Yes, we let our toddler watch television — the past two weeks, kind of
a lot of TV. We did it for you, the readers! To save you from the
horrors of a bad Christmas movie experience, our two-year-old screened
all the holiday DVDs that came into the Babble office this month, which
means we also screened them (and if you know a trick for getting the
song “There’s Always Tomorrow” out of one’s head, please share). Here
are our young tester’s five favorites, in order.
1. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (Part of "Christmas Classics")
We swear our son improved his pronunciation just so he could clearly
request this title in its entirety. Rankin/Bass claymation creates a
bizarre, compelling world, and the message about “misfits” is a good
one, even if that dentist-elf gets mighty irritating after a few viewings. One possible downside: repeat viewings may cause your child to run around pretending to be the
Abomidable Snowman and yelling, “I’m gonna bite
you!” Also, you know, those songs really do stick in your head like glue.
2. Elmo’s Christmas Countdown
We now have this movie memorized. There is a funny scene between Bert
and Ernie and the stars of The Sopranos. And Anne Hathaway is pretty
damn cute singing about Snuffy. But Ben Stiller’s sarcastic,
yoga-practicing Elf is hella annoying. Not to our son, though. If he had his way, he would
watch this twenty-four hours a day until Christmas, and probably
beyond. Heaven help us all.
3. Gumby (Part of "The New Classics")
This time of year, there are a ton of compilation DVDs for regular old
kid shows that just have “Christmas” slapped on the front of them
because there’s, like, five minutes about snow. This is one of those,
but it’s kind of great anyway, as there are all kinds of truly weird
little holiday-esque episodes about, among other things, a witch pretending to be
Santa, and the Mayflower — also a politically incorrect
Pilgrims-and-Indians battle. And some jail time. Anyway, just trust us,
it’s festive!
4. Snow Days: HIT Round-up Including Fireman Sam and Thomas
This is another one of those non-Christmas Christmas DVDs, but the very British Fireman Sam
episode about putting out a fire on a very cold day (watch out for
those falling icicles!) seemed to plug directly into our son’s back-brain. He’s been pretending to put out blanket-fires ever since. The
Thomas one is a blur of Christmas trees and over-eager helping. They don’t drop the “useful”
mantra for the holidays, we can tell you that. How Anglican is that
show, by the way?
5. Casper’s Haunted Christmas (Part of "The New Classics")
Our tester loved this one, as it was about ghosts, which he finds fascinating.
Unfortunately for him, this DVD got “lost.” The adults in the house
didn’t enjoy the wise-ass humor or the insanely complex plot as much as he did. Apparently, ghosts have to deal with scare quotas, strict deadlines; a black hole of nothingness
for those who don’t do their job. We’ve got enough performance
anxiety in real life, thanks.
