I shared last week some of my earliest December memories. Today I want to focus on those bastions of my childhood holiday entertainment, the Christmas TV shows. 

Most of my favorites were based on famous Christmas songs, like “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “The Little Drummer Boy,” and “Frosty the Snowman.” As a kid those were songs you learned at school and from the radio (as well as those great Dean Martin LPs). 

So I knew all the words to the songs, which meant I thought I knew the plot lines of the ensuing TV shows. 

How wrong I was. Let’s examine a little deeper, shall we? 

The Little Drummer Boy is about a little poor boy who has no gift to offer the baby Jesus except a “rum a pum pum” song on his humble drum, which in turn makes the newborn king smile. It would seem that would make for an interesting enough program, right? 

So imagine a 6-year-old me watching the show and my reaction when I discovered that the Little Drummer Boy was a very bitter little guy who had nothing but hard luck follow him throughout his young life, and then on Christmas Eve, lo and behold, his lamb (who was quite the dancer) gets run over on a Bethlehem street right in front of him and dies. 

Wait — there wasn’t any mention about any kind of road kill in the song. Where did this plot twist come from?

Now here I was, a wee lad myself, feeling sorry for all of the bad things that had happened to this small percussionist and then his pet gets smushed. 

Needless to say, I cried. 

But lo and behold again, when the heartbroken little drummer did play for Jesus, Joseph and Mary, what to my wondering eyes would appear but the lamb brought back to life after the tune made the baby smile. And then, all of the bitterness that had weighed the little drummer boy down from his trials were lifted, and for the first time on the whole 30-minute show he smiled, too. 

So there was raising the dead and lifting of sorrows, all through Jesus (ahhh, I see what they did there). But none of that was in the song, so I wasn’t prepared. 

Then Frosty the Snowman, the snowman who came to life one day when a magic hat was placed on his head. Nowhere in the song was it mentioned that — as according to the TV show — the magic hat actually came from a disgruntled yet busy busy busy magician who threw it away thinking there was no magic to be found in it. Of course, then when it brought Frosty to life it was his mission to get the hat back, which of course would surely mean the end of Frosty. 

But even that knowledge didn’t prepare me for the moment the mean old magician trapped Frosty in a greenhouse, melting him into a puddle (a precursor to global warming?). 

Wait a second — nowhere in the song was a word said about Frosty melting. This was the iciest Christmas crime a little guy could even imagine.

Traumatized by witnessing this cold-watered murder, I cried again. 

But wait a second more — because Santa, the big man himself, then showed up and said that Frosty couldn’t die, because he was made of Christmas snow. He opened the greenhouse door, the cold wind hit that puddle, and voila, Frosty was back again — but, not alive. 

But when Santa threatened to never bring him another present, the magician gave up the magic hat, they put it on Frosty’s head, and one “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” later he was entirely alive, and the day was saved. 

Again though — none of that in the song. 

And then finally, Rudolph. The classic song of the red-nosed reindeer who got picked on because of his glowing proboscis, who eventually became a hero when his beak that blinked like a blinking beacon helped Santa navigate one especially foggy Christmas eve. 

In the TV show, Yukon Cornelius, the Greatest Prospector of the North, and the Bumble, a horrifying monster, are new characters. Yukon is a likable fellow who like to throw his pick axe up in the air, let it hit in the snow, then sample it for traces of silver and/or gold by licking it (he never finds any). The Bumble (or Abominable Snow Monster of the North) is a horrible, hairy thing that is 90% fangs. 

When the Bumble kidnaps Rudolph’s family, Yukon, Rudolph, and the elf dentist Hermie conjur up a brilliant plan to lure the Bumble out of his cave by having Hermie imitate a pig (‘no Bumble can resist a pork dinner’ said Cornelius) just outside, then drop a rock on his head to knock him out so that Hermie can then pull all of his teeth out. 

It worked to perfection (Hermie’s pig call is the stuff of legends). But when the Bumble roars at them, Yukon accidentally pushes both of them over a cliff. The others look over and exclaim ‘they’re gone!’ 

So again, I cried. But no prospector, Bumble, dentist, or anyone going over a cliff were ever in the song.

But then, later at Santa’s house the day was again saved, because who shows up but Yukon, with the toothless Bumble in tow — with Yukon explaining: “Didn’t I ever tell you? Bumbles bounce!” 

Just like all of the others, that sure would’ve been a handy little piece of info to have going in.