(courtesy Laughing Squid)
Christmas used to be defined by the specials that aired on Network TV.
While videos were a thing, it wasn’t yet common in the Eighties for people to routinely have the movies and TV shows they loved on the shelf to watch whenever they wanted, and so Christmas specials were usually only watched once a year.
And while some came back regularly, some did not as Rhett for History points out in his 1980s Forgotten Christmas Specials!, featured on Laughing Squid, which takes us through seasonal specials by the likes of Pee-wee Herman, played by Paul Reubens (Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special), George Burns (George Burns’ Early, Early, Early Christmas Special; it aired 16 November), Garfield (A Garfield Christmas Special), Pac-Man (Christmas Comes to Pac-Land), Ziggy (Ziggy’s Gift), B.C. (B.C.: A Special Christmas) and even the Osmonds (The Osmond Family Christmas Special) and Dean Martin (Dean Martin’s Christmas at Sea World).
There was even a Muppets’ special, A Muppet Family Christmas, which is the only time that The Muppets, Sesame Street, Muppet Babies and Fraggle Rock all made it into the one special, a The Brady Bunch return (A Very Brady Christmas) and Mickey’s Christmas Carol.
It’s a lot of fun to see what came out during the decade and to see what you remember and what, for probably very good reasons, you have forgotten.