General Introduction
6476063929_30ae1e3c57_b– Who’s done? Who’s not?
– Working on our Night Cheese
– No housekeeping

Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol
– A Gilmour Family Tradition
– Slapstick comedy—deferred
– Tortured rhymes and razzleberry dressing
– A joke fails to land

Sitcom Christmas Episodes
– Stephen’s credentials
– Sitcom Christmas Carols
Married…with Children ruins everything
– Proving Santa
– Snowed into a clip show
– The True Meaning of ChristmasTM
– The death of Santa
– 1996: The future of the sitcom
– A gumbo of sentimentality
– Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas

Rankin-Bass
– Do they hold up?
– David’s hipster family
– The breadth of their work
– On evil magicians and aspiring dentists
– Pantheons of Christmas gods
– Super high-definition
– They would laugh and call him names
Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey

A Charlie Brown Christmas
Real children
– Eternal questions
– Your depressing holidays
– The climax
– Sally Brown as college student
– The soundtrack

Compiling the VHS Tape
– NBA games
– Other Christmas Carols
– George Bailey vs. Ralphie
– ­A Muppet Family Christmas
A Claymation Christmas
– A Scandanavian favorite

10 thoughts on “The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode #93: Christmas Specials”
  1. Alf’s real name is Gordon Shumway.
    The Bones episode with the dead Santa is great, but my favorite of that show is the Christmas episode in which they were trapped in the lab.  I especially liked Temperance’s befuddlement when she learns that she is in the minority among her colleagues in her atheism, and IIRC that was the episode in which we first learn that Booth has a son.
    Since I haven’t seen Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, I’ll have to ask: does the donkey advocate that Jesus’ humanity was absorbed into his divinity?
    As for me, I’m looking forward to the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

    1. Charles H Wow.  Charles with the Nestorian humor!
      Remembering that episode of Bones makes me miss the Dr. Goodman, who disappeared after one fleeting season.  I like Cam just fine, but Goodman was all sorts of fun.

      1. ngilmour Charles H  
        You are entirely correct.  Goodman was a great character, especially when we got to see his inner conflict over having abandoned research for administration. Cam sort of balances the two by splitting her time between admin and autopsies.  I’d like to see it come about that Cam has to choose, and she steps down from administration to focus on soft-tissue analysis, and Goodman comes back as a full-time administrator.

  2. Oh, and if you have an hour and a half to kill, here’s the entire Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”

    I watch it every year, without fail.

  3. In addition to the Bones episode cited by Charles, I would like to point to my favorite subversive Christmas special, which is the first Futurama Christmas episode. There is nothing quite like a robotic Santa Claus whose standards of “nice” are too high, and who attempts to gruesomely murder all those who are “naughty.” 
    I also wonder why we don’t have any Christmas specials with the Krampus? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krampus
    Great episode guys, I laughed a lot.

    1. CarterS http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Krampus-Postkarte_um_1900.jpg   Best Christmas card ever.

  4. My first encounter with A Christmas Carol was “Mickey’s Christmas Carol,” with Mickey as Cratchit and, of course, Scrooge McDuck as Scrooge. (Funny to have one fictional character playing another fictional character.) I don’t know how I would perceive it if I encountered it first as an adult (and I haven’t even re-watched it as an adult), but that cartoon really seemed to capture the spirit of the story.

  5. No matter what you think about fruitcake, Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory is fantastic.  The 1966 television special was narrated by Capote.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0vjTfVyZco

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