drieux

As the years drag on and you realize that there is no Santa, that the holiday season is primarily about commerce and drinking and that each Christmas becomes a sad death-march through time, watching yourself and your loved ones become older, flabbier and inexorably more obsolete with each passing day, you gotta find the fun parts.

For me, it's the specials. I love Christmas specials. I'm not talking about a Very Special Episode of "According to Jim" in which the show has 44 minutes instead of 22 to get Jim into even wackier, snow-related marital misunderstandings and then wrap it all up in a slightly sweeter package, ending in a big bluesy Christmas song that Jim himself plays in a harmonica while his ridiculously hotter wife adoringly stares at him.

No, I'm talking about the old-school stuff. The stop-motion puppetry specials that were all made in the 60's and 70's and featured starring roles for drunks and misfits that would never even get halfway up the voiceover ladder these days. I love 'em and when December hits, I can watch them all repeatedly - so much so that a few years back, I began buying all of them on DVD to avoid having to constantly check listings to discover when in November (for some fucking reason) the networks were airing all my favorites.

So I've been working my way through all my discs of holiday cheer, and once again upon getting to a specific special, I'm perplexed. This one in particular is just weird, obtuse and just plain fucked-up.

I'm talking, of course, about "Mr. Rogers and Johnny Cash Sing Hitler's Favorite Jew Anthems For New Year's!"

Okay, I'm actually talking about "Year Without A Santa Claus."

If you're a member of Generation X or older, you've definitely seen this. It's inspired a line of dolls and even a live-action TV version a few years ago. The special is done in the same stop-motion style of all those other favorites and yet, it's remarkably surreal, the plot is screwed up and what sets the story in motion is nothing but laziness, ego and selfishness.

As the title suggests, the main conflict of the story is that Santa might not be coming that year. But why? It's not because he's been captured by some miserly bastard, it's not because of weather conditions and it's not even because Santa has converted to being a Muslim - it's because Santa just doesn't feel like it.

Santa starts out being all whiny and pouty, and Mrs. Claus gets their resident doctor at the North Pole to come see him in bed. And what does the doctor say? He doesn't suggest exercise or anything to lift Santa's spirits - he tells him that he should just stay in bed and forget about Christmas, because nobody cares about it anyway.

So - Santa's doctor. Who Lives. At. The North Pole. Tells him that Christmas. Is. STUPID.

That would be like you going into your job today, sitting at your desk doing shots of tequila until your boss finally came in to see what was going on, and then you just telling them to go fuck themselves, barf on the desk and then go out to the parking lot and start keying the cars of everybody you work with.

And also, as a doctor, the guy doesn't really have any diagnosis. I'm sure that there are plenty of reasons that a guy like Santa would have to stay in bed. Y'know - diabetes. Need for a heart transplant. Hell, maybe all the eggnog drinking has completely pickled his liver, and he's steadily getting that David Crosby-shade of purple on his face.

Nope - nothing. Just, "Screw it, stay in bed."

And Santa, supposedly the epitome of Christmas Spirit, agrees - "Yeah, fuck it. I'm staying in bed."

Enter Mrs. Claus. They say behind every great man is a woman, inspiring and pushing that man to achieve that greatness, thus making the accomplishments of the one truly the work of the pair, for without that inspiration the man would never aspire to greatness, nor be able to achieve it.

So Mrs. Claus steps up. What does she do?

She puts on Santa's coat and hat and essentially says, "Fuck that fat asshole - I can do his job, and so could anybody else." She even does a song to that exact effect.

So far into this special, the very people we're supposed to be rooting for - our X-mas Heroes - are proving to be selfish assholes.

Enter two elves, who discover Mrs. Claus at the end of her song. They tell Mrs. Claus that, in fact, she can't be Santa. So she starts another plan - she's going to send the elves to get proof that people still have Christmas Spirit. So they hop onto reindeer Donner and head south.

