was on, and the whole family watched together. Seriously, kids!

*other than a couple that I just never glommed onto; for whatever reason, I was never into The Little Drummer Boy, and Frosty Returns didn't get me either. As an adult, I rather liked Olive, the Other Reindeer, but it's not the same if you didn't grow up with it, somehow.
**Video! I have them on video! This year, I'll have to watch the specials when they come on, because my VCR isn't working! Whoa.

Is it all the nostalgia that makes me love them? They're such products of their times, with some seriously dubious messages (about conformity and gender roles, for instance), and the animation/claymation is nothing like what they can do today ... and yet I love them.

What about you?