Lots of TV series decide they need a little Christmas come December, but they’re not quite sure how to do it. Do you talk about the big Jesus-shaped elephant in the room? Do you just focus on Santa? Do you, I don’t know, cast Juliana Hatfield as an angel, or make miracles happen on Walker, Texas Ranger?
This late-December urge becomes extra fun when sci-fi franchises try it—they don’t usually want to deal with the religious aspect of Christmas, but they still have to find a way to explain Santa and presents to aliens who are already confused enough just trying to deal with humans. Most of them fall back on humans teaching aliens about some Christmas-y lessons about “goodwill” or “being kind to others”, as in the following examples…
Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special
After Kraglin tells Mantis, Drax, and Nebula about how Yondu banned a young Peter Quill from celebrating Christmas, Mantis decides to give Peter a holiday he’ll never forget. How will she do this? By kidnapping his hero Kevin Bacon and giving him to Quill as a gift. She and Drax hop down to Terra and search Los Angeles for the elusive Bacon, finally finding him with a Map of the Stars Homes. (Mr. Bacon is, of course, settling in to watch the thematically appropriate Santa Claus Conquers the Martians when they find him.) I won’t spoil the newest special on the list, but it does initially throw itself into the idea that the aliens need to learn about Christmas. An alien band (played by the Old 97s) sing a song about all of their misconceptions, and though Quill objects, he doesn’t actually explain any of the stuff they get wrong (including a line about Santa’s “powerful flamethrower”). The special never fully commits to this part of the premise: Mantis and Drax spend much of their time in L.A. posing for photos with Marvel superhero impersonators outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theater—though they do stand in front of a Nativity scene briefly, and much comedic hay is made of Drax thinking a candy cane decoration is a man. Their time on Terra is soundtracked with Christmas songs including “Fairytale of New York”, “I Want an Alien for Christmas”, and “Christmas Wrapping”, but it’s never clear whether these are diegetic or not. And somehow, back on Knowhere, everyone knows how to decorate, wrap and exchange gifts, and Nebula even knows to provide fake snow for Quill’s perfect Christmas—even though there was obviously no snow in LA.
“A Cosmic Christmas”
This 1977 special was Canadian company Nelvana’s first foray into television—shortly after completing this one, they moved on to a Halloween special, The Devil and Daniel Mouse, before tackling the most important holiday of them all, Life Day, in their short “The Faithful Wookiee,” which featured in the Star Wars Holiday Special. A Cosmic Christmas is regretfully wookiee-free, but it does have a holiday message, imparted by aliens. Kinda.
On Christmas Eve, three aliens who look like they’ve been shipped in from Fantastic Planet come to Earth, searching for the meaning behind “the transitory celestial phenomenon” that occurred on Earth 2000-ish years ago.
Unfortunately, they’re about 1,976 years late, and they’ve landed on the mean streets of Canada. They find a town ridden with teenage hippies, plus some adults who seem to be pretty into Christmas, but not as into it as one ten-year-old boy wants them to be. Said ten-year-old boy, Peter, greets the aliens, who ask him about the “meaning of the star.” In reply, he screams “You mean Christmas!” and rather than asking him to elaborate on this incomprehensible one-word answer, they ask how “Christmas” can be “measured”. Peter goes full Linus Van Pelt: “We celebrate every year with love, peace, and caring for others!”—the aliens managed to find the only pre-teen in history who wouldn’t just scream “PRESENTS!” and then jump up and down in a fit of Christmas-cookie-induced mania.
Peter takes the three wise aliens home and introduces them to his grandmother, who improvs a song about Christmases past. The aliens respond by inducing a mass hallucination of old-timey decorations flying around the living room. But then one of the town hippies steals Peter’s pet goose (???) and the town’s entire police force chases him onto a frozen lake which predictably cracks. Peter tries to save him, but the kid’s super-sweet flares are waterlogged and keep dragging them both down. The humans form a chain to pull them out, and this inspires the aliens break their vow of non-involvement to help pull them out. They’ve decided that “helping” might be the meaning of Christmas. (Peter already told you the meaning of Christmas, aliens, what more do you want?) Then Peter’s family invites the whole town over for dinner, everyone accepts that aliens walk among us, and the aliens give them the greatest gift of all: a boss laser light show.
