User blog:Toughpigs/10 Worst Christmas Specials of All Time

This is the season to be charitable and forgiving... but some Christmas specials just don't deserve it. Here's a list of the 10 worst Christmas specials of all time.



Christmas Comes to PacLand (ABC, 1982)

Okay, so get this: Pac-Man and his family are out riding in their snowmobile when they're chased by a pack of angry killer ghosts. Pac-Man eats his emergency Power Pellets, and chomps the ghosts.

The monsters' eyes float up into the sky, where Santa Claus happens to be passing by. The reindeer are spooked by the ghostly eyes, and the sleigh crashes into PacLand, leaving Santa stranded in a world where even a simple family snowmobile ride can become another opportunity to eat your ghoulish spectral enemies.



Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (syndication, 1977)

Nestor is a donkey who is born with abnormally long ears. This is apparently some kind of huge crime in Nestor's world, so naturally, he's teased and treated badly by everyone around him. This may lead viewers to expect that Nestor will probably end up earning everyone's respect by performing some important act of heroism, just like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Dumbo, the big-eared Disney elephant.

And that's exactly what happens. Plus, Nestor's mom freezes to death, and there's a big-cheeked angel with no pants on.



Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer (direct-to-video, 2000)

How do you take a three-minute novelty song about Santa killing your drunk grandma and turn it into a 50-minute cartoon special? Just add a soap opera plot about the gold-digging Cousin Mel trying to trick the family into selling their store.

Then you have Grandma turn out to be alive after all, but she's got amnesia and living in the North Pole with Santa. Then Cousin Mel and an evil attorney called I.M. Slime kidnap Grandma and frame Santa. And then it turns out that Grandma's fruitcake was laced with reindeer-nip. And then... oh, never mind.



A Special Sesame Street Christmas (CBS, 1978)

You know that great Sesame Street Christmas special from the 70s where Ernie sells Rubber Duckie to Mr. Hooper to buy a paper-clip box for Bert, and Bert sells his paper clip collection to buy a soapdish for Rubber Duckie?

Well, this isn't that Sesame Street Christmas special. This is the other one.

This is the one where Leslie Uggams teaches Oscar the Grouch the true meaning of Christmas by asking Imogene Coca to dress up as the Ghost of Christmas Past. This is the one where Ethel Merman sings "Tomorrow" from Annie, and Anne Murray sings an inappropriately romantic song to Big Bird, and Henry Fonda appears wearing a bathrobe.

I swear to God this really happened. It was on TV and everything.



The Year Without a Santa Claus (syndicated, 1974)

The Year Without a Santa Claus is boring and terrible.

Oh, it is too, and you know it. Yes, it's got the Heat Miser song, which is catchy, and it's got the Snow Miser song, which is the same thing as the Heat Miser song but in the other direction.

But what else do you remember about it? Nothin'. It stars two elves named Jingle Bells and Jangle Bells, and a buck-toothed kid named Ignatius Thistlewhite. Remember them? They have to talk to the mayor in order to get a reindeer out of the dog pound. Does that help? Didn't think so.



Rich Little's Christmas Carol (HBO, 1978)

Well, to start with, even five minutes of celebrity impersonator Rich Little is hard to sit through. So an hour of Rich Little performing A Christmas Carol -- including W.C. Fields as Ebenezer Scrooge, Columbo as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Edith Bunker as Mrs. Cratchit -- it's pretty much the Christmas equivalent of a war crime.

Especially Rich Little playing Truman Capote playing Tiny Tim, lisping, "God bleth uth, every one!" This was entertainment in 1978; presumably everything on the other channels was even worse.



He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special (syndicated, 1985)

This one doesn't even make sense. He-Man lives on a planet called Eternia, so in order to make this a Christmas special, Orko the magician crashes a space shuttle on Earth so that he can meet a couple of Earth kids named Miguel and Alisha who are out shopping for a Christmas tree.

The kids explain Christmas to Orko, and he's so moved by it that he basically kidnaps the kids and brings them back to Eternia, tree and all, where they end up in the middle of He-Man's ongoing war against the implacable forces of darkness. Skeletor captures the children, but he gets a sudden attack of Christmas spirit, giving them winter coats and hardly even trying to kill them at all.



A Claymation Christmas Celebration (CBS, 1987)

Young folks won't remember this, but there was a time in the mid-80s when one of the most popular things in America was a TV commercial for the California Raisin Advisory Board. It featured clay animation raisins dancing around a kitchen and singing "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", and I know this doesn't seem even vaguely plausible now, but I swear to you, every single person in the whole country knew and loved this commercial.

So in 1987 they went and made a whole Christmas special based around the California Raisins singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". Then they had to stretch it to fill a half-hour, so the rest of it is mostly a couple of dinosaurs arguing about what "Here We Come a Wassailing" means.



Rosie Live! (NBC, 2008)

Okay, it was more of a Thanksgiving special than a Christmas special, but it did have Harry Connick, Jr. dressed as Santa Claus, singing "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas". And it had Rosie O'Donnell delivering the immortal line, "It's Harry Connick, Jr! It's not Santa at all!" at the top of her voice.

Also, ever since I saw it last month, I just can't think of the word "Worst" anymore without automatically thinking, Rosie Live! So here it is.



The Star Wars Holiday Special (CBS, 1978)

I know, it's old news -- everybody talks about how bad The Star Wars Holiday Special was. But seriously, if you've never seen it, you just don't know. The first twelve minutes of the special are entirely in Wookiee language. No English, no subtitles. Just Chewbacca's son Lumpy walking around on the porch while his mother and grandfather moan and growl at each other. Then the special goes on for another hour and a half.

By the way, 1978 was also the year of Rich Little's Christmas Carol and A Special Sesame Street Christmas. What a merry Christmas that must have been!

So what are your least favorite Christmas specials? If I missed the one you hate the most, add it in the comments below!