Muppet Holidays, 2020: The Year We Break Contact

Pals! If you're here on this defunct blog it's because I linked you to this page for the schedule of the 2020 Muppet Holiday Party. (Theme: "why are we doing this!!!") My email has most of the details (and the Zoom links) but the schedule of streaming is below, in case that dictates your plans for jumping online.

In some instances, shorter clips from individual shows will crop up to try to get us as close as possible to on-the-hour start times for the main specials. If you've been going crazy waiting to see Rudolf Nureyev dance "Swine Lake" with a giant pig, Danny Kaye playing a turkey-roasting co-host to Swedish Chef, or just want to see Bert sing an absolute banger about putting on scarves and mittens and suchlike, you will just have to see when they crop up (or else go to youtube they're all on youtube).

Hit me up if you have any questions and please, I beg you, for once: take care of yourselves! You are all stardust!

Times are all Chicago-style; add 6 hours for the UK, 7 hours for continental Europe, and 15 for Japan. I will not be making any recommendations on other time zones!!!

1 PM: A Muppet Family Christmas

If you've never met the Muppets before, this is either a great way to do so, or the most confusing way to do so. Muppet Show, Sesame Street and Fraggle Muppets all celebrate the winter solstice for a while and then Big Papa Jim shows up in the kitchen, nourishing us all with our heart's favorite food (Fozzie and a snowman singing together). No, the Skeksis were not involved. (Good joke for people who care about Skeksis.)

2 PM: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These specials are all very pure, but maybe none is so pure as this, especially when Bert and Ernie Gift of the Magi each other and sweet, glorious Mr. Hooper has to come along and (spoiler alert) bail them out. Please note if you have children that they may find the Sesame Street on Ice sequence that starts the show VERY upsetting this is NOT just a me thing this is very common and psychologically normal!

3 PM: Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

 

The special that appears every year because (a) I love the outtakes reel something fierce, and (b) there are those among you who find the hilariously extreme bleakness of this story to be an essential and charming part of the holiday season!

4 PM: Muppet Christmas Carol

 

 

 

 

 

 

The champ, the legend, the reason for the season, what more needs to be said? I could quote lines or songs or talk about how Michael Caine gives the all-time second-best human performance in a Muppet movie (please don't ruin another Christmas by disrespecting Charles Grodin again), but what it comes down to is that in my subjective experience, those horns and the sweeping shot through London's rooftops signals we're finally here, we made it, it's Christmas eve for cer-tain.

5:25 PM: "When Love Is Gone" don't-yell-at-me screening

 

 

 

 

 

It is very important to some people that this song be included in the festivities; said people refuse to stop shouting through the entire half of the movie because they're mad the action didn't include Michael Caine emotionally singing, and I get it but even though this year the shouters will not be audible thanks to Zoom muting, I am still screening this at the end of the movie because I am full of the giving spirit that we so associate with Saturnalia et al.

5:30 PM:  The Bells of Fraggle Rock

 

 

 

 

Making an appearance on the schedule for the first time this year in honor of my somehow only this year getting around to watching Fraggle Rock?? Lay off I didn't have cable growing up.

6 PM :A Muppet Family Christmas

Uh, I already wrote about this earlier in the page! SCROLL UP!!!

7 PM: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street

This is the same as what I talked about earlier. Not Family Christmas, the other one. No, THIS one. I am exhausted. This year is exhausting.

8 PM: Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas

I am screening this twice mostly to give the River Bottom Band a shot at wining the whole thing. They rule.

9 PM: Muppet Christmas Carol

It's that movie again! The one we like! Hooray for cinema!

10:30 PM : POTPOURRI!

Based on who's on the stream and how they're voting (or what I personally feel like, in the absence of a riotous mob of voters) I'll throw on a series of the following specials until we all pass out from exhaustion and/or delight. Here's the rundown, though I could throw more options on the table if and when I come across 'em (this is a threat)! These are not (as the preceding specials are) core pieces of my childhood, but they range from the exceptionally good ("Give Your Friend an Easter Egg for Christmas" from Elmo Saves Christmas) to the abjectly dreadful (The rest of Elmo Saves Christmas JUST KIDDING FOR STRUCTURAL COMEDY PURPOSES, the actual worst thing available is A Special Sesame Street Christmas, thanks to the extremely purposeful exclusion of the Sesamstraat Sinterklaas episodes with Zwarte Piet in them.)

A Sesame Street Christmas Carol

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I mean, I guess if you're gonna tempt fate by producing a direct-to-home-video Christmas Carol adaptation a decade after your classic, you may as well jam it full of bland and disappointing CGI characters. One of those things that evaporates out of your head while you watch it.

