Every year we carve out time to watch some of our favourite Christmas specials, like Rudolph, the Grinch, Frosty, and Charlie Brown. But what about the Christmas episodes of your favourite cartoon shows? It wasn’t just the big specials drawing people into the season. Pretty well every TV show you were watching likely had at least one Christmas episode if not one for every season!
Here are some of the best Christmas episodes from ’90s cartoons that I think you should check out this year!
The Ren & Stimpy Show – “Son of Stimpy”
Okay, I had to lead with this one, because it is way out there, but please indulge me.
The Ren & Stimpy Show was one of my favourite cartoons as a kid. This was one of the first cartoons that were (intentionally or not) really aimed at an older demographic, but the potty humour and ridiculousness made it borderline taboo so, of course, I just wanted to watch it more. Oddly enough, this show somehow aired beside Rugrats and Doug on Nicktoons in the US. In Canada, Ren & Stimpy aired later in the evening on Much Music, our (pun intended) much better version of MTV.
My parents were always very liberal with letting me watch whatever I wanted. Ren & Stimpy was where they drew the line, for some reason. I can recall one night convincing my father to let me stay up until 9:30 to watch TV – but totally not Ren & Stimpy – only to dastardly change the channel to Much Music just as the show was about to begin. He made me turn it off! I was scandalized! It wasn’t long before he relented however and the first episode I can recall watching was “Space Madness”, which had me hooked.
Like any TV show at the time, especially one that was technically made for kids, Ren & Stimpy had a Christmas episode. There’s actually two that I can remember! Today, however, we’ll be talking about “Son of Stimpy”, which aired in January of 1993. Yeah… I know. It was apparently typical of the show’s creator, John Kricfalusi, to be late with material, so I’m assuming this is one of those instances.
Now, bear with me, but the episode’s premise surrounds Stimpy having his first *ahem* fart, which leads him to believe he has just given birth. He names his son Stinky and pines over his disappearance, falling into a state of depression. Ren, who unsurprisingly doesn’t believe Stimpy created gaseous offspring, can only watch as his best friend falls into the depths of sadness, before striking out in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve to try and find his long-lost child.
This kind of stuff would only fly on Ren & Stimpy, but as absurd as it sounds it worked. I would about guarantee you’d never expect to have a vested interest in seeing a cat be reunited with his long lost fart on Christmas morning, but here it is.
You may be thinking there’s no way you’d sit down and watch something this ridiculous during the holidays, but can you honestly think of anything else like it? Nope! So strike a new path and take in “Son of Stimpy” this year. I guarantee you’ll get a gas out of it! HA! I kill me!
I couldn’t find The Ren & Stimpy Show anywhere to stream here in Canada, so if you want to check this one out you might have to dig around for an old DVD or search the web like I did for a VHS-ripped TV airing from the year 2008!
I can't sleep, so I'm drinking Christmas tea and watching old Christmas Cartoons. As you can see, only the classics. 🎄🍑💨 pic.twitter.com/AguEhIDOlm
— Ryan Hollohan (@RyHoMagnifico) November 14, 2020
The Simpsons – “Marge Be Not Proud”
Everyone remembers The Simpsons Christmas episode “Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire”, because – in a rare case – it was actually the very first episode of the series when it hit syndication in 1989. The first episode was intended to be “Some Enchanted Evening”, but because of a hiccup with the animation and it being mid-December, the producers decided to lead with a Christmas special.
But I’m not going to talk about that episode. I’d like to talk about another classic, which is “Marge Be Not Proud”. It’s hard to believe, but this was only the second Christmas-themed Simpsons episode to ever air, seven years to the day after the first show! Because the first episode was so well-received, no one wanted to touch a Christmas show for a very long time.
The story centers around Bart wanting a new violent video game called Bonestorm, which is of course a Mortal Kombat stand-in. When Marge refuses to buy it for him, he attempts to shoplift it from a local discount store. The episode is incredible poignant. We’ve all disappointed someone in our lives at some point and it’s easy to empathize with Bart in this situation, even if you didn’t do anything as egregious as shoplift.
At it’s core, “Marge Be Not Proud” is one of those really heartwarming episodes The Simpsons were capable of without losing the laughs. It’s hard to explain, but it doesn’t feel like the usual Christmas special you’d expect. I mean all the trappings are there; it features Santa (like you’ve never seen him before!) in a video game commercial, a department store at Christmas, and a Krusty Christmas Special, but at it’s core “Marge Be Not Proud” is just a sweet story about Marge and Bart realizing how much they need each other, while Homer and Milhouse (a.k.a. Thillho) handle the comic relief.
