The City That Forgot About Christmas

"The City that Forgot Christmas" is a 1974 animated TV short. It's one of a series made by Lutheran Television with a young boy, Benji, and his big sheepdog, Waldo. In this film, Benji and siblings get reprimanded by parents about being careful with Christmas ornaments. So, they decide that they don't want Christmas anymore. Well, when they go see what grandpa is working on, Matthew tells them a tale about a city that forgot about Christmas.

The town had forgotten about Christmas and the mayor and his cronies are all nay-sayers and an unhappy and a nasty lot. Then a carpenter comes to the town one day - it's Matthew, and he starts helping people, fixing things, and telling the kids about Christmas. So, the town turns around, and then Benji and other kids decide they want Christmas after all.

This short has some prominent personalities of the day doing voices. They include Sebastian Cabot, Louis Nye and Casey Kasem.

This is a film by the Lutheran Church, so its purpose is to present Christmas from a Christian perspective. The animation is rather low cost (they repeat motions and images, mouths do not synchronize with the words...), but my family has always enjoyed the humor in the well written story--so we watch this show most every year. My boys especially like the simple minded men who follow the mayor about. These three often repeat the same phrases with the third giving a humorous twist. The songs are also simple, but nicely done, clear and memorable: "you can't stop Christmas no matter how you try" and "chip, chip, chip away." Other than the odd animation (which probably matters most to adults anyway), this is an excellent show for children.

I saw this around Christmas 2007. I know it's dated, but I found it to be an entertaining story and a great choice for younger viewers. It begins with a boy depressed over the coming Christmas. All he's seen is the season making everyone around grumpy. His grandfather then tells a story of a similar situation. The story he tells is of a gloomy city that has forgotten Christmas and where nearly everyone is nasty towards one another. One day a man named Matthew, a carpenter, arrives in town. Matthew shares with the children what makes him different and what makes Christmas very special, the birth of Jesus Christ. Soon everyone in the city begins planning a big Christmas celebration, the first in many years. But the Mayor and his henchmen plan to stop the celebration.

🎄Probably the last Christmas cartoon I watched that I was still young enough to watch Christmas cartoons. Takes me back to that last moment that Christmas was something special for childhood🎄

Since Casey Kasem died a few weeks ago, I've been watching some stuff he did-whether live action movies or animated cartoons-made in chronological order on the internet. So I'm now in 1974 with another animated cartoon for Christmas he did after "The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas". For this one, he voices a frustrated father and a henchman for a grumpy mayor (voiced by Charles Nelson Reilly). The mayor is a character in a story told by a grandfatherly figure who also resembles another elderly person in the story named Matthew who comes to this town to help its people discover Christmas since the mayor doesn't allow it to be celebrated. Let me now say that while its a bit heavy-handed and the visual slapstick scenes are visually clumsy, its still a pretty heartfelt story worthy to be seen by any child who stumbles into this one. So on that note, The City That Forgot About Christmas is worth a look.