The Night Before Christmas

Three virtues defines it:

1) It is a story about Christmas in simple, fair way. The old Christmas of tradition, family and high care for the other. The Christmas of Navity, far by pink compromises and commercial temptations.

2) It is a film for family . For each member. At the first sigh, a film about past. In fact, about the essence of Christmas in each year, location and people.

3) It is well crafted, with care for details, for tension and profound honesty, that kid of cartoon who reminds the real sense of life and joy.

Short, it is a classic. Not for the passing decades but for powerful and useful message.

I loved this Christmas special when I was a kid. They eventually stopped playing it around Christmas and the last time I saw it was in the late seventies at a special showing in my elementary school's gymnasium which everyone from Kindergarten to 6th grade attended. Whenever I view the poem I immediately hear it to the tune of the version sung in this cartoon, and I never imagine it any other way.

I was amazed and appalled when Rankin-Bass did a vastly inferior version of this story in 1974. It was so bad I only watched it once. Why did they even bother? It was always a disappointment for me when the TV guide indicated the Night Before Christmas was going to be and it turned out to be the Rankin-Bass one.

But getting back to this one, the good one, I should say, I just started watching it for the first time in over 30 years and I still love it. I miss the days when TV was still fun to watch.

I much prefer this "Night Before Christmas" to all of the ridiculous ones with mice and all of the other animals since. When her siblings ask for their father to bring them home toys from his business trip Gretchen only wants a book. She wants to read about Santa Claus to learn more about the great man. It's a wonderful account of the era in which the story was written. It was funny as the youngest brother was stringing popcorn and the dog was eating it off the end of the string as the little boy put it on. Of course the little boy was stuffing a lot of the popcorn into his own mouth as well. Gretchen was the perfect mother's helper and reminds me of Wendy in "Peter Pan." As I recall Gretchen had two brothers just like Wendy and she helps the youngest brother by tying a knot in the end of his popcorn string. I grew up listening to "The Night Before Christmas" performed by Fred Waring and his Orchestra. I much prefer it to just hearing the story read. The music races with the wind as Santa comes into sight and is softened as the father watches him go about filling the stockings. No one really listens to the song. I found it on a Time Life Christmas CD set and I bought it for that song alone. Sadly, their later collections with the same picture and title omitted the song. I wish someone would actually show it every year. I haven't seen it since it was first shown in 1968, but I remember it vividly.

This animated TV special, which aired in 1968, is a retelling of The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore, and a bit meta-fictional, as the story depicts the author of this classic Christmas poem as a father looking for the perfect gift for his children, one of whom is a daughter deathly sick who had asked for a book about St. Nick. In his failure to find this sought after present, he instead writes a story for his daughter to coax her out of her sickness, and the poem is thus animated. Well done for the time, but a bit outdated and overly homogeneous in terms of the people depicted.

Review Date 6/22/2019

I Have Reviewed OVER 500 "Christmas Films and Specials". Please BEWARE Of films and specials with just one review! For instance When "It's a POSITIVE" chances are that the reviewer was involved with the production. "If its Negative" then they may have a grudge against the film for whatever reason. I am fare about these films.

This is a charmer. This is "The Night Before Christmas" story brought to life with a story about how the creation came to be. Well told. Well Made. Bravo!