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A Year Without A Santa Claus

December 9, 2011 by · Comments Off on A Year Without A Santa Claus 

A Year Without A Santa Claus, The Year Without a Santa Claus is a 1974 Rankin/Bass stop motion animated television special. It usually airs during the Christmas season on United States television. The story is based on Phyllis McGinley’s 1956 book of the same name, illustrated by Kurt Werth.
The show is set in the 1920s and is narrated by Shirley Booth (as Mrs. Claus). Santa Claus (voiced by Mickey Rooney who voiced the same character in Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, of which this special is a semi-sequel) wakes up with a cold and is told by his doctor, who thinks that nobody cares about Christmas anymore (even though he wishes Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus a merry Christmas), that he should make some changes to his routine on Christmas. He decides to take a holiday, and it’s up to the elves, Jingle and Jangle, to find people who still believe in Santa Claus. The elves, however, run into trouble along the way, when they get lost in Southtown, a small town in the Southern United States. They get a ticket from a Police Officer who doesn’t know them or their baby reindeer, Vixen. They get accused of “riding a vixen the wrong way on a one way road, crossing the White Line, and wearing funny looking suits on a Sunday.” When they try to disguise Vixen as a dog, Vixen is mistaken for a lost dog and is sent to the pound, where she sickens in the heat. The skeptical Mayor of Southtown laughs hysterically at their story but agrees to free the reindeer if Jingle and Jangle prove that they are Santa’s magical elves by making it snow in Southtown on Christmas Day.

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