A Gifted Variety Pack: A Look Back at TV’s Classic Christmas Variety Specials
[Note: The following material is an edited book excerpt from Christmas TV Memories: Nostalgic Holiday Favorites of the Small Screen by Herbie J Pilato.]
Of all the varied Christmas TV special formats, the musical comedy variety program holds an inaugural, pertinent place and portion of the pie in the Christmas special spectrum, either as a singular hour airing just once, as a series of specials hosted by the same performer over time or as a one-hour episode of an established variety series.
In many ways, the TV variety-special format began with famed outdoor events such as America’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Detroit and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which marked its hundredth anniversary in 2024. Still other unique and relatively reverent evening hours include the annual Kennedy Center Honors, which applauds a select, small, and distinguished group of entertainers and artists every year between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
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Juxtaposed to the latter, Guy Lombardo’s iconic New Year’s Eve specials (pictured above with Joan Collins) brought in the post-Christmastimes for the more senior, traditional set before The Midnight Special and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve outings began to roll with a bit more spiked punch for the younger crowd, into which American Idol’s original host Ryan Seacrest continues to throw his baton today.
The evening TV talk show, led by The Tonight Show, also circulated its own brand of Christmas episodes hosted by Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, as did the morning and afternoon chat shows hosted by Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore. Seacrest once again popped into the picture when he briefly stepped into the Live With duties for Regis Philbin opposite Kelly Ripa (who had replaced Philbin’s original female cohort Kathie Lee Gifford, and who now shares the stage with her real-life husband Mark Consuelos).
But still, it is the one-hour, primetime specials of the Christmas variety that aired mostly between the 1950s and 1980s that hold the most bang for their holiday buck (or should that be “deer”?).
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Who can forget Bob Hope’s legendary Vietnam War Christmas specials with the troops, or how two music worlds collided with grace during host Bing Crosby’s “Little Drummer Boy” duet with special guest star David Bowie from Crosby’s famed Christmas special in 1977? Or when Perry Como, Julie Andrews and John Denver paid periodic Christmas visits on-location to the Colorado Rockies and other December destinations? Or when Bing Crosby and Andy Williams taped their holiday specials more traditionally inside a studio, surrounded by their real-life family members who were incorporated into the show? Or how Lawrence Welk made sure to do the same with annual Christmas segments that showcased his “musical family” moments every December?
Additional Christmas musical/comedy variety specials or show episodes were hosted by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Jackie Gleason, Mac Davis, Captain & Tennille, Donny & Marie, Sonny & Cher, the Carpenters, Glen Campbell and more; even Walt Disney’s Sunday-night staple did special Christmas entries (“From All of Us to All of You”).
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Cozy up with holiday nostalgia memories
According to producer, documentarian and TV historian Dan Wingate, such grand celebratory gatherings raised the musical variety genre to a new level, “decorated for the holidays with Christmas trees bursting with presents, lots of snow coming down and people bundled up in winter clothes.”
Such programming often began with “a bustling musical number showing preparations for the big celebration, whether it was shopping, getting a tree, decorating the house.” It all matched the anticipation of the coming holiday and “set the stage for the arrival of family. Once that was settled, the main component would set in — nostalgia. No holiday special succeeds without this ingredient — they can’t be completely modern and evoke the feelings we associate with this time of year. Loved ones, near and dear to our hearts — with whom we have shared this experience since we were very young — are ever-present during the holidays.”
Christmas songs and music, in general, are also, of course, key ingredients, said Wingate. Many familiar tunes date “back to the youth of the oldest viewers — practically guaranteeing the evocation of childhood memories and feelings which are seldom experienced in the more challenging later years. These songs tie the traditional American Christmas celebrations together for all generations — and elevate these specials beyond the traditional vaudeville aspects of the then-ubiquitous musical variety format.”
As a child born in 1967, entertainment historian Bob Barnett’s memories of TV Christmas variety shows were “like stepping into a storybook filled with enchantment and merriment.” For Barnett, such shows were more than just entertainment, but the source of “holiday dreams and the embodiment of the magic of Christmas.”
Each year, Barnett was “whisked away to a world of music, laughter and togetherness.” He was left with “a deep appreciation for the enchanting spirit of the season.” Such memories, seen through the eyes of his childhood, continue to fill Barnett with “warmth and a sense of wonder, even now as an adult.”
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Fellow author and entertainment historian David Laurell was party to “the first generation to grow up immersed in the programs, personalities, characters and culture of television.” As he continued to observe: “Baby boomers — unlike their parents or offspring — lived through that pre-cable extremely limited-choice era when everyone, of every age, watched or was familiar with the same shows. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, variety shows and situation comedies attracted cross-generational viewing and, when it came to the holiday season, just about every family gathered around the tube for ‘specials’ hosted by a cavalcade of entertainers such as Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Andy Williams.”
For Telly Davidson, author of TV’s Grooviest Variety Shows (of the ’60 and ’70s), the “great and groundbreaking Flip Wilson” played a pertinent role in variety show history, particularly when it came to Christmas. Wilson arrived on the TV scene toward the end of the genre’s golden age with a show made of what the entertainer called “a fruit salad,” or as Davidson explained it, presenting “weekly guests and performers that were different enough to keep things tart and tasty, but compatible enough not to be dissonant and just vulgar-campy or cringe.
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“The big, spectacular, MGM-musical-style numbers and laugh-out-loud comedy,” Davidson continued, were pertinent components of the variety show format, as a weekly or single-special presentation. It was all about showcasing “an earnest sense of family — whether it was the ‘we’re all in this together’ show business sense [as with The Ed Sullivan Show, which had a new lineup of top-name performers each week] or the sense that we were ‘dropping in on’ a holiday party amongst the regulars.”
Davidson, also the author of Culture War: How the ’90s Made Us Who We Are Today (Whether We Like It or Not), pointed to Lawrence Welk and Carol Burnett as prime examples of variety family programming. Welk referred to his weekly show’s cast as a “musical family.” Burnett’s long-running variety hour featured a regular band of performers that both she and the audience viewed as family, including Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner and Tim Conway. “Even for a hip-for-its-time show like Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” Davidson said, “viewers tuned in as much for the regular weekly cast and costars, as they did for the leading performer or the A-list guest stars. Saturday Night Live was ‘made’ by its cast members,” he continued, “every bit as much as its weekly guest hosts. People wanted to see what their favorite TV ‘friends’ were up to each week. … It was all about the importance of the ‘family atmosphere,’ onscreen and off, which was encouraged, especially around Christmas.”
Click here to order CHRISTMAS TV MEMORIES: NOSTALGIC HOLIDAY FAVORITES OF THE SMALL SCREEN by Herbie J Pilato.
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Home For The Holidays
November 2021
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