Anyone who grew up when television was king can’t help but connect the Christmas season with the holiday-themed episodes and specials that would air every year without fail. That’s because the season of giving has inspired some of the finest programming ever made, but it’s also because pretty much every network, company, and creative team on the planet was pumping out holiday specials back then in order to get a piece of the yuletide pie.
The massive popularity of Christmas specials led to various producers throwing anything at the wall just to see what stuck, and that has resulted in some truly strange stuff over the years.
7 Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer
Whenever Christmastime came around back in the late 90s/early 2000s, Cartoon Network would roll out a number of classic holiday specials from animated favorites like The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, Yogi Bear, and many more. They would also play Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, which seemingly came out of nowhere and involved exactly zero cartoon favorites.
The concept was simple: take the novelty Christmas tune “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and turn it into an animated story for children. The problem was that the song didn’t have the characters, plot points, structure, or resolution required of all good storytelling.
To remedy this, the movie wound up banking a hard left into the worlds of corporate greed, backstabbing family members, and courtroom drama. It also included songs called “Texas Chainsaw Christmas” and “Grandpa’s Gonna Sue The Pants Offa’ Santa.” Kids who grew up watching it are still befuddled to this day.
6 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: “Alpha’s Magical Christmas”
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are guilty of not one but two holiday specials that are absolute headscratchers: “I’m Driving of a White Ranger” and “Alpha’s Magical Christmas.” While both make a good argument as the weirdest and most uncomfortable, the trophy ultimately has to go to “Alpha’s Magical Christmas.”
This special amounts to what is essentially a 20-something-minute string of low-budget music videos starring Alpha 5 and a bunch of children Zordon has kidnapped to keep the awkward robot company on Christmas. There’s no real conflict, no action, no frightening villains, no Megazords, and almost no Power Rangers at all. Just pure unsettling Christmas discomfort.
5 A Very Brady Christmas
Christmastime is a time for reflection. It’s the point in the year to finally slow down a bit, take in all that’s gone by, and think about what it all means. That said, nobody wants to be reminded of the passage of time around the holiday season in the way that A Very Brady Christmas does it.
Everyone in the Brady family has grown up or grown old (or in Cindy’s case, become an entirely different person) and now they’re all together again at their family home for a dysfunctional Christmas. What was once a silly and heartwarming family comedy has for the most part become an uncomfortable family drama intermingled with some jokes. Sitcoms are supposed to be a reprieve from the horrors of reality, not a reminder of them.
4 The Leprechaun’s Christmas Gold
There are many out there who consider Rankin/Bass Christmas specials to be the absolute height of holiday television. With classics like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, it’s hard to argue. With The Leprechaun’s Christmas Gold, however, it’s quite a bit easier.
One of the bigger issues with this 1981 stop-motion special is that it really doesn’t have much to do with Christmas at all. It’s easy to imagine that Rankin/Bass was running on fumes when they came up with it and that just about every viewer on earth was entirely bewildered when they first saw it. It’s not the worst, or even strangest, tale these animators have told, but its seasonal confusion makes it a truly weird watch around Christmastime.
3 We Wish You A Turtle Christmas
Back in 1994, if children were asked their thoughts on the prospect of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Christmas special, the most common response would probably be an ear-piercing screech of unbridled joy. Their response after actually seeing We Wish You a Turtle Christmas, however, was probably closer to despondent dead-eyed silence.
Well, maybe young children got something out of this exceptionally strange, low-budget, money grab of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles holiday special, but for anyone over about eight, it was probably little more than utterly creepy and deeply disappointing. Its string of painfully uninspired songs sung by people in strange puppet-like turtle suits with ceaseless grins and mile-wide eyes remove any possible charm from this strange footnote in Turtle history.
2 Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe In Santa
The motivation and the vision behind most weird and uncomfortable holiday specials are usually clear enough even if the finished product confuses and frightens the children it was supposed to delight. With Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa, that’s not quite the case.
It’s difficult to tell if this special was a full-on flop made in earnest or an all-time brilliant troll that predicted the explosion of ironic, unsettling humor delivered with bargain bin production values that would start to rise a few years after its 2002 release date. All that can be said for sure is that it most definitely doesn’t capture the Christmas spirit, but it certainly captures something of note.
1 Star Wars Holiday Special
It’s trite to even mention it at this point, but the Star Wars Holiday Special cannot be omitted from any discussion about the most bonkers pieces of holiday programming ever created, and that’s because it’s really one of the most bonkers pieces of media ever made, period.
The unprecedented earth-shattering success of A New Hope in 1977 had fans and greedy execs hungry for more Star Wars, and so an ill-fated, not-so-well-thought-out television special was planned for the 1978 holiday season. There’s just so much to this thing that’s inexplicable, odd, and uncomfortable. It bizarrely centered around Chewie’s family (who ceaselessly spoke only in their native Wookiee tongue with no subtitles) and involved very little action in spite of being two hours long and only peripherally including the main cast for the most part. Mercifully, it aired only once.