Various Doctor Who Holiday Specials
While there were a few sporadic holiday cheers in earlier generations of Doctor Who—as seen above—it was 2005’s New Who revival that turned the show into a Yuletide juggernaut. Unlike a lot of the aliens on this list, the Doctor already seems to understand Christmas cheer, and shows up ready to pull a Christmas cracker, or fight an evil Santa robot. In a move that I’m sure makes Elf on the Shelf holly green with envy, Doctor Who’s Christmas and/or New Year’s-themed episodes were embraced as a new holiday tradition, no creepy panopticonaganda required! The Doctor understands that the real spirit of Christmas is helping people, whether they’re tourists trapped on a doomed interstellar holiday cruise, Blitz refugees, tree people, North Pole-based scientists, or Jack Harkness eyeing up Midshipman Alonso at a bar.
“George and The Christmas Star”
“George and the Christmas Star” doesn’t exactly fit in with the rest of these specials, but it’s set in space, there are aliens, and it’s an interesting enough half hour of TV that I’m gonna make it work. The director, Gerald Potterton, was one of the directors of Heavy Metal and I love thinking about how that prepared him for work on a holiday special. The show somehow combines a ridiculous sci-fi story that is nearly Pinkwaterian in its deadpan humor and the song stylings of Ottawa’s own Paul Anka with only the barest hint of a message about Christmas, goodwill, or…anything really.
George decides that his usual cut-out paper Christmas tree-topper isn’t enough this year. He looks out the window and focuses on a particularly bright star, and thinks to himself: “Living alone with a cat has its moments, but there are times when you just have to get out there and prove something to yourself.” So he builds a steampunk-y spaceship, flies through a black hole, meets a robot named Ralph, rescues an astronaut named Barbara, tangles with space rangers, space pirates, and space bikers (Bell’s Angels!!!), meets Santa, gets his star, and ultimately loses the star, all so he can learn a vague message about being happy that he has friends.
This special is called “George and The Christmas Star”—emphasis mine—and it’s very much implied that it’s the star that he’s looking for, that significant anomalous one with the extra little points and glowiness and defying physics and everything—but not once in the whole special does anyone talk about the significance of this particular star. Which just seems weird to me. But again, Bell’s Angels? All is forgiven, I love this thing.
“The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever”, Invader ZIM
Any Goths out there? Your Christmastime has come. Unsurprisingly, Invader Zim’s take on Xmas is dark AF, a perfect counterpoint to too many syrupy holiday specials. How does Zim react when presented with the mysterious Sannn-tah? Well, he realizes that Christmas could be a great new avenue for World Domination, obviously. He claims to be the Real Santa and enslaves humanity, who (aside from Dib) don’t make it terribly difficult. The thing that torpedoes Zim’s plot is that he keeps being possessed by some sort of nebulous, goodwill-and-holiday-trapping-based Christmas Spirit. The show focuses on Santa, and doesn’t even bother bringing that Other Christmas Figurehead into things, which is probably for the best. It’s a fantastic episode, featured the only appearance of Mini-Moose (who has always been here), and was also, sadly, the final entry in Jhonen Vasquez’s epic… at least until the excellent sequel movie.
He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special
Honestly I don’t even know how to talk about this one, I love it so much. Let’s start with the basics: extreme Targaryen vibes between He-Man and She-Ra; the gross negligence of She-Ra leaving Etheria unprotected! Bow’s godawful travesty of a Christmas song! Learning that Adam and Adora’s mom is an Earthling astronaut who crashed on Eternia and never even tried to go back! Orko Just Orko-ing the fuck out of every situation!
