When I was growing up in New York City, every Thanksgiving and Christmas, Channel 11 would run March of the Wooden Soldiers with Laurel and Hardy. In those days before home video, it was the only way to see the film so you didn't want to miss your chance. As a result, the film became a local holiday tradition.
You may be familiar with the Disney TV episode "From All of Us to All of You." It first ran on December 19, 1958 and was re-run for years. It's a clip show, using old shorts and feature excerpts. Apparently, the show is a huge holiday tradition in Sweden. It's been running for nearly 50 years and is still attracting one third to one half of the TV audience on Christmas Eve day. Jeremy Stahl discovered this when he traveled to Sweden to celebrate Christmas with his fiance's family and has investigated the phenomenon in this article for Slate.
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I've heard about this before. You can see clips of this special on YouTube. I think it was aired back in the eighties as "A Disney Channel Christmas". I actually wish Disney would play stuff like that here in the States.
Very interesting article by the way. However, I do take offense at what the writer calls "antiquated animation". Those cartoons are as fun and vibrant today as they've ever been.
I always loved "From All of Us to all of You" when it played almost every Christmastime on Disney's Sunday night show during my youth. Happily, from 1978 onwards when I had my first VCR, I was able to tape it whenever it ran. While the NBC version at 7 PM would only run a new film excerpt as the "special gift" if Disney had a new Christmas release (otherwise they would run a short cartoon), CBC at 6PM would often run shows that had been originally broadcast years before. Therefore I was able to get the shows that were promoting "The Jungle Book" and "The Aristocats" years after those films had debuted. Keeping in mind that this was well before these films were eventually released on home video, having some clips was pretty exciting!
You definitely hit on two hot spots of my youger Christmases. I was just thinking of "March of the Wooden Soldiers" yesterday and sort of miss the magical appeal it had back thne. No doubt it would not fare well in the world of Avatar's children. "From All of Us to All of You" was so familiar back then that I sort of resented the fact that they didn't update it. Unfortunately, they eventually did do just that, and the gem from the past is all but gone - except in Sweden.
And Denmark... and Norway! They're right next to Sweden and have their own localized versions—with very similar traditions behind them.
Actually there has been quite many changes from each year. The rasist joke mentioned in the article was taken out a few years, then put back in (depending on the political climate, i guess). The editing is also quite different some years to accomodate the length of the trailer(s) for the latest Disnye/Pixar releases.
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