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Mr. C has decided to grace us with 30 festive frames per second of animated (and puppetized) Christmas cheer.

The American cultural-commercial force known as “Christmastime” now begins its mobilization on November 1. One can’t even wipe the grease paint from one’s face the morning after Halloween revelry without being blindsided by large containers full of cheap decorative holiday trinkets, either at a grocery or convenience store, or personal storage [argh].

Wasn’t there a holiday in between the darkness and the lights? Something more American-oriented than demons and barn-staged virgin births?

Oh, right, the thing with the dead turkeys.

Yeah, Thanksgiving happens in there, and we get a day off of work for it. When I was a kid, watching Christmas specials was verboten until the day after Thanksgiving, no matter how itchy one was for the transition to SOON IT WILL BE CHRISTMAS.¹ A Thanksgiving special, perhaps with Christmas overtones, though, could slip through.

Of course, I only knew of two at the time. However, in the past few years I’ve discovered the type of special that would have bridged me, kept my holiday sanity in check once mid-October caused the birthday and Halloween screams in my gray matter to fade into waiting waiting waiting for November to pass to get to CHRISTMASTIME WHERE ALL THE COOKIES AND CANDY CANES AND SNOW-FILLED CARTOONS ARE.

The first Christmas movie with a Thanksgiving theme I was aware of (one that wasn’t typically viewed in my household, oddly enough) was Miracle on 34th Street, which begins at the first special event I was aware of: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade [warning: the Macy’s site is absurdly Flash-heavy and loud]. Now, we always watched the (end of the) Thanksgiving Day Parade, which concludes its franchise-balloon-and-pop-music extravaganza with Santa Claus ushering in CHRISTMASTIME WHERE PRESENTS WILL BE BOUGHT FOR ALL THE GOOD CHILDREN AT MACY’S AND OTHER FINE RETAILERS. (Side note: Anyone remember last year’s parade, where the entire country was Rick-Rolled? Thanks, Foster’s.) But live-action movies and parades are not animated, are they? We move on.²

“Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends” Rick-Rolls the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

Many favorite comics and cartoon characters appear in the parade every year: this time we have such luminaries as Spider-Man and Mickey Mouse. Even Beavis & Butt-head got in on the Thanksgiving Parade commentary, in 1997, with Kurt Loder at MTV.

“Woah! I just got an idea of something you could could do with those dolls, Butt-head!”

Ground Zero for animated Thanksgiving specials is, of course, 1973’s A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving contains misinformation, browbeating, canine hallucinations, and avian cannibalism. Funmania.

Charlie Brown replays the common Thanksgiving legend of what it’s like to be invaded by strange people and have to feed them because they’re too dense to realize the imposition.

Speaking of imposition, I declare the Star Wars Holiday Special a Thanksgiving, not Christmas, special, since it was aired the Friday before Thanksgiving in 1978. This, and the focus on cooking. For hours. In Wookieese and Tim Conwayese (which may, sometimes, be harder to understand). No matter; we all know that Boba Fett was introduced to the world in an animated piece in the Holiday Special. We’re aware of its status.

Above, Tim Conway; below, Boba Fett. “And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!” Images courtesy Stomp Tokyo.

Of course, you can find endless information about the SWHS online. I’m a bit more interested in the video version of The Hoboken Chicken Emergency, which features Daniel Pinkwater’s 266-pound Henrietta, a motorcycle drifter mutated into a heroin-addicted fowl-headed monster, killing junkies to drink their horse-infused blood.

No, wait, that’s Blood Freak.

“But Herschel, what will the children look like?” Image courtesy badmovies.org.

Henrietta, though, is a mutant chicken of SCIENCE!, and a young friend of Christmas viewers everywhere (little Ralphie, here named Arthur Bobowicz) takes her under his wing while failing the seemingly simple task of going to a grocery store to pick up a Thanksgiving turkey. You see, there’s an oil shortage AND a turkey shortage in early ’80s Hoboken. They seem to have a Kotter infestation, though, as Gabe Kaplan seems to be everywhere at once while running for mayor to oust Dick Van Patten, and Henrietta-on-the-loose becomes a political pawn. Ooh, baste us in the local giant-chicken intrigue!

Henrietta terrorizes Hoboken. Yeah.

Seriously, though, it’s terrible.

As terrible as South Park’s forays into Thanksgivingdom? Starvin’ Marvin or Helen Keller! The Musical good enough?

Finally, MST3K Turkey Day clips makes waiting for Christmas bearable. (And waiting for MST3K Christmas episodes unbearable.)

Next up: HENSONMAS, where we celebrate the ridiculous sounds and motions of pieces of felt.

Notes:

1 This was in Florida, though, so it could have just been November mosquitoes and ants covering my body, as they did 11 months out of the year.

2 I should note at this point that, although I am focusing on animated, i.e. cel, stop-motion, and CG, specials, I am making a special exemption for puppets. Silhouettes and balloons are puppets, dammit, and will show up from time to time, as well as (of course) Muppets.