The Rankin/Bass winters
When NBC broadcast Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in December 1964, sponsored by General Electric, few expected a puppet film to outlive almost everything else on the schedule. Produced by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, it used a stop-motion technique the company called "Animagic", with puppets built in Japan under animator Tadahito Mochinaga. Burl Ives narrated as Sam the Snowman. The Island of Misfit Toys, Hermey the elf who wants to be a dentist and the Abominable Snow Monster have since become part of the season's shared vocabulary, and the special is often described as the longest continuously running holiday special in American television.
Rankin/Bass returned to the snow again and again. Frosty the Snowman (1969), narrated by Jimmy Durante, switched to traditional cel animation, and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (1970) went back to puppets, with Fred Astaire as the mailman narrator.
Peanuts and a jazz piano
A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) almost didn't happen the way we know it. Producer Lee Mendelson, director Bill Melendez and creator Charles M. Schulz had only months to make it. They cast real children as voices, refused a laugh track and commissioned a jazz score from the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Network executives at CBS reportedly feared it would flop. Instead it won an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and Linus's quiet recitation on a bare stage remains one of the most affecting minutes in children's television.
The Grinch, twice drawn
A year later, Chuck Jones, the Warner Bros. animator behind Road Runner, directed How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966). Boris Karloff narrated and voiced the Grinch, while Thurl Ravenscroft sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch". At 26 minutes it remains the tightest adaptation of Dr. Seuss, though Illumination's feature-length The Grinch (2018) introduced a new generation to Whoville.
A British Boxing Day
In the United Kingdom, one film rules the animated season. The Snowman, directed by Dianne Jackson from Raymond Briggs's wordless 1978 picture book, first aired on Channel 4 on 26 December 1982. Howard Blake's music, especially "Walking in the Air", sung in the film by chorister Peter Auty, carries a story told without dialogue. It was nominated for an Academy Award and has been shown on British television every Christmas since. Its sequel, The Snowman and the Snowdog, arrived in 2012.
The feature-length wave
Henry Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), conceived by Tim Burton with songs by Danny Elfman, proved a stop-motion feature could straddle Halloween and Christmas. Robert Zemeckis's The Polar Express (2004) used performance capture, with Tom Hanks in several roles, to adapt Chris Van Allsburg's book. Aardman's Arthur Christmas (2011), directed by Sarah Smith, imagined the North Pole as a high-tech operation run by an exhausted family. And Sergio Pablos's Klaus (2019) for Netflix gave hand-drawn animation a luminous new look; it won the BAFTA for Animated Film and earned an Oscar nomination.
How to programme animation
Use specials as a curtain-raiser. A 25-minute short followed by a feature makes an evening feel like a proper cinema visit, complete with supporting programme. Save the darker material, such as Nightmare's skeletons, for children who already enjoy a gentle scare.