A Special Sesame Street Christmas

The Star Wars Christmas Special of Muppet holiday programming, this dire star-studded spectacular makes lots of time for a celebrity cast to grimly intone the jokes they were handed when they got to set while the Sesame Street humans openly grimace at the spectacle. (Henson, annoyed that the show had licensed this special to CBS, only let them use Caroll Spinney, so you only get Oscar and Big Bird.) The fact that this came out the same year as the perfect object that is Christmas Eve on Sesame Street is proof of something but I can't think of what right now. The random chaos of the universe?

 Barrio Sésamo Especial Navidad

 

This one will be new to me if we watch it (though I may see it by the time the party rolls around), representing another "Muppet things from other countries" installment. From my EXTREMELY brief research while grabbing the episode, the one thing I can say is that I think there is a human-sized porcupine Muppet in this version of Sesame Street?

Elmo Saves Christmas

There's this thing called an Elmo, and he saves Christmas. Pretty good special imho. (Plus, Harvey Fierstein sings a song as the Easter Bunny. I don't need you all to vote for this, I'll watch it on my own if I have to.

Elmo's World Happy Holidays

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fraggle Rock was great at acknowledging the many ways that different cultures share values (or differ in their ways of being), and Christmas Eve on Sesame Street acknowledges (FLEETINGLY) that Mr. Hooper is celebrating Hanukkah, but moooost of the Hensonverse celebrates Christmas. This is a nice little counterbalance, with a Sesame Street-level "hey, here are some different ways people celebrate!" look at Christmas, Hannukah and Kwanza.

It's A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I always get this and fellow mediocrity Letters to Santa confused. I guess this one has Joan Cusack in it? 

John Denver And The Muppets - A Christmas Together

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The album that came from this special is an all-time classic (if you can handle Muppet voices singing Christmas tunes), tremendously sweet and thoughtful and spiritual and curious and also zany and rowdy and fun. The special is 70s dreck that includes multiple dance sequences starring noted John Denver, of whom it was often said, "why isn't he dancing with Rockettes more often?"

Lady Gaga and the Muppets special

This is mostly whatever, sort of the "IP licensing" era of Muppets, but it's worth noting that Lady Gaga and Joseph Gordon-Levitt sing "Baby It's Cold Outside" which remains gross but is gender-flipped. To my knowledge, the Muppets have riffed on this song thrice, and in each instance their take is: flip the genders, and mostly have Miss Piggy sing it threateningly! I do not think this solves the song's issues but okay!

Letters to Santa

 

 

 

 

 

I always get this and fellow mediocrity It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie confused. I guess this one has Whoopi Goldberg in it?

Mr Willowby's Christmas Tree

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you ever longed to see Mrs. President Bartlett and Leslie Nielson in a movie with Iron Man himself, but you were terrified at the thought of any other human actors having speaking parts, have no fear! Literally any time a non-puppet chorus is called for in this special, a man from accounting forces them to cut to shots of [puppeted?] feet stomping around while offscreen voices sing. Truly inspiring filmmaking-as-efficient-budgeting stuff.

Once Upon a Sesame Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

 

I swear that I have seen this but all I remember is that it sells the premise "19th century Sesame Street" without following the courage of its convictions to a suitably Gangs of New York  conclusion. It's fine. HBO Sesame Street is neutral to me, like distilled water.

 Sesamstraße - Weihnachten mit Ernie und Bert

 

 

 

 

 

 

YO THIS SPECIAL HONKS, it sends glorious sparks shooting into the stratosphere, it is transcendence and light ok it's probably medium okay but it's weirdly wonderful (TO ME) to see German Bert and German Ernie have a Christmas clip show of sorts in between getting ready for Santa's visit. The Berlin-ness of Ernie cannot be overstated.

 The Christmas Toy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe I reference this every year, but there's a Muppet Show episode where their guests do puppetry (maybe Edgar Bergen?) and Gonzo, disgusted, says "who wants to watch dolls wiggle?" Well, friends, if YOU want to watch dolls wiggle, this aesthetically weird special is for you! (Contains elements of Toy Story's plot so directly that it is wild to me that the Henson company does not own a piece of that particular pie.)

The Great Santa Claus Switch

 

 

 

 

 

 

The selection for the "ah, yes, this isn't especially good but it is of historical significance" crowd out there, god rest your precious souls. This is the special that Henson's crew launched to try to expand from Ed Sullivan and TV commercials to their own projects, and it is... primarily interesting for that reason alone! Arthur "Art" Carney is also in this.

OKAY! That is enough words about the party. Thank you for uhhhhh reading this and uhhhhhhh thinking about coming to my party long enough to say "we probably would get better resolution just watching this off of youtube, right?" I shall cherish our time together until they lay me in the ground!