Ebenezer Scrooge! You suck! Just thought I'd drop by to remind you. I mean, yeah, you've changed your miserly ways, built a few hospitals, supported the local humane society and all that jazz, but you still suck! And why? Well, I'll tell you.
You see, you have forsaken Christmas once again by embracing it too much. I know that doesn't make any sense, stop looking at me like that! I'm talking about sacrificing quality for quantity. Have you looked at the Christmas specials in your Netflix cue? What on earth have you been watching? Saccharine, that's what. Flimsy plots that barely tie together acapella renditions of "Jingle Bell Rock", people throwing their careers away for a single kiss in the snow, and 101 ways to derail Santa's whole racket with one poorly timed appearance at the North Pole (haven't we all just wandered in there?). These aren't Christmas specials. These are Christmas mundanes.
So that's why I'm here, to warn you that you need to cut that out if you really want to save your soul or something. And with that in mind, I've taken the liberty of assembling the usual lot. Tonight you will be visited by three specials that did it right. Listen to them. Watch them. Do what they say. Or your chain, which I forgot to mention earlier, will be longer than mine. What chain is that, you ask? It's the one where you make ten copies of this letter and send them anonymously to strangers so you can experience good luck, and if you don't you'll single handedly ruin everything! Yep. Global warming is all on you. Merry Christmas!
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
To start with, this episode is very funny. Every MST episode has some good laughs, but occasionally you get one that strikes the right balance of having a bad movie that's intriguingly watchable on its own paired with a running commentary that's pretty damn solid from start to finish. Martians is one of those gems that you can show to a non-MST fan and at the very least get them to understand why people rave about the show (even if you don't convert them).
But what really makes this episode stand out is the flavor of the host segments. If you don't know, MST is a show identified by its biting sarcasm. Sentiment isn't really a concept that has any room in the intentional cheapness of production and the team's refusal to take anything about itself seriously. Even when Joel Hodgson left the show, or either time the series ended, you never really felt anything about the characters. You weren't meant to. The show was wit, not heart.
Which is why Martians is unique to the show. Somewhere between Crow's Christmas wish that he gets to decide who lives and dies and Tom Servo's suggestion that Santa was killed in Viet Nam, Joel pauses to reflect on whether or not they've become so jaded that the spirit of Christmas has been lost to them. And then Gypsy (good luck getting that name in the final script today) silently presents a manager scene with no facetiousness and no punch line, before going to commercial. It's quick, and they don't big deal out of it, but it may be the most poignant acknowledgement of Christ since Linus recited the Gospel of Luke.
To the best of my understanding, the MST veterans are predominantly Christian. I am as well. Perhaps you aren't, and I'm not remotely bothered by that. But if you celebrate something around the time of the cold and the shortening of days, I do hope it has a meaning for you. Whatever it may be. Even if you don't know what that meaning is, I hope you get to experience it some time this season. The Grinch never figured out exactly what Christmas meant, but simply accepting the possibility of a meaning was enough for him to feel a joy he hadn't felt before. And for MST, a mere moment of reflection among an hour and a half of one-liners speaks volumes.
The Bells of Fraggle Rock
How about a Christmas special that never mentions Christmas (if you factor out the wraparound segments)? Fraggle Rock was a brilliant show that set out to end war, and would damn near succeed if world leaders would take the time to listen to their inner songs. Gobo is the most level-headed of the Fraggles, approaching things like magic with a certain scientific mindset that he developed purely on his own accord.
As the Festival of the Bells approaches, Gobo finds himself experiencing a crisis of faith that he can't quite describe as such. Being the only Fraggle who can't accept the story behind the festival at face value, he declares that he'll be able to prove the existence of the Great Bell; something that he thinks will restore the festival's significance that has slipped away from him.
The takeaway is ultimately left ambiguous. Does he become a believer again? Does he accept comfort in the story as metaphor? And who exactly is this particular story meant to reach? I wonder what would happen if an agnostic told this story to a group of children. Which elements would be emphasized?
