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🎄 Trudge back to 1974 as we dig up a rare gem, “The Gift of Winter,” which introduces a colorful cast of characters from Anytown, better known from its Halloween sequel, “Witch’s Night Out!”  🎙️ Chad Young from the Horror Movie BBQ joins the quest for an audience with Old Man Winter alongside pre-“Saturday Night Live” Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd.  📺 You can watch “The Gift of Winter” on Tubi.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Treatments for a whole Anytown Series, which includes sequel stories for Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day.  Whenever Bazooey’s not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, “Where’s Bazooey?”  The special’s true heroes: A couple of gay trees.  Every parade should end at the Rocky steps.  ****  “The Gift of Winter” © 1974 Leach/Rankin Productions.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s1 #1970s #anytown

🐰 We’re back! This surprise springtime episode covers the 1976 Rankin/Bass special, “The First Easter Rabbit,” which despite its name and main theme, still relies heavily on Christmas.  🎙️ Brandon Medley hops by to discuss this special’s very obvious and very uncredited connection to “The Velveteen Rabbit,” Easter Valley’s odd location next door to the North Pole, and Rankin/Bass’s habit of giving bad directions.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  They named the talking snowball “Br-r-ruce,” a joke I didn’t notice until just now!  ****  “The First Easter Rabbit” © 1974 Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s1 #1970s #easter #rankinbass

🎃 The Advent Calendar House presents a dazzling display of magical mischief.  🎙️ Chad Young creeps in to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of “Witch’s Night Out,” an often remembered, then forgotten, then re-remembered Halloween classic from 1978.  📺 You can watch “Witch’s Night Out” on Tubi.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  WitchsNightOut.com, the official website.  Anytown Series, a planned sequel, and other holiday specials in development.  Toys “R” Us TV commercial from 1980, featuring ”the Big Bird Halloween costume and the Yoda Halloween costume.”  Ghostbusters Fright Features action figures.  Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?  Malicious’s food may or may not have been inspired by Joys of Jell-O.  ****  “Witch’s Night Out” © 1978 Leach/Rankin Productions.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s1 #1970s #halloween #anytown

💫 Get ready to blast off for space church as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Star Wars Holiday Special!  🎙️ Lizzie Twacthman joins our exploration of the farthest point from the bright center of our favorite galaxy far, far away.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  “Some folks are in space for the benefit of nobody” (SB Nation, 2015)  Our disappointment that Chewbacca’s family didn’t show up in Solo, but at least we got L3-37, who was great.  High praise for the animated segment, marking our introduction to Boba Fett and the return of Luke’s awesome yellow jacket.  Dihann Carroll was 43 years old in that erotic VR helmet sequence.  Screen Junkies’ Honest Trailers of the Star Wars Holiday Special and other spinoffs.  ****  “Star Wars Holiday Special” © 1978 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s2 #1970s

🎄🐭 It’s the one with the mouse. Turn back the clock till it goes kerplunk — or kerplooey — to make some time for Rankin/Bass’s 1974 retelling of ’Twas the Night Before Christmas from the perspective of the mouse and his know-it-all nerdy son.  🎙️ Joey O. is in the Advent Calendar House to do what’s necessary, ’cause even a miracle needs a hand.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  The worst thing we’ve broken that ruined multiple peoples’ day.  We prepared for this episode by listening to Green Day’s “Kerplunk!”  South Park’s cover of “Even a Miracle Needs a Hand.”  A young Julia Stiles in a 1990s Apple Jacks cereal commercial.  Dusty Rhodes’s “Hard Times” promo.  ****  “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” © 1974 Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s2 #1970s #rankinbass

🎄 Merry Christmas, little Zachary. Enter the void as time, space, and reality blur around the 1979 TV special accompaniment to my favorite Christmas album of all time, “John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together.”🎙️ Carlin Trammel and Bill Hanstock join the celebration of peace on Earth and good will to men, women, chickens, bears, Dizzy Gillespie, and Missy Piggy.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Bill’s Uncle Deadly tattoo.  Pro-wrestler and “Muppets Most Wanted” cast member Hornswoggle’s Muppet tattoo.  The Muppet Show Season 4 DVD promised at 2009’s D23 Expo, but which never came.  Miss Piggy makes a sex joke, lest we forget the “Muppet Show” pilot opened with “Sex and Violence.”  John Denver’s linear notes for the album’s 1996 re-release cite the Muppets as an inspiration for writing “Alfie, the Christmas Tree.”  “A Baby Just Like You is one endpoint of the John Denver Christmas song emotional spectrum. The other is “Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas).”  “I Will Wait for You” in “Futurama.”  Jesus Christ has His own entry on Muppet Wiki.  Zachary Denver in the audience during “Silent Night,” and at his father’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony in 2014.  Jerry Nelson and Louise Gold sing “When the River Meets the Sea” at Jim Henson’s memorial service.  ****  “John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together” © 1979 John Jer Productions.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s2 #1970s #muppets

