December 24, 2001

4:44 AM

Was Christmas TV really ever all that special? 'Off The Telly' reviews three decades of Christmas Day television in Britain. "It's funny...that Christmas time is actually an excuse for some of the worst TV atrocities of the year to be inflicted upon us. Christmas telly does not equate with quality. And yet, never does TV become a more integral part of our own family or personal routines and traditions. And never are we so receptive to a gathering of disparate middle-of-the-road celebrities and their stale party pieces." And for the ultra-cynic, TV-Go-Home's Charlie Booker presents an alternative schedule.
posted by feelinglistless (17 comments total)

The Onion has a related piece, "Emotionally Distant Family Spends Holidays Watching Touching Family Dramas Together."
Sure, Christmas TV is crap--tons of old crap at that. Nobody with a mental age over 7 really wants to watch it, I think, but like the holiday Muzak, it's part and parcel of the landscape, another indignity inflicted on us all by the merchandisers.
I think of holiday programming as the TV equivalent of fruitcake.
posted by StOne at 6:58 AM on December 24, 2001

This week's onion is uber-weak. Did they fire all the writers and get monkeys to re-arange words from existing non-fictional articles?
posted by tiaka at 7:41 AM on December 24, 2001

considering what the folks at the onion write, it would not surprise me at all if they have been heavily involved in pre-Christmas carnage, the upshot of which is they have done naff-all work.

'tis the season and all..
posted by Frasermoo at 8:26 AM on December 24, 2001

TV in general is pretty horrible anyway. I prefer Scrabble.
posted by pudders at 9:01 AM on December 24, 2001

I don't know. I think I'd miss the crappy x-mas specials and movies, really. It's always been such a prominent part of the whole "experience" since... well.. forever...

StOne : Nobody with a mental age over 7 really wants to watch it.
Fine with me. Can I still believe in Père Noël just for a day ? =)
posted by XiBe at 9:14 AM on December 24, 2001

everyone knows they're staying up late tonight to watch "christmas comes to pac-land" at 4:30 a.m. eastern on the cartoon network. it's a pac-man christmas special... ah. so fun.
posted by onthestereo at 9:38 AM on December 24, 2001

Did anyone else catch the "KISS Saves Christmas" sendup on Family Guy this week? Priceless.
posted by rushmc at 9:52 AM on December 24, 2001

The only Christmas movie I find appealing is "A Christmas Story", and there's a marathon of that on TNT starting this evening ;)
posted by valerie at 10:16 AM on December 24, 2001

My favorite Christmas special (and the only I'd ever watch): Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas
posted by skwm at 10:46 AM on December 24, 2001

The Onion has been weak since the Sept 11 issue and the 2 or 3 following it. I will forgive them since the Sept 11 issue was a grand slam. I laughed for hours.
posted by McBain at 10:55 AM on December 24, 2001

I think of holiday programming as the TV equivalent of fruitcake.

I LIKE fruitcake and resent you towing the anti-fruitcake line like a sheep. Thanks to a few overly repeated bad comic routines it is now blindly accepted that fruitcake is a preordained bad thing.

Make THIS holiday year a breakthrough year for yourself and STOP BEING LED AS A SHEEP! THINK FOR YOURSELF! This year give yourself the gift of an open and freed mind, unencumbered by the prejudice implanted by decades of weak comedy routines.

BUY A FRUITCAKE!
posted by HTuttle at 12:25 PM on December 24, 2001

LOL HTuttle...viva la revolucion!
posted by rushmc at 12:38 PM on December 24, 2001

("No, I don't have a reindeer up my butt, but I have mistletoe in my pants!")
Merry Christmas to all-- even avowed fruitcake lovers, Santa-worshipers and Onion-haters.
posted by StOne at 1:25 PM on December 24, 2001

Did anyone actually read the links in this thread?
posted by feelinglistless at 2:29 PM on December 24, 2001

I always thought that "A Wish for Wings That Work" had the most inspirational Santa arrival sequence.

I've been surprised and disappointed to not find "Olive, the Other Reindeer" scheduled.
posted by dglynn at 2:39 PM on December 24, 2001

dglynn: I, too, am an Olive fan. See what's happened to her.
posted by Carol Anne at 3:26 PM on December 24, 2001

I LIKE fruitcake and resent you toeing the anti-fruitcake line

Sorry.
posted by emf at 3:45 PM on December 25, 2001