Christmas Special Book 1: How steadfast are your branches.

One of my favorite Christmas songs is "The Christmas Waltz," as recorded by Frank Sinatra the second time as a single for Capitol records. Someone screen-named Tatsurou83 has used that recording as a soundtrack to the first three minutes or so of their Christmas home video.

The video's about as great as any home video by someone you don't know. So you might prefer just to collapse the window and listen to the song, which shouldn't necessarily work-it's got a freaking choral group on it. But it's haunting, and in a good way.

I especially love how, as the last chorus fades out, Frank says "Merry Christmas," and he sounds...innocent.

Here's, via YouTube, a clip from A Cosmic Christmas, a television special that first aired in 1977 in the wake of Star Wars' success. I think it's almost wholly forgotten now (last time I checked it wasn't in print on video), and if so I'm sorry about that. The story is great-and a little more meaningful than some others in its characterization, too.

In short synopsis, it might sound like your typical artificially sweetened Christmas special. "Three aliens land on earth and learn the meaning of Christmas." In execution it's something else again.

The animation has a freshness to it which, in my opinion, has not diminished in the 30 years since it first aired. The special was produced by Nelvana Limited, a Canadian company. That clip is just over two minutes, if you like it, Google Video has the whole thing, about 23 minutes.

Here's a very special minute from The Muppets Family Christmas, which united characters from Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and so on.

Earlier in the special, there was a joke which I haven't been able to get out of my head for 20 years. As I remember, it went a little something like this. Fozzie has met a singing, joke telling snowman and tells Kermit,

"Hey Kermit, I got a great new partner for my act!"
"Really? Who's your new partner?"
"A snowman."
"The heck you say."

Aw, good ole' Kermit. Good ole' all of them.

This clip is from the end of the show.