Santa is in peril again!
For someone who can go around the world distributing presents to all the girls and boys in a single magical night, with all of the logistical mastery, tenacity and physical endurance that implies, Santa Claus sure has a way of coming a cropper at the absolute worst times.
Which, rather conveniently for the narratives of just about every Christmas special going, is Christmas Eve, the big night when everything is riding on Santa not skipping a single beat.
Or, in the case of the 1977 special, A Flintstone Christmas aka A Flintstone Family Christmas, not tripping on the snow-covered, rough hewn roof of one Fred Flintstone (voiced in this special by Henry Corden after the death of original voice actor Alan Reed) and tumbling into a snow bank.
Injured and needing recuperation, not simply from a sprained ankle but a nascent cold, Santa must rely on good old Fred and neighbour Barney Rubble (Mel Blanc) to get the sleight aloft – with very modern reindeers pulling it through the sky; yep, evolution is all over the shop in the world of this modern Stone Age family – and deliver all those presents flawlessly.
Small problem – Fred has been fighting requests from Wilma (Jean Vander Pyl), backed by Barney’s wife, Betty (Gay Hartwig) to dress up as the jolly red man for the Bedrock Orphanage Christmas event, backed by the Ladies’ Auxiliary and one Mr Slate (John Stephenson) who is Fred’s boss.
Turns out that while Fred won’t accede to a kind request from his own wife, he will dress up as Santa for his boss and the gallivant around the world for Santa himself, both men who apparently carry the gender weight to get Fred to do their bidding.
Leaving the implicit misogyny of The Flintstones aside – it’s lots of fun, although why do people use cars and catch buses when they are effectively still walking or running, and very sweet but the men get away with all the things – A Flintstone Christmas is still a Christmas classic worth your viewing because it uses the whole Santa-and-thus-Christmas-in-peril trope to tell a heartwarming tale of Christmas.
First broadcast on 7 December 1977, A Flintstone Christmas has everything you’d want from an animated festive special.
It has a simple but effectively compelling storyline, a visually lush Christmas tableau with Santa everywhere – thus the singing of the song “Which One is the Real Santa Claus?”; the first of five brief but charming musical interludes – and decorations festooning the stone buildings of a twinkling Bedrock, a Scrooge-like transformation from ho-hum about Christmas to all-in, and messaging that speaks to the inherent magicality of the season (“It’s My Favorite Time of the Year”).
If you want to walk away feeling contentedly happy about the season, and amused by dinosaurs operating lifts and bird intercoms being a literal “squawk box”, then A Flintstone Christmas is a worthy addition to your Christmas viewing schedule.
It has that warm inner glow that comes from family and friends getting together for the season, and while it trades all the usual tropes of Santa in trouble and Mrs Claus and the elves doing their thing at the North Pole after Fred and Barney loses multiple sacks of presents during a storm, the special feels sweetly fresh, evoking the cosy family inclusivity of the original 1960s series, from September 30, 1960, to April 1, 1966.
While Fred is cantankerous and you to wonder why the Rubbles stay his friends and Wilma stays married to him, he somehow manages to keep everyone on side, even Santa, and deliver just the right amount of adorable husband and friend material just when he needs to.
It’s on full display in A Flintstone Christmas and while there are times when you wonder how one earth Wilma can put up with his selfish antics, he does the right thing with just the right amount of loveliness and becomes everyone’s hero of the day once again.
And at Christmastime when kids must see the magic of Christmas and presents must be delivered and the world made a better, more tinsel-y place, if just for one night, being a hero is pretty important and emotionally uplifting.
The innocence and joy of A Flintstone Christmas is in the fact that Fred and Wilma love each other, that Pebbles (Jean Vander Pyl) and Bamm-Bamm (Lucille Bliss) love everything about the season including decorating the tree and getting gifts and that Bedrock feels like Christmas made tangible.
Even more than that though, the special executes on the whole saving Christmas trope in a way that’s fresh but traditionally reassuring, a mix of the old and the new that works a treat, reminding us that in the end the season is all about selflessness, love and the magic of a step away from the everyday, and that’s why A Flintstone Christmas is a necessary part of every Christmas, especially ones in peril which may need some saving from an animated quarter.