But in case you want plot: Orko hijacks one of Man-at-Arms’ rockets, and crashes on Earth. Luckily, he crashes near the two deeply stupid children, Miguel and Alisha, who went, alone? To chop down their own Christmas tree? And got lost in the woods? He saves them from freezing to death, and in return they overlook the fact that HE’S A FLOATING ALIEN and launch into an explanation of Christmas. They start by skirting around Jesus and talking about gifts, then dive into a Nativity narrative after a weird camera dissolve, and finally barrel ahead into Santa. Orko displays intelligence and discretion, possibly for the first time in his life, and latches onto the “presents!” aspect.
Somehow, an-at-Arms retrieves the rocket, thus kidnapping Miguel and Alisha. The kids take this in stride, and Queen Marlena, presented with the knowledge that Man-at-Arms has invented a way to get back to Earth and she could inform her family that she’s still alive, instead is all like, “Oh, yeah, Christmas is a thing!” and instructs everyone how to decorate the castle properly. There are some tortured plot machinations, Miguel and Alisha get kidnapped multiple times, and end up giving Skeletor the Christmas Spirit, seemingly by osmosis since they never even give him the stilted holiday explanation that Orko got.
They’re sent home just in time for Christmas (their parents are so deadpan about their absence that one wonders if there was a Hansel and Gretel scenario happening here) and He-Man comes on to give a vague lecture about how everyone has the Christmas Spirit inside of them at all times. But since the show never really defines “Christmas Spirit” and we’re still not sure that anyone on Eternia knows what the hell Christmas is, this postscript just adds to the confusion. Here, have Bow’s terrible, terrible song.
“Christmas Comes to Pac-Land”
This totally counts since Pac-Land is presented as an alien world. Santa ends up crashing his sleigh after he gets lost on the way to Earth, and has to try to explain the concept of Christmas to Pac-Man and his family. The special is able to freely focus on the Santa-and-presents aspect of the holiday, since the “death-and-miraculous-resurrection” storyline is covered by Pac-Man himself after the ghosts chomp him and he has to rally—and that’s really more of an Easter storyline anyway. Pac-man saves Christmas by ‘roiding Santa’s reindeer out on Power Pellets which gives them enough pep to make it to Earth. All of the denizens of Pac-Land happily accept the idea of a gift-based holiday, with no questions asked about how it got started, what humans are, or why Santa also gives the ghosts presents even though their dearest, oft-repeated wish is to bite Pac-man’s baby to death.
“Star of Wonder” by Sufjan Stevens
Is this a holiday special? Nope. A TV episode? Nuh-uh. A movie? Not even close! It’s one of Sufjan Stevens’ 100 Christmas songs, and I’m putting it here because (a) I really admire Sufjan’s precarious balancing act of high camp, melancholy, cynicism, and banjo-based religious faith and (b) as far as I’ve been able to parse the lyrics, the song is either about the Three Magi following the Christmas Star, the Christmas Star becoming sentient and falling to Earth to start a new life (maybe?), or about an angel falling to Earth to start a new life (maybe!). I think. Nevertheless if either of the latter interpretations are correct—as much as any interpretation of art can be correct—it’s an alien being encountering the holidays, and it gives me an excuse to include a song, and it ends with a line from a Bukowski poem (“These days, days, days run away like horses over the hills…” which also featured prominently in the U2 song “Dirty Day”). Any time I can cite Bukowski in a holiday list post I’m gonna do it.
But beyond all of that it’s a beautiful song, and everyone should listen to it, at volume, with headphones.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
The children of Mars are depressed and listless, so Martian leader Kimar kidnaps Santa Claus to demand that the Jolly One share Christmas cheer—which, fair enough, but kidnapping a pair of Earth kids too was just excessive. Santa immediately bonds with all the children, and even the Martian adults perk up, except Kimar’s rival Voldar, who thinks that all this Santa stuff is making the children weak, and plots to kill the Claus. This culminates in the children fighting Voldar with toys while Santa laughs hysterically, and this saves Christmas? I guess?