🎄 It’s mime time at the Most Magical Place on Earth in 1978’s “Christmas at Walt Disney World.”  🎙️ Drew Crowley and John Dedeke from The Hourchive drop in to watch Shields and Yarnell as the most 1978 couple imaginable, Pablo Cruise and their indifference to help a screaming woman escape from pirates, Phyllis Diller in the world’s poofiest princess dress, the Doritos guy as a wildly off-model Geppetto, Dee from “What’s Happening?” as an ungrateful passenger in a magical pumpkin coach, and Broadway’s original Annie singing Christmas carols with surprisingly reverent Disney villains.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Map of what Walt Disney World looked like in 1978.  Vault Disney.  How “My Favorite Things” became a Christmas song.  The opening music, “The Great Gate of Kiev” from Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” or as I know it best, Jerry “The King” Lawler’s theme music.  Shields and Yarnell on “American Bandstand” (1976)  Drew eating a gigantic spoonful of mashed potatoes at the Liberty Tree Tavern.  Photos from the long-abandoned Discovery Island in 2009.  Disney’s short-lived plans of reopening Discovery Island as an attraction based on Myst.  One-day admission to the Magic Kingdom plus a book of attraction tickets in 1978 cost $13, according to this Ticket Price Guide.  “Ernest Goes to Splash Mountain.”  Winnie-the-Pooh wearing a honey pot on his head.  Giant, smoking cigars in a theme park parade for children.  The (1970s) “Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World.”  “Kraft Salutes Walt Disney World’s 10th Anniversary” (1981)  The Hourchive on Walt Disney World: Part 1 and Part 2.  ****  “Christmas at Walt Disney World” © 1978 Walt Disney Productions.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s2 #1970s #disney

🎄 Extend your ears as we revisit a lesser-known Rankin/Bass special from 1977 that unravels a new side quest to the Nativity story.  🎙️ Lindy Kempe and Brandon Medley droop in to salute “Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey,” the first of a Christmas donkey double feature.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Roger Miller performing “Do Wacka Do” in 1966 with another guitarist, “Stubbs,” who’s wearing a Batman T-shirt.  Roger Miller’s “Whistle Stop” in Disney’s “Robin Hood” is secretly the Hamster Dance.  Tilly’s ascension back to heaven is strikingly similar to Poochie’s exit from “The Itchy and Scratchy Show.”  Mary has the Glow from “The Last Dragon.”  Annalee Santa dolls.  ****  “Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey” © 1977 Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s2 #1970s #rankinbass #nativity

🎄 Part 2 of our Christmas donkey double feature presents a completely different origin story of the donkey who carried Mary to Bethlehem.  🎙️ Lindy Kempe and Brandon Medley return to talk “The Small One,” Don Bluth’s last Disney project, released in front of the 1978 re-release of “Pinocchio.”  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  The original book, “The Small One: A Story for Those Who Like Christmas and Small Donkeys.”  “Dragon’s Lair.”  The Land Before Time toys from Pizza Hut.  Mouse in Transition: When Everyone Left Disney (Cartoon Brew, 2014)  Don Bluth visited Walt Disney Animation Studios 40 years later.  Assistant director Richard Rich went on to direct all 8 Swan Princess movies. (I’m sorry if you just learned there are 8 Swan Princess movies.)  One piece of silver, adjusted for inflation.  Edits for home video include the Merchants’ song, and the Star of Bethlehem getting extra rays of light to look less cross-shaped. To avoid too much foreshadowing, I guess.  Gordon Jump, the voice of Joseph, was on a very special episode of “Diff’rent Strokes.” Yeah. Sorry.  ****  “The Small One” © 1978 Walt Disney Productions.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s2 #1970s #disney #nativity

🎄 Listen in as we gush over a 1977 Muppet Christmas special that probably doesn’t get the attention it deserves.  🎙️ Emily Rowley drops in to marvel at Kermit riding a bicycle, watch a drum roll out a door too many times to count, and rock out to the Riverbottom Nightmare Band. Pa would’ve loved this podcast.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Muppet Wiki has the lowdown of all 5 cuts of this.  The official outtake reel and the one with the drum roll.  Of Muppets and Men: The Making of The Muppet Show.  The Christmas Price Index.  The “ass sliding” scene from “Rad.”  Jerry Nelson and Louise Gold sing “When the River Meets the Sea” at Jim Henson’s memorial.  The Can’t Wait for Christmas podcast on Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.  ****  “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas” © 1977 The Jim Henson Company.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s2 #1970s #muppets #giftofthemagi

