If you’re looking for some wholesome Christmas entertainment this year, watch the old stuff. Pictured: John Denver in the Muppet Family Christmas.
My wife and I went nostalgic with our entertainment as the final countdown to Christmas drew near. We watched the 1987 Muppet Family Christmas, then the 1979 John Denver and the Muppets: a Christmas Special. What classics!
The ‘87 show starts with Fozzie Bear driving a half-ton truck full of Muppets in a snowstorm to his mom’s farm. Unbeknownst to him, she had booked a trip to a sunny surfing destination and rented out her house to Doc and Sprocket (from Fraggle Rock) for the holidays. Alas, she had to stick around. She could not say no to her son and his dozens of friends.
The party got even larger as every puppet on Sesame Street showed up. They traversed the snow-bound hills in a single-file parade, singing the Perry Como classic Here We Come a Carolling:
Love and joy come to you,
And to you glad Christmas too,
And God bless you and send you,
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.
It fell to the Swedish Chef to cook the Christmas meal for this entourage. Lucky for him, a large turkey puppet was walking in the house.
“Ya ya ya, gobbly gobbly torkey bitsky witsky!” said the chef.
The bird could not convince him he was a dairy cow or seagull, so he pointed the chef to Big Bird instead.
“Oh ye bork!” the chef exclaimed with joy. “Newska gobbly gobbly humunga!”
Big Bird escaped death, when, innocent of the chef’s intentions, he gave him a homemade chocolate covered birdseed dessert for Christmas. The bird said it must be hard for the chef to be so far away from Sweden for the holidays. The two of them sang the Nat King Cole special Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire and the chef wiped away tears. A vegetarian meal it would be!
Miss Piggy was shopping ‘til last minute but showed up late in a horse-drawn sleigh, blizzard or not. Jim Henson even made a cameo to do the dishes with the dog. How did he ever think of a female pig being a diva! Or having a frog for a boyfriend?
The character stole the show in John Denver’s 50-minute program. At a planning meeting with the Muppets, Kermit the Frog announced the program’s main message, “Peace on earth, good will toward men.”
Miss Piggy said, “Excuse me, what about toward women?”
Denver said, “Well, of course towards women.”
Asked why they didn’t say so then, Denver replied, “We took it from the Bible.”
That’s when Miss Piggy reminded him how the Bible was full of women who “begat” generation after generation and clearly received a lot of “good will”!
Gonzo asked, “Why stop there?” He wanted chickens added. Fozzie quipped, “How about bears?” All these groups made it into the glad tidings, though Floyd Pepper’s suggestion of Dizzy Gillespie didn’t make the final cut.
Later Denver shared his poem Alfie The Christmas Tree
You see, some folks have never heard a jingle bell ring,
And they’ve never heard of Santa Claus.
They’ve never heard the story of the Son of God. And that made Alfie pause.
Did that mean that they’d never know of peace on earth
or the brotherhood of man?
Denver’s empathetic humanity was on full display during the special. He even shared the Christmas story from the Bible, depicted with special puppets of Joseph, Mary, Jesus, camels, sheep, and an angel.
Miss Piggy, discontented with the role originally cast for her, convinced Denver to offer her bigger and better. She joined a song-and-dance routine where Denver himself was a toy soldier.
My wife and I, now in our early ‘50s, had renewed appreciation for growing up when we did. Christmas was celebrated on network TV, mainstream entertainment could be about love and family, and children had a chance at a wholesome view of the world.
Given the greater place of God, family, and traditional morals in past generations, a 1979 Christmas Bible story might not seem out of place for the time. Yet, it may not have happened had A Charlie Brown Christmas not previously been broadcast in 1965.
“Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?!?” asked Charlie Brown. Linus could. He walked to centre stage and recited the story of Jesus’ birth from the Gospel of Luke.
Remarkably, it took some convincing for Peanuts creator Charles Schultz to get this segment into the animation. This was only two years after the Lord’s prayer had been banned from American public schools. Shultz’s two partners in the production, Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez advised him to take the Gospel passage out. “The Bible thing scares us,” they said.
Schultz’s reply was simple: “If we don’t do it, who will?”
If you’re looking for some wholesome Christmas entertainment this year, go to YouTube and watch the old stuff. It’s timeless. And, wish someone a Merry Christmas. If you don’t do it, who will?
