Christmas is a time for families to come together to count their blessings and enjoy the love, joy, and
spirituality of the holiday season. The same thing goes for your
favorite TV characters and their families. Just about every TV family has
celebrated the holidays in their own special way… giving us some of the most
memorable, touching, and truly surreal moments in television history.
Now TV critic Diane Werts has collected them all – more than 700 episodes, specials, TV movies, reality shows, cartoons, and commercials — in her book CHRISTMAS ON TELEVISION. To tell you the truth, I’ve been kicking around the same idea for a book since I was a kid, recording Christmas episodes and sticking them in a box for the day I’d finally get around to writing it. Well, that day never came and now Diane has beaten me to it. I’ve already ordered my copy and can’t wait to read it.
I would certainly hope that “The Homecoming” from the novella by Earl Hamner Jr. features prominently in her book.
Watching that “Hallmark Hall of Fame”(?) special that was later adapted into the series “The Waltons” is one of my enduring childhood memories, even though I only saw the original braodcast and have never seen it since.
If writers or performers ever doubt the magic that their words and images can create I would hope they have a memory as enduring as mine to keep them going.
I saw this book mentioned on Amazon.com and can’t wait to get a look at it. 272 pages seems terribly short to fit in 700 programs, though, unless the print is tiny. I’m wondering if she goes as far back as the “kidnapped statue of Jesus” on DRAGNET, OZZIE AND HARRIET, FATHER KNOWS BEST, the LASSIE Christmas episodes, etc. Hi, Jonathan, THE HOMECOMING was not a Hallmark Hall of Fame, it was a CBS special. It’s out on DVD.