As far as aliens learning about Christmas—Martian culture is thinly sketched at best, and we only meet one family plus a couple of anti-Santa-ists, so it’s hard to say how they respond to the holiday. The main conceit seems to be that Martians are aggro and warlike, and their kids are fed information rather than being allowed to play, which is presumably why they get hooked on “Earth programs” about Santa. Santa is objectively real, has magic powers that are used off-camera, is a public icon who’s interviewed on the nightly news, and the entire world unites in a military action to get him back after Mars takes him. Once he gets to Mars, Santa makes vague pronouncements about Christmas cheer, but the main focus is on his status as gift-giver. In contrast to his community at Earth’s North Pole, where he’s assisted by elves (they’re unexplained) on Mars Santa uses the presumably better Martian tech to found an automated, elf-free factory. The kidnapped Earthlings team up with Kimar’s two kids to collect letters from all Mars’ children and churn out the gifts they ask for—suspiciously banal toys like baseball bats and dolls. Wouldn’t Martian kids have other referents for their toys? Like plush versions of native Mars beasts, or ray guns, or, something? There’s no sense that there’s any other “meaning” to Christmas, or explanation for Santa’s magic, the existence of the elves, or, really, much of anything else. In the end Droppo, the laziest man on Mars, takes over as Mars’ Santa with no sense that he needs any training or powers or anything, and Earth’s Santa makes it home just in time for the big night.
The MST3K version of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
The ‘Bots were made on the Satellite of Love, which technically makes them aliens as well as robots. And I want to include them so here we are. Experiment 321 is the first time we see them encounter Christmas, but Joel has apparently taught them about Christmas already as they’re able to present essays on the meaning of the holiday, and already have favorite specials to compare with Martians.
In fact the ‘Bots relationship with Christmas has its own fascinating arc in the host segments—the snark that leads a child to sing parody lyrics to Christmas carols while still believing, if pressed, in the objective reality of Santa is mashed up with a hard-nosed robotic critique of the basic assumptions of the holiday.
I’ll explain.
Crow joins a pantheon that includes Irving Berlin, Mel Torme, and Johnny Marks by writing “Let’s Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas”—the song itself is a celebration of Roadhouse-ian violence, including the line “I’ll have to smash your kneecaps if you bastards touch my car” which never fails to reduce me to crying laughter (even now as I type this) but Crow genuinely believes he’s written a hit that will stand beside “White Christmas” and “(Walking In) A Winter Wonderland”. He later reads from a Christmas theme that posits that Santa and the elves need to seriously compete with the more tech-friendly entrepreneurs of the “Century of the Pacific” if they want to stay relevant. Again, he’s trying to drag Christmas into the present, but he does it by addressing Santa directly.
Then Tom Servo reads his theme it’s a riff on Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”, because Tom is a pretentious son of a bitch. BUT he runs into the classic problem of harmonizing Santa’s magic (which he believes in) with the cold reality of space:
Maybe some kid is looking up tonight, and wishing upon us? Oh, to see the rosy face of Santa in the portal offering me a Coke and a smile…of course, his face would be rosy ‘cause it’s a vacuum out there. I mean Santa’s heart would explode. But he won’t feel cause his capillaries in his brain would pop like little firecrackers due to the blood boiling away in his face like a pudding in a copper… Oh the humanity! Oh his jolly old belly would start bubbling like a roasted marshmallow eyes bulging and popping—and the reindeer! Oh the reindeer! Exploding like holiday floats and they’re exploding in a hail of blood and entrails—Prancer? BOOM! Dancer? BOOM!
Until Joel cuts in to tell him Santa’s going to be OK. “Give him a little credit, OK?” In contrast, Joel’s essay is focused not on Santa, but rather adult ennui. He describes Christmas office parties of the 1970s, listing the many types of liquor on offer, and acts of questionable consent in closets, ending on the line “…and Jesus is nowhere to be seen.”
The mood is salvaged by GPC, who has apparently allowed Joel (the only one with working arms) to build a Nativity set in her mouth. Weird, but everyone should celebrate in the way that speaks to them. Like many specials before and since the older kids interrogate the holiday, the grown-ups are barely hanging on, and the youngest (or at least youngest in spirit) makes everyone, including the audience, contemplate the religious aspect with no commentary, implying that it speaks for itself.