Christmas can be a frustrating time for people prone to wanting spiritual answers. My experiences with most churches is that if a conversation about doubt is even permitted to begin, it's cut off by a traditional non-answer like "Well, you just have to have faith," which appeases the one who was never comfortable with the question in the first place while pushing away the one who's asking.
The bottom line here: some people simply cannot do things the easy way, their inner song dictates they try to observe the invisible. From a purely goal-driven perspective, the pursuit is futile. But experience teaches the lessons it has, not the ones you expect it to have. And that feeling we refer to as 'the Christmas spirit' only pokes its head in when we stop listening to our own voices and just hear what's around us.
The reason it's fun to ride in a one horse open sleigh is because you're fully invested in the journey as you're experiencing it. The Christmas party at the home of Farmer Gray will happen when it does. For now, just jingle. And commit to doing it all the way.
ALF's Christmas Special
It's probably nothing more than coincidence that all three of these specials involve puppetry. Although if there really is anything to it, I guess I would argue that puppets are inherently more human than human. They have no poker faces or repressing workplace etiquette. Ulterior motives don't exist unless they show up in the character's voice or mannerisms. In that regard, a puppet will naturally be more honest than any of us will. And I guess that makes them the ideal catalysts for Christmas tales of any sort of emotional weight.
So ALF. Some people may not know; he was a brown puppet alien character from an eighties sitcom of the same name (it stands for Alien Life Form). After crash landing on earth he winds up in the care of the Tanner family, trying to find ways to integrate himself into daily life without being discovered by the government.
In the Christmas special, ALF pushes the Tanners about as close to their breaking point as his performer allegedly did in real life to the production team, and they order him out of the cabin they're staying at for the holidays. The alien gets stuck in the back of the cabin owner's truck, which is full of toys destined for a children's hospital. ALF soon finds himself posing as a Christmas toy to a little girl named Tiffany.
He intentionally blows his own cover sooner than you'd expect and asks her for help getting out of the hospital so he can return to the Tanners. It's kind of a tear jerking moment, because Tiffany was clearly bonding with what she thought was a stuffed animal for her to keep. But not to worry. That moment gets completely overshadowed by the kick in the gut you receive when you find out she's also terminally ill, and this is going to be her last Christmas.
Not kidding here. Tiny Tim undoubtedly got cured and grew up to be a key activist in the fight against starvation. Tiffany gets no Christmas miracle here in this eighties sitcom. In the end, the Tanner's come to spend Christmas with her in the hospital, and that's nice enough. But the episode makes it clear that she's not going to live. It aired thirty years and five days ago, and I'm still about to lose it just thinking about her.
Luckily we have a much needed bit of ALF-ish hijinks when the furball gets stuck in an elevator with a pregnant woman and has to deliver her baby himself (which is apparently not that hard to figure out, if television is to be believed). It's a welcomed palette cleanser and a return to Christmas special form, as the normally selfish ALF gets to be the guardian angel for a stranger in need. And it makes the episode's Act III mood swing feel all the more like a drop kick when ALF witnesses the aforementioned cabin owner one step away from committing suicide. What the f**k happened in 1987 to take us down this road?
Christmas comes at a time when our side of the world is literally heading into a dark place (or technically, just as we're coming out of it). It's odd to me that Christmas specials rarely go as dark as this one does. Many people hurt during the holidays, and because of the reflective nature of winter that pain seems to make itself known in different ways. Contrary to popular belief, the suicide rate is actually at a low point around Christmas (April being the high), but it certainly doesn't mean the pain isn't there.
We all carry things that hurt, and the older I get the more I notice what kind of stress the holidays put on us. It's like, bringing joy to the world is such a gritty determination for us that we easily lose sight of how to experience it. Maybe what we should be doing instead is granting ourselves some time to mourn. Every one of us had at least one connection last Christmas that we no longer have now. I wonder what would happen if we allowed ourselves a chance to be sad, instead of trying so hard to be happy. Maybe, just maybe, the Christmas spirit is something we need, not something we can make or buy or binge watch.
Merry Christmas, and may God bless us every one.
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