🎄 It’s Christmas Eve, and we’re celebrating with the first Christmas special I ever remember watching, from 1978.  🎙️ Erin Evans and Joey O. help bring Advent to a close as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of “Christmas Eve on Sesame Street,” in which Big Bird worries Santa’s unfit for skinny chimneys, Mr. Hooper spends his Hanukkah saving Christmas, and we get a possible clue into how to get to Sesame Street.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  My taped copy of this is interrupted in the middle by a WHYY telethon with Philadelphia TV legend Ed Cunningham.  The Count’s amazing ice-skating cape.  The wibbly-wobbly physics of Oscar’s trash can.  Olivia married the Predator.  A cameo by Mr. Macintosh.  If you want to go read about Northern Calloway (David) and his off-screen troubles and tragic death, proceed with caution.  The adorable 2-year-old girl too little for her own vocabulary trying to explain that Santa pushes a magic button to go down chimneys is now in her 40s.  “Don’t Eat the Pictures: Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”  An oral history of Mr. Snuffleupagus’s revelation as not imaginary.  Oscar holds a broom like it’s Not His Broom.  Ernie’s pajamas look like the background of the “Trololo” video.  Joey makes my Christmas by assuring me I didn’t imagine “The Candy Apple News Company.”  ****  🏌️‍♂️ After This Episode:  Listen to my guest appearance on the Two Bad Neighbors podcast discussing my favorite Christmas-adjacent episode of The Simpsons, “Marge Be Not Proud.”  Then go relax or take a nap or something. Hope you enjoy your Christmas!  ****  “Christmas Eve on Sesame Street” © 1978 Children’s Television Workshop.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s2 #1970s #muppets #giftofthemagi

💝 Love and dynamite are in the air as I introduce 2 guests to an early pilot of what would eventually become “The Muppet Show,” guest-starring a pregnant Mia Farrow.  🎙️ Joey O. and Brian Arnold drop by as we fall head over heels for “The Muppets Valentine Show,” a 1974 TV special that misinformed me about where babies come from.  📺 You can find “The Muppets Valentine Show” on YouTube.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  “The Muppets Valentine Show” on Muppet Wiki.  Jim Henson’s Red Book entry about getting this pilot green-lit by some guy at ABC named “Mike” Eisner.  We quickly touch on Crazy Harry’s original incarnation as “Crazy Donald” and then immediately drop it.  Miss Mousey.  George the Janitor is simultaneously UHF’s Stanley Spadowski and WWE’s Perry Saturn.  George and Mildred At the Dance.  Droop in the “Cosby Show” episode, “Cliff’s Nightmare.”  The first appearance of Kermit the Frog riding a bicycle.  “You gotta know what a crumpet is to understand cricket.”  “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms” and the Looney Tunes musical bomb gag.  Brian’s blog post about “The Candy Apple News Company.”  ****  “The Muppets Valentine Show” © 1974 The Jim Henson Company.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s2 #1970s #valentinesday #muppets

🎉 It’s a special, post-Christmas bonus episode for your oversized ears!  🎙 Joey O. and Brandon Medley help us turn back the years to 1976 and tip an oversized hat to “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year,” Rankin/Bass’s first sequel special, in which Rudolph has to save the Baby New Year from a big, angry bird.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Rudolph devolves into a younger-looking reindeer, because the original model may have been lost. But also he seems to forget he can fly.  According to our narrator, Father Time (Red Skelton), this story begins “on that very same foggy night.” As in Christmas Eve. When Santa’s kind of busy.  I learned who Red Skelton was from a joke in a Tex Avery cartoon.  “The Phantom Tollbooth.”  Tik-Tok from “Return to Oz.”  Creepier song about time: “The Moving Finger Writes” from this, or “Older” by They Might Be Giants?  Ralph Archibold, Philadelphia’s longtime Ben Franklin impersonator.  Billy Corgan rides a roller coaster.  ****  “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year” © 1976 Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s3 #1970s #newyear #rankinbass #rudolph