I was delighted to see that MST3K continued the narrative of the ‘Bots learning about the holidays in their latest holiday offering. In the (stellar) new episode The Christmas Dragon (Joel, Jonah, and Emily all riff together! You can watch it on the Gizmoplex!) they touch on the idea of the ‘Bots being baffled by Christmas twice. First, they bring in Friar Nick Nolte…OK, hang on, let me back up. The Christmas Dragon is a recent film that mashes up Game of Thrones-style pseudo-medievalism with a story of how Santa Claus came to be. With dragons. And there’s a friar who looks and speaks very much like Mr. Nick Nolte, so naturally Patton Oswalt drops by, dressed as Friar Nolte, to explain Christmas. This results in a drunken rant that tangles up parts of the Gospel of Luke with stories from the set of The Prince of Tides. Later, Emily Connor starts lecturing the ‘Bots on “the real reason for the season” and Tom replies “Paganism?”—at which point Emily gives up on explaining it, and they go back to the movie.
The Man Who Fell to Earth
…hear me out.
This all-time classic film ends with Thomas Jerome Newton’s former lover, Mary-Lou, and his former employee, Dr. Nathan Bryce, dropping into a liquor store for some Christmas cheer. Bryce is dressed as Santa for this excursion, (because what this film really needed to tip it over fully into feverish vision that will haunt my dreams forever is Rip Torn dressed as fucking Santa) and after a night of drinking he goes out to a record store—I guess on Boxing Day?—where he finds Newton’s album, The Visitor. This leads to the first meeting between the two old colleagues in years, where we learn that Newton has fallen fully into alcoholism and lost any hope of saving his planet or seeing his family again. But all of this technically happens at Christmas and it’s possible, within the world of the film, that copies of The Visitor were tucked beneath Christmas trees and handed out after dinner on the first night of Hanukkah. Or, well, it’s a drone-y ambient album, so maybe on like the fourth night of Hanukkah.
Gosh I love this movie. Happy Holidays, everybody.
Christmas in the Stars
And hell, as long as I included Sufjan, why not Star Wars as well. Back in 1979, right before Empire came out, a Yale music professor named Maury Yeston wrote a concept album about Star Wars characters struggling with Yuletide. Armed with the voice talents of Anthony Daniels and a pre-teen Jon Bon Jovi (credited as John Bongiovi!), Yeston wrote such classics as the titular “Christmas in the Stars”, “The Odds Against Christmas”, and “What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)”, along with a rendition of “R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, a version of “Sleigh Ride” sung by R2-D2, and a narrative thread about the droids who build the toys for Santa, and Santa’s son (???) who cameos at the end to sing about the meaning of Christmas: it’s a time for joy, your own face shining with a special glow, trees, wreaths, peace, and love, and it’s existed from as far back as anyone can remember, apparently. This is his way of telling the droids that they don’t get presents, because their gift—the best one of all, according to Son of Santa—is making gifts for everyone else. Hopefully the New Year will bring a droid uprising.
For those who want to know, the odds against Christmas being Christmas are 365-to-1 . This album, while ridiculous, was much more successful than the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special Starring Beatrice Arthur, with “What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)” becoming a perennial holiday standard—it even got to #69 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1980.
Nice.
ALF’s Special Christmas
For those of you who are either blissfully unaware of ALF, or maybe just suffered a specific type of PTSD that has erased it from your memory: ALF (ALF = Alien Life Form; ALF’s actual name is, I am not joking, Gordon Shumway) crashes on Earth after his home planet, Melmac, is destroyed. The Tanner family adopts him, teaches him about humanity and shields him from the government (at least, uh, until the finale), all the while tolerating his terrible Borscht Belt jokes and attempts to eat their cat. (Cats are a delicacy on Melmac you see. If you want to understand ALF more, you can watch the Ben Stiller vehicle Permanent Midnight, about one of the staff writers who was blitzed out of his mind on heroin for most of his career there.) ALF is widely acknowledged to have had one of the most disturbing finales in the history of television, because the government finally catches up with him and experiments on him. (Suck it, Dinosaurs!) However, what doesn’t get nearly enough press is that the show also produced the single most fucked up Christmas Special in History. (Suck it, Diahann Carroll serenading Itchy the Wookiee in the Star Wars Holiday Special!)
