If I wrote a Christmas special...

The "Good Idea Fairy" strikes again.

Back in the 90s, my Nana worked for a creative company in LA that did short film projects and also produced music. One of their albums was a collection of Christmas parodies, lampooning the downsides of the holiday season, most of which related to commercialism, excess, and the general hectic schedule that people keep in December.

I remember a particular line in one song that decried the endless supply of TV specials. I think about it every time I see a commercial for “this year’s special” on any given channel or platform. Then I think about the movies or shows I watch around Christmas—and especially, the books I read—and there are some definite perennial favorites. I could never get tired of them. However…

Earlier this week I thought about what makes a good Christmas special. I think the right answer is “What is Christmas really about, and does this story reflect that?”

More often than not, if you’re reading a book in a series, or watching an episode of a show, you just get the normal tropes from that series dressed in the skin of Christmas. Very rarely do you get something that cuts right to the heart of it, and centers it on Christ, as the holiday is meant to.

Tonight we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas, which turned 60 this year. I’m a huge Peanuts fan and I’ve read Michaelis’ biography of Schulz, so I know a little bit of the behind-the-curtain stuff involved there. Schulz drifted away from his commitment to faith later on in life, but during his more spiritual years, he wrote and produced this half-hour cartoon, which has since become a staple of the season.

The premise, as usual, centers on Charlie Brown’s depression, made all the more poignant by the season. He dislikes the commercialism of Christmas, how everybody just wants stuff, and they care more about the dressing of it all than the substance beneath it. (The unspoken fear is that there might not be anything beneath it.)

Linus, as usual, comes in clutch just as Charlie Brown’s fears hit their peak, and he recounts the story of the Nativity as recorded in Luke. He cites the Star of David, the shepherds, the angel, and the announcement of Christ’s birth. Glad tidings of great joy to all men, don’t you know. “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

60 years later, not a single film or show or even book has really captured that in so much simplicity, while also earning a spot in our national lexicon of Christmas art. A Muppet Christmas Carol is a beautiful film, though even that is generally a ghost story of Christmas, about a guy who needs to stop being so miserly and start caring more about people. Redemption is a theme, alongside repentance, but Christ as a cause or figure in the story is only there if you already have an understanding of the Gospel. To the lay viewer (or reader of Dickens’ original tale), it’s a spiritual story but it denies the form thereof.

(Maybe I’m being unfair, it’s been a few years since I’ve read it, I could be forgetting some particular line that disproves me.)

BEN-HUR, by Lew Wallace, is probably the single best novel about Christmas, as it’s contemporary to the Christ story, opening up with the Magi, the Nativity, and the Roman occupation of Judea. The protagonist is a Jewish man falsely accused of an assassination attempt on a Roman governor; he then undergoes an arc not dissimilar to Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo, languishing in prison and swearing revenge.

Decades pass, and as the events unfold, he is present at the crucifixion of Christ, and he is thus inspired to abandon