The holidays are upon us and with them come a plethora of specials for the season. Growing up my favorite shows to watch were the Rankin/Bass stop motion animated specials featuring Rudolph, Santa and the wife, Jack Frost, and Frosty and his family. I still enjoy these shows but watching them for the umpteenth time as an adult certain thoughts and questions start to creep in my twisted little mind.
First off, Santa Claus was a real douche in most of these shows. Of course, everyone is jumping on the bandwagon that Santa treated Rudolph like garbage in Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer (1964) instead of having his back and shaming everyone else in town for bullying him. Poor Rudolph gets it immediately from his parents (mostly dad) and when Santa comes in to see the new addition to the family and sees his nose, Donner tells Santa he's sure he'll grow out of it. Rather than telling Donner how amazing the baby reindeer's nose is and not to worry about it, he responds with, "Well, let's hope so, if he wants to make the sleigh team someday."
Not only is he a douche to Rudolph but the elves as well. There's a scene that occurs after Christmas is over where the elves are presented for inspection and perform for them, happily singing their hearts out. Mrs. Claus enjoys it but afterwards Santa is like "meh, keep working on it" and then leaves. His wife tries to do damage control but obviously the elves are crushed. He then shows up for reindeer flying class or whatever where Rudolph is literally flying high because the doe he's crushing on said he was cute. Santa is impressed until the disguise on his nose falls off and it starts to glow again. Everyone starts ridiculing Rudolph and rather than telling everyone to chill, Santa actually scolds Donner either for his son still having a glowing nose or for trying to hide it. Gee, I wonder why he would try to hide it? It's not like Santa is prejudiced or anything.
So after Rudolph runs away to hang with people who don't treat him like shit for his nose even when its glow does actually put them in danger, he returns home to find out his parents and girlfriend went to find him and have been missing for months. Santa says he's worried not because he cares about them or anything but because "Christmas Eve is only two days off, and without your father, I'll never be able to get my sleigh off the ground."
That's right, his big concern is that Donner being missing fucks with his schedule. And yet even at this Santa doesn't bother to send out a search party or look for the missing deer himself even though little Rudolph, who hasn't even been alive for a year, knew to go straight to the Abominable Snowmonster's lair. Now Rudolph disappears, the big storm hits and apparently Santa STILL doesn't do anything about it. That narrating snowman has to direct his friends to find him when they arrive IN. THE. STORM.
Only after all this happens and everyone is rescued does Santa get a clue and everyone lives happily ever after. Now, in one of the sequels, Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July (1979), Santa himself explains that the reindeer's glowing nose comes from the power of the queen of the Northern Lights named Lady Borealis who threw down with the evil king of the North Pole called Winterbolt long before Santa was even a twinkle in his mother's eye. The queen basically knocks his tyrannical ass into a coma for centuries until her power starts to diminish in her human form and she becomes the aurora borealis. Knowing Winterbolt was waking up and about to cause trouble, she puts the last of her power into Rudolph just as he's being born. So my question is when did Santa find this out? Did he know this when he was giving Donner a hard time or did he find out later somehow? Because if he knew beforehand then all I have to say is WTF Santa?
Now, Santa didn't start out as a douche although he could very well have as we see in Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1970) when he's left on the doorstep of Burgermeister Meisterburger as a baby. This was a man who hated children, noise, toys, colors, apparently, and ordered his henchman to drop the baby at the orphanage. The henchman loses the baby, doesn't tell anyone, and the baby finds his way to the Kringle elves who raise him. The Kringles used to be the official royal toymakers of the king who I'm assuming stopped being king when Meisterburger's people led a coup and overthrew him because joy is a bad thing?
Anyway, the Kringles never stopped making toys and when Santa becomes a man he decides to start delivering their toys. The townspeople are downright hostile to Santa when he arrives and absolutely freak when he tries to give out the toys. He doesn't understand but now we start to see the douchebaggery began to flower. He meets a group of miserable looking kids doing their chores who clues him in on what their life is like. His response? Well, I've got some toys and goodies for you but I'm not giving you anything until you smile.
So the kids abandon their chores and start to play until their teacher and future Mrs. C, Miss Jessica, comes out and yells at everybody to stop it. She informs Santa that toys are illegal and having them puts them all in danger. Santa's response? "Why, that's the silliest thing I ever heard." He wins her over with a doll and as she helps him and his penguin (don't ask) pass out all the still illegal toys he sings a pretty shady song with lyrics about sitting on his lap and giving him a kiss as "the price you'll pay" for a toy. I know this was probably like 14th century Russia or something but no one saw anything weird about some strange man appearing out of the mountains asking for children to sit on his lap and kiss him?
So, Santa keeps finding ways to deliver the toys to the kids who stupidly keep playing with them where authorities can see them. Burgermeister keeps bringing down the banhammer and arresting people but the kids keep defying him, lather, rinse, repeat, until he gets captured and the town ostracizes Jessica for helping him. Now, had this not been a kid's cartoon I'm assuming there'd have been public executions and torture, which would explain the response of the adults in town. Anyway, as the story goes, Jessica breaks everyone out of jail and they flee far from civilization, set up shop at the North Pole and keep doing their thing as outlaws until the Meisterburgers died off. So basically the kids in this movie rage against the machine for a few weeks and then spend the rest of their lives bent under the oppressive thumb of this regime and no one ever fights back again.
In another prequel, and probably the most favored special by just about everyone, The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), Santa wakes up late one morning and just can't be bothered to do the Santa thing anymore. Mrs. C says he's still recovering from a bad case of pneumonia he picked up the Christmas before. Being as ancient as Santa is at this point I guess you can't blame him for having a bad attitude and saying fuck it, I'm not going out this year. His doctor doesn't help matters when he comes in and tells him to stay home because "nobody cares about Christmas anymore" and "nobody even believes in you anymore." I mean damn, would you want to go to work if someone told you this?
I think Santa is the least douchiest in this show because after finding out two of his elves took a baby reindeer down to civilization to attempt to find evidence to pick up his spirits he goes after them in case they run into trouble which, of course, they do thanks to the Miser brothers. Anyway, to make a long story short Santa gets a sick Vixen out of the pound and brings her home to recuperate. Upon learning his wife went to help the elves he goes back to bed knowing she can handle things, which she does. He sees that society doesn't completely suck and decides to go do his annual thing after all. The End.
Although the timeline in this universe says that Santa basically becomes more and more jaded as he gets older, I guess Rankin/Bass realized that Santa Douche wasn't exactly playing well with audiences since they seemed to dial it back with each special. Either way, the fact that I'm shivering from an Arctic blast here in South Florida tells me the new mayor of Southtown probably asked for snow again since it worked the last time Jolly Old St. Nick felt taken for granted and ima shove my size 11 foot up some Miser ass if they don't get it together soon.
Anyway, Happy Holidays to one and all. Stay safe and warm out there!
Next week: Is Mrs. Claus a FEEDER? She's always after the man to eat but he never wants to. How the hell does she get him so fat from one day to the next? Does Mrs. Claus fatten Santa up like he's a fois gras duck? And how does he get back to being so skinny afterwards. Is magic metabolism a thing?
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