The episode opens with dad Willie Tanner dragging his family to spend Christmas in a cabin that is not so much “rustic” as “barely a house.” The cabin has been loaned to them by Mr. Foley (played by Cleavon Little, Sheriff Bart from Blazing Saddles!!!) who veers wildly between grieving for his recently deceased wife, and jocularly playing Santa Claus at the local children’s hospital. We’re just going to skip over the idea that the Tanner children are the actual aliens here (they’re OK with staying at the cabin—sans heat, electricity, or running water—and I have questions) and instead get right to ALF learning the True Meaning of Christmas.
After a bunch of misunderstandings, ALF opens all the Tanner’s presents, ruining Christmas morning. Willie blows up at him, so he does what you or I would do and climbs into the back of an unattended truck filled with toys. Since we’re in a sitcom, this is Mr. Foley’s truck, and before you can say “collision course for wackiness” Mr. Foley is dressed as Santa handing out toys to the sick kids, and ALF is pretending to be a plush version of himself. Since ALF is real in the universe, and not the star of a hit sitcom, the only child who wants him is a wan girl named Tiffany.
She talks to him in the way children talk to toys, with no idea that he’s a living creature. But this is ALF, and he never shuts up, so he only makes it a few minutes into this charade before revealing his true identity. Rather than freaking the fuck out like a normal kid, she accepts his story about being an alien (and not, say, a medication-induced hallucination) and begins confiding in him, and, oof.
She draws a picture of her and ALF hanging out, except she’s wearing wings. We’re in some deep Life Lesson waters here, so do your best to stay afloat as I relate the following conversation:
“Alf, do you ever miss Melmac?”
“Yeah, I miss it a lot. It was my whole world. Everything, and everybody I knew was there…but, when I came to this world, I made new friends! Like the people I live with, and you, Tiffany!”
[She asks if he had Christmas on Melmac, and he shakes his head.] “I don’t really have a handle on Christmas yet. People get uptight about presents.”
“That’s ’cause they don’t know. Christmas isn’t about presents, it’s about giving of yourself. That’s what Santa Claus said.”
“After meeting you, I know what he means.”
“I’m gonna have to move onto another world too, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, and I’m afraid to go, Alf.”
AAAAUUUGGGHHHH.
OK, at this point I have to switch into summary, because my brain has shut down. The last time I watched this episode with friends, pre-pandemic (or perhaps I should say, the last time I inflicted this episode on friends, because I’m a terrible person) we were all watching this scene through our hands like it was a Dalek coming to exterminate us, and my tolerance for it hasn’t gotten any stronger. He tells her it’s all right to be afraid, and then they discuss whether this other world will have Christmas (owwww…) whether Tiffany will have friends there (gurk) and then ALF manages to stick the landing on a joke, and they say they love each other as she falls asleep.
The show then does the equivalent of an ‘80s sitcom parking lot doughnut and throws us into a scene where ALF delivers a baby in an elevator.
(But just in case you thought it was safe to laugh, he tells the new mom to name the baby Tiffany. GAAAHHHHH.)
ALF uses his new understanding of the True Meaning of Christmas to save the despairing Mr. Foley from suicide, the Tanners and ALF reconcile, and everyone brings Tiffany presents, which is great, but there is no reprieve here. Mr. Foley is still depressed, Tiffany’s still going to die, and OH MY GOD the ending credits dedicate the show to two different real people who died that year.
Whew.
So in the end ALF comes away with an idea that Christmas is about togetherness and compassion cut with some serious existential grief, and I never expected to say this, but it seems like of all the aliens presented with varying True Meanings of Christmas, ALF was the one who got it right.
I hope this has given you some new viewing options this Christmas—or possibly some specials to avoid. My holiday wish for you? If an alien crashes into your home, may it be of the friendly, wise-cracking variety, amenable to whichever traditions you hold dear, and willing to help clean up after your New Year’s Eve party.
A slightly different version of this article was originally published in December 2013. This version is better.
Leah Schnelbach wants an ALF/Thomas Jerome Newton crossover special.