If you are subscribed to Disney+ then you can stream this episode right here or you can always track down one of the millions of DVD releases that are floating out there in the wild!
Stuuuuuff THIS up your stocking!
Bump in the Night – “Twas the Night Before Bumpy”
Unlike The Simpsons, I’m never sure how many people are aware of Bump in the Night or not, so I’ll start with a little about the show, if you’ll indulge me!
Bump in the Night was a claymation show that aired on ABC for two seasons from ’94 to ’95. Everyone remembers the ABC Saturday Morning cartoon block, because they always had the best bumpers to the tune of “After these messages we’ll be riiiii-ight back!” You know you were singing that in your head!
What some people might forget is that in 1993 a new set of bumpers were created, which featured a little green bug-eyed monster, a blue blob-looking creature, and a stitched together Raggedy Ann-style doll. Well, these would become the characters of the then newly-minted Bump in the Night!
The show followed the green monster, Mr. Bumpy, who lived under a 10-year old boy’s bed and his friends the blue blob Squishington and the boy’s sister’s doll, Molly Coddle, as they went on adventures in the night while everyone was asleep in the house. There was a whole cast of characters, which included antagonists Destructo, a robot action figure that constantly tries to keep Mr. Bumpy in line, and the Closet Monster, which is a living pile of clothes that lurks in the depths of the, well… closet.
There would usually be two stories per half hour episode, which almost always included a musical number that acted as a sort of clip show recounting the events of the episode.
ABC pulled out all the stops for Bump in the Night, casting veteran voice actors Rob Paulsen (Raphael from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) as Squishington, Gail Matthius (former Saturday Night Live cast member and Shirley the Loon from Tiny Toon Adventures) as Molly, and Jim Cummings (Tigger from Winnie the Pooh and Pete from various incarnations of Mickey Mouse cartoons) as Mr. Bumpy.
The show was a super fun and incredibly well-animated program that I instantly fell in love with when it started airing in ’94. It was a popular show, as well, but in ’95 was cancelled. I’m not sure why exactly, but I assume it has something to do with Disney buying into ABC around that time and the SatAM cartoon block being loaded with Disney programming like Gargoyles, The Mighty Ducks, and DuckTales.
In it’s final year, however, they made a huge Christmas special. As I said before, the clips in the show were usually under 15 minutes, although the occasional episode took up the whole half hour block. “Twas the Night Before Bumpy” had over an hour long runtime!
In the special Mr. Bumpy wants to get his hands on Santa’s sack and enlists his best pal Squishington to join him on a quest to the North Pole to find Santa’s workshop. Molly Coddle and the rest of the show’s characters remain at home attempting to put on a Christmas Pageant.
Along Mr. Bumpy’s quest he and Squish run into several characters in desperate need of gifts from Santa, including a South American earthworm by the name of Juaquin Gusanito Sin Manos, voiced by none other than Cheech Marin! The little monsters enlist the help of their new acquaintances to help them find Santa’s bag with the promise of whatever they wish for from it, although Mr. Bumpy is always working angles to keep all the wonderful presents to himself.
In the end, Bumpy and Squish find Santa’s workshop, which is protected by a paramilitary force of Elves and Snowmen that instantly make you think of the Clayfighter video games – clay animation was really seeing a big resurgence during this time. The episode is interspersed with original parodies of classic Christmas carols and even a Hannukah song!
My sister and I loved this special back in ’95. In my memory YTV, which I believe syndicated the show after it was cancelled by ABC, played “Twas the Night Before Bumpy” during their Christmas programming for at least a few years after, because I certainly made a point to catch it more than once in the 90s. Either that or I had it recorded to a VHS tape, but if I did it’s long gone. For years I couldn’t watch the special, which always irked me, despite it actually having a DVD release in the mid-2000s, but now anyone can enjoy it on the Wildbrain YouTube Channel, which is loaded with all kinds of great 80s and 90s cartoon content!
The ads can be a bit of a pain, but trust me – this one is worth it!
Batman: The Animated Series – “Christmas with The Joker”
Now we’re cookin’!
Batman: The Animated Series launched on FoxKids back in September of 1992 and essentially kicked off the entire Warner Bros. DC cartoon superhero “universe” we all know and love today. The style, attention to detail, and incredible story-telling and acting on display in Batman TAS make it not only one of the best animated TV shows all time, but just plain one of the best shows, period. For my money, this is the greatest portrayal of Batman ever outside of the comic books.