But it can't be that simple, can it? Nope - while on their way, they encounter two weather-based Bad Guys - Heat Miser and Cold Miser. Both hate Santa and all his cohorts, so they begin assaulting the elves and their reindeer and send them to the ground in a place called Southtown.

For some reason, it's around this time that Santa gets up from bed and starts asking questions, discovering that Mrs. Claus has sent the two elves and the reindeer on the errand. That's when Santa remarks, "Oh, no - they'll get attacked by Heat Miser and Cold Miser!"

And Mrs. Claus says, "Oh, I completely forgot about those two!"

Talk about detached from reality. If you live in the middle of nowhere and to leave you have two dastardly, weather-based baddies to contend with, it seems like you'd remember that before sending your minions off to their death with nothing more but curly shoes with bells and bright tights.

Thus, Santa decides he has no choice but to go after the elves. Now he's depressed, listless AND cleaning up after his wife's mistake.

Santa heads towards Southtown in disguise, and immediately upon arriving he starts asking around about the elves, starting with the kids. Of course, the elves have gotten in trouble and Donner, looking nothing like a dog, has for some reason gotten taken into custody by the local dog catcher.

While questioning some kids Santa asks about whether the kids are going to miss Santa this year, since Santa took the trouble of apparently issuing a press release and making the announcement that he wasn't coming this year.

One boy responds, saying that it's none of their business if Santa doesn't feel well - a pretty enlightened and selfless response, initially: if somebody who spends their life doing good needs a breather, shouldn't we all be understanding about it?

But, because this has to keep being The Most Fucked-Up Christmas Special Ever, the kid keeps going: "Besides, only little kids believe in Santa."

Uhhhh...but you were just talking about him as a real person. And reading about him in the paper, and hearing about him on the radio, with the newspeople treating him as a real person.

It's also around this time that the elves make a deal with the mayor of Southtown - if they can get it to snow in Southtown, they can get their reindeer out of the dog pound.

So Mrs. Claus gets involved to convince Heat Miser and Cold Miser to cooperate. Turns out they're brothers and they don't like each other, which doesn't make any sense because they're both apparently screaming, faggy queens who should be able to relate to one another, having grown up together as guys with weather powers who are into the cock.

Both of them burst into song when Mrs. Claus meets them, and both of their songs have an ending coda of "I'm too much!" Which is, of course, the gayest way to end a song about yourself other than pointing to your butt and singing "Penises go here!"

Finally, Mrs. Claus goes to Mother Nature, who basically tells the two Misers to stop being dramatic jerkwads and gets them to cooperate. Amidst all of that Santa sees some kids decide that they do, in fact, have Christmas spirit and Santa stops being glum and decides he's going to go out and deliver Christmas presents for all the kiddies.

If ever a special was a photograph of its time, "Year Without A Santa Claus" captures its era, 1974, perfectly. Confused, ineffectual, meandering and generally blase about the world and their place in it. If it was made for adults, Santa would have been snorting cocaine and listening to Fleetwood Mac in a dark room while Mrs. Claus divorced him and opened her own sewing shop to bedazzle bellbottoms and started dating a Latino plumber. The elves would all be wearing Cheech-and-Chong-esque denim tuxedos and smoking pot and calling Santa a "Jive Turkey" while hanging outside a dirty warehouse. Also, all the Southtown people would be racist, waving rebel flags and carrying guns. And when we met the Misers they'd be in a sex club, and the argument would be that both of them had dated the same college swimmer.

But it's not - it's for kids. And after the goody-goody, feel-good specials of the 60's, this one is completely odd and weird. In fact, I couldn't even relate to it until the last few years. Because now I wake up not wanting to go to work, and often the people in the way of me accomplishing my goals are silly overly-dramatic weirdos, and the people I occasionally rely on to accomplish simple work tasks just make my life more difficult and prove to me the old adage, "If you want things done right, you have to do them yourself."

But it's a hell of a message for a kids Christmas special.