The Year Without a Santa Claus

"The Year Without a Santa Claus" is predictably about a hypothetical curious, furious, fidgety, terrible year where Santa decided to be like everyone else and take a vacation. If the setup is predictable, then so is most of what follows. From the beginning, the narration of Mrs. Claus (voiced by Shirley Booth) falls into an annoying rhythm. It's not a good start.

Santa Claus is sick this year with a nasty cold, and only last year he had near-pneumonia. Children don't give a hoot about Christmas or Santa, he is told by his pessimistic doctor (though the doctor still wishes him a Merry Christmas). It's clear that Santa needs a vacation, and he calls off the operations, throwing the North Pole into chaos. Mrs. Claus, though, will having nothing of it, and she does her best to insure that Christmas continues as usual.

Within fifteen minutes of the holiday television special from 1974, I began to wonder if nostalgia really is to blame for my admiration of other children's holiday films like "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reineer" and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," the predecessor to "The Year Without a Santa Claus." Can I really justify my liking of "Home Alone," a film I probably saw when I was four but a movie in which barely half of critics enjoyed? After all, I saw those other movies when I was a child, and I saw "The Year Without a Santa Claus" as an adult. Then I thought that this was probably not the case, for those films had serious thought and effort, whereas this one does not. "The Year Without a Santa Claus" simply doesn't have the novelty and imagination of its predecessor. The most the filmmakers could come up with in this film is Mrs. Claus dressed in drag fantasizing about delivering presents instead of her husband, and that just isn't quite the same as the charm and likability of Fred Astaire's voice acting in "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." Even the honking penguin had more charisma than Jingle and Jangle, the annoying humorless elf duo who have become the Jar Jar Binks of holiday specials. Even Mickey Rooney as the voice of Santa (a role he provided for in four animated holiday specials) sounds more tired in this one.

I don't want to call a movie that utilizes the exhausting process of stop motion effects (or "claymation") lazy.  But if only the story and music writers could have matched the hard work of the animators, for there seems to be a lack of effort than was required.  The redeeming moments involve the Miser Brothers--dueling brothers of nature voiced by Dick Shawn as the Snow Miser and George S. Irving as the Heat Miser, singing and dancing in the film's only memorable parts (though to today's audiences the former calling the latter a "flaming fool" might raise eyebrows).  A lot of the scenes in this movie take place in a boring town in California (though the child actor providing the voice of the young boy insists on making him sound like they're in the Bronx), whereas the scenes of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" featured scenes of winter wonderlands and European towns of centuries ago.  Think of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and the other holidays specials of old and you likely will remember not only various moments from them but also a large amount of the songs.  Not so with "The Year Without a Santa Claus."


On second thought I have the Miser's songs stuck in my head.  Better than anything out of the mouths of Jingle and Jangle.