As is always the case with a great superhero there must be equally engaging bad guys and if there’s a more famous villain that The Joker, I’m not sure who it is! Batman, voiced by the incomparable Kevin Conroy – who is so good as the Caped Crusader, I have a hard time hearing anyone else in the role, much like Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime – had to have just the right actor to stand against him as The Joker. In what is probably one of the greatest casting choices of all time, Mark Hamill would take the bull by the horns and help to create an absolutely iconic version of The Joker that endures to this day.
And that all started with the series second episode, “Christmas with The Joker”. I say the second episode, but in reality it actually aired much later. As I mentioned the show started in September of ’92, but it came out of the gate with 65 episodes and immediately went into syndication, so the initial airings were kind of all over the place at the time. This particular episode didn’t actually air until November of that year, so there were likely at least 10 other episodes that technically preceded it.
“Christmas with The Joker” opens with the Clown Prince of Crime breaking out of Arkham in top notch Joker style, by somehow rigging a Christmas tree into a rocket and blasting off throw a skylight singing “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”, which was likely the first time that version of the song was ever canonized!
He then goes on to somehow take over the television airwaves of Gotham City, broadcasting his own twisted Christmas special calling out Batman to jump through a series of elaborate traps to save Commissioner Gordon, Barbara Gordon, and Detective Bullock all on Christmas Eve.
The Joker absolutely steals the show, of course. I just can’t get over Mark Hamill’s version of the character. Much like I have a hard time hearing anyone other than Kevin Conroy voice Batman, I find it equally difficult listening to anyone else play The Joker. Hamill’s laugh and line delivery is absolutely perfect. And the best part of the whole episode? The Joker’s endgame was legitimately to give Batman a pie in the face. That’s it.
Absolutely brilliant!
Batman TAS had a fairly popular DVD release, which isn’t too hard to find secondhand, and recently landed on a really awesome Blu-ray set. You can also stream the show from various platforms, including YouTube for $1.99 CDN an episode.
Futurama – “Xmas Story”
Although I already featured a Matt Groening animated show I just couldn’t talk myself out of rounding out this list without mentioning one of my favourite episodes of his other seminal cartoon, Futurama.
Futurama, of course, follows the story of Fry – a dim-witted pizza delivery guy – who gets accidentally cryogenically frozen on New Year’s Eve 1999 only to awaken 1000 years later as the year 3000 begins! He gets another delivery gig for a company called Planet Express once he finds his only living descendant, Dr. Farnsworth, a quirky old professor. There he meets the rest of the cast, which includes Leela, the captain of the interplanetary deliver ship, Amy Wong, a rich intern at Planet Express, and Bender, a liquor-swilling, foul-mouthed, robot.
Futurama instantly became one of my favourite shows when it first aired in 1998. For many people, I feel like it was overshadowed by the immensely popular Family Guy, which began airing a few months later in 1999, but I always preferred Futurama, which itself aired for seven seasona and was even revived with some direct-to-DVD films in the late-2000s.
It’s first Christmas special, “Xmas Story” aired in the second season on December 19th, 1999 and has some of the most iconic jokes in the whole series.
It’s centered around Fry’s first Christmas in the future, which is now known as Xmas, but continues to keep many of the same traditions that were around in 1999. One major difference, however, is Santa Claus. In the year 2801 a real robotic version of Santa was created, which could determine if someone was actually naughty or nice. In true Terminator fashion, the robot went mad and started dishing out punishments for anyone who was naughty. Since then, the people of the world hide in fear during the night of Christmas Eve, lest they be judged by SantaBot and have to see what he has in his “sack of horrors”.
There’s also a great subplot in there with Bender stealing booze (which is basically food for robots in Futurama) from homeless robots, because that’s how Bender do.
Much like the iconic quotes Santa delivers in “Marge Be Not Proud”, robot Santa has some of the best lines from Futurama, like “Time to get jolly on your candy asses!” and “I’m going to shove coal so far up your stocking you’ll be coughing up diamonds!” All delivered by none other than John Goodman… Frosty from Frosty Returns!
Again, I can’t recommend “Xmas Story” enough. It’s available on many streaming platforms and the DVDs for Futurama are really easy to find for cheap. Here it is on YouTube for the slightly steep price of $2.99 CDN per episode!
And there you have it! Five classic ’90s Christmas shows that you might not have considered taking in this holiday season. Let’s face it, with the Covid-19 pandemic many people have nothing but time, so instead of just watching the usual fair, why not try something different? You can’t go wrong with these Christmas shows, I promise!
Merry Christmas,
R