Every year, a lot of us likely look forward to hearing news if our favorite currently-running television shows have new Christmas-themed episodes premiering in the holiday season. But have you ever felt that one of your favorite shows from the past should have gotten a Christmas episode when it, for some reason, didn't get one? Here are a few examples of my favorite cancelled television shows that, to my surprise, never got a single Christmas episode in their original run.
DuckTales - The fact that Disney's first syndicated animated television series never had a Christmas episode has baffled me for quite some time now. As you may already know, Scrooge McDuck was originally created for one of Carl Barks' Christmas-themed Donald Duck comics, Christmas on Bear Mountain, and he later starred as Ebenezer Scrooge in Mickey's Christmas Carol (and the record album that special was based on). Therefore, it would've seemed perfectly natural for the animated series starring Scrooge to have an episode set at Christmastime. I think if such an episode was made, its plot would either be similar to the storybook Christmas at the North Pole (which got published in the US long after the show ended), or they could've gone with doing an adaptation of one of Barks' Christmas-themed Uncle Scrooge comics, like Search for the Cuspidoria.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the Fred Wolf series) - At 192 episodes, the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon had a pretty long run, especially by Saturday morning cartoon standards. But there was not a single episode where Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael had to save Christmas in some way, even when the Technodrome got stuck at the North Pole in the fifth season. And no, I am not counting that awful We Wish You a Turtle Christmas video as the Christmas installment of this show. (To be fair, though, Turtle fans did eventually get a good TMNT Christmas special in the form of the 4Kids series' adaptation of "The Christmas Aliens", and it won't surprise me if the current show on Nickelodeon gets a Christmas episode too.)
U.S. Acres - As of this writing, Garfield has now starred in no less than four animated Christmas productions, but Jim Davis' other, less famous comic strip, better known as the "B" segment of Garfield and Friends, has only done its Christmas stories in print media. Like the first Ninja Turtles show, Garfield and Friends ran longer than most Saturday morning cartoons, so it seems a little odd to me that there never was an animated Christmas short with Orson and his friends in any of the show's 121 episodes.
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers - Chip 'n Dale were no strangers to Christmas cartoons by the time they got their own syndicated TV series. But while there was a Christmas-themed Rescue Rangers story in the second issue of Disney Adventures magazine, the show itself, like DuckTales before it, had no episode featuring the Rangers' Yuletide adventures.
Duck Dodgers - Unlike Taz-Mania, The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, The Looney Tunes Show, and even Baby Looney Tunes, Daffy Duck's own spin-off TV series did not have an episode themed around Christmas. As such, one can only imagine how Santa Claus runs things at the North Pole in the 24½th century.
These are a few examples that I have thought of myself. Are there any television shows from the past that you wish had gotten a full Christmas episode? If so, you can mention them in the comments.