🎄 Happy birthday! The Advent Calendar House kicks off a countdown to Christmas in July by setting the table for Rankin/Bass’s eventual epic crossover, starting with “Frosty’s Winter Wonderland,” the “Weird Science” of Christmas specials.  🎙️ Brandon Medley belly-whops in to salute this snowy sequel from 1976 starring a strange, tall goblin claiming to be Andy Griffith.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  A brief guide to finding obsure things on Disney+, like “Melody Time,” starring Dennis Day, (Parson Brown) as Johnny Appleseed.  Barbara Jo Ewing voiced one of the kids in her only known credit, but somehow IMDb knows her height.  We do the math to figure out how far the wind carried a newspaper from Frosty’s hometown to the North Pole.  Frosty beat “The Santa Clause 2” to the “gotta get a wife” plot point by more than 20 years.  Frosty’s “specifications” for his ideal woman are the same as Sir Mix-a-Lot’s.  At what point do snow people become self-aware?  Jack Frost’s “winter that almost didn’t end” foreshadowed the real-life Blizzard of 1977.  ****  📼 Commercials:  Freezy Freakies (1984)  Christmas Clatter.  ****  “Frosty’s Winter Wonderland” © 1976 Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s4 #1970s #rankinbass #frosty

🎄 Mr. Snowman, I don’t feel so good. Rankin/Bass’s Avengers assemble in the studio’s longest holiday special ever.  🎙️ Brandon Medley returns to marvel at “Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July.” Frosty’s a dad! And Rudolph’s a fake uncle whose nose stops shining at the beginning of this story… but what happens to Frosty and his whole family is even worse.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  King Winterbolt’s genie of the ice scepter, allegedly Thurl Ravenscroft, is the stuff of nightmares.  “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” may be the most metal Christmas special, but this is a contender.  Rudolph’s entire story gets retconned into a long play to stop Winterbolt’s foggy Christmas Eve from grounding Santa.  Ethel Merman on “The Muppet Show.”  Scratcher is a great evil reindeer, but we’d like it better if he was Fireball.  A couple of songs were cut for time from TV, including “Chicken Today, Feathers Tomorrow” and “I See Rainbows When I Look at You.”  Walt Disney World’s Candlelight Processional.  ****  📼 Commercials:  Atari Christmas Commercial, aired during a 1981 ABC Movie Special airing, preserved by the Museum of Classic Chicago Television.  The Can’t Wait for Christmas Podcast.  ****  “Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July” © 1979 Rankin/Bass Productions.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s4 #1970s #rankinbass #rudolph #frosty #4thofjuly

🎃 It’s the 13th of July, so it’s time for the Advent Calendar House to unearth one of our favorite Halloween haunts.  🎙️ Tommy Coombs flies in to talk 1979’s “The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t,” starring an exceptionally great Judd Hirsch as Count Dracula.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  This was renamed for its VHS release as “The Night Dracula Saved the World,” except no, he doesn’t.  Lyndhurst Mansion.  Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” was never in a Dracula movie.  Wildwood, New Jersey’s Castle Dracula.  Jack Riley (Warren the Werewolf) in commercials for Country Crock spread.  ****  📼 Commercials:  McDonald’s Scared Silly (1986) starring Ronald McDonald and the Chicken McNuggets.  Weird Christmas.  ****  “The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t” © 1979 Concepts Unlimited.  Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  #s4 #1970s #halloween

🎄 On another Scrooge Sunday edition of the Advent Calendar House, we fly back in time to 1978 to revisit Rankin/Bass’s turn at “A Christmas Carol.”  🎙️ Michael DiGiovanni and Michael May return to talk “The Stingiest Man in Town,” an animated remake of a made-for-TV musical, featuring the voices of Walter Matthau as Scrooge and Tom Bosley as our narrator, a literal talking Humbug.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  This is specifically an adaptation of a 1956 production on “The Alcoa Hour” starring Basil Rathbone as Scrooge.  The original special on Sleigh Bell Cinema.  Michael May’s Christmas Carol Project.  Sonny Melendrez (Bob Cratchit) in “You and Me, Kid.”  This has my all-time favorite, super creepy version of Marley’s face appearing on Scrooge’s door knocker.  This special gets older Belle completely wrong.  Tiny Tim has skinny robot legs.  Debbie Clinger (Martha Cratchit) of the Clinger Sisters, a.k.a. Superchick from the “Krofft Supershow” host band Kaptain Kool and the Kongs.  Rankin/Bass should have made a south seas-themed special called Christmas Island. (Hi from the future! We ended up exploring this idea on After Lunch.)  Scrooge’s grave morphing into a giant devil face is a reminder in hindsight that this special was animated in Japan by Topcraft, the predecessor to Studio Ghibli.  ****  📼 Commercials:  Glad Trash Bags Commercial starring Tom Bosley (1981)  Christmas Creeps.  ****  “The Stingiest Man in Town” © 1978 Rankin/Bass Productions.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s4 #1970s #rankinbass #scroogesunday