Season 2: Christmas TV History
Episode 1
Season 1: Christmas TV History
Christmas TV History is also available on Apple Podcasts.
Christmas TV History started as a five-part audio series created in July 2019. The first five installments: an introduction, the history of Christmas animation, the history of Christmas TV movies, yuletide variety specials and episodes, and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol adaptations. Why these topics for the episodes here? These are the most discussed formats and topics that I’m asked about. I hope you find them satisfying. Two additional episodes were created in 2021. One is on Christmas Film & TV Soundtrack Records, and another is on Rankin/Bass Christmas and New Year's animated programs.
I've been working on finalizing the expanded and updated, 2nd edition of the encyclopedia Tis the Season TV coming out in 2022. I’ve been researching and writing about Christmas entertainment for twenty years. It’s one thing to gather data for the encyclopedia and another thing to synthesize the information. I’ve never been in a better place to share what I’ve learned.
I’m also a firm believer in examining popular culture—most importantly here, Christmas entertainment—so we can better understand ourselves through the stories we tell and connect with. Considering there are thousands of Christmas episodes, specials and TV movies, and so little scholarship on it to this point, I can say it is a body of work that is under-appreciated despite the big business the TV and film industry knows it to be. Looking back into the history of television, I can clearly see that yuletide programs have been a part of every format in TV, proving that Christmas TV History is TV history.
I’m also doing this audio series as a first step toward writing about Christmas TV History for a collection of essays that will eventually be published in print as well. The written essays will be much longer, have more depth, and refer to more examples—but starting the conversation in these fairly short, 30-minute audio episodes allows me to share some of this information now.
More installments are possible in the future—I can certainly discuss the history of sitcom/comedy Christmas episodes, theatrical-release Christmas movies, interesting adaptations of O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi,” all 20 Rankin/Bass animated Christmas and New Year’s programs—the potential list goes on and on. If you like this series, feel free to drop me a line and suggest a potential topic for a future installment.
Awesome! Really looking forward to hearing the whole series, and excited for more!
ReplyDeleteThank you Jeff. The whole set of episodes will be available in August. Thanks for your patience.
DeleteI am very glad you are doing these podcasts. I hope you will go back to each topic and break them down. There's so much information--and you have so much knowledge--that this at times becomes lists. It would be great if you could divide it up by decades (or even separate animated specials from holiday episodes of animated shows), so that, in essence, you could "slow it down" and thus allow more time for different parts.
ReplyDeleteKeep these coming!
Thank you for your feedback Hugh. Yes, in these first segments I'm trying to do an overview which requires big picture descriptions. I appreciate what you're saying though. I'm hoping for more of the detail to come through in the written essays coming eventually in print. In the meantime, I'll try to take on smaller chunks of info in upcoming segments :D THANK YOU.
DeleteHi Joanna, I'd love to see you do some recommendations or your "top 5" type lists, especially ones that are easily accessible like YouTube, Hulu or Netflix. The amount of Christmas shows can be overwhelming and there is nobody I trust more to list the very best!
ReplyDeleteHi Jonathan. Thank you for your comment. I've been doing Top 5 lists on TikTok. I'm at @TistheSeasonTV and feel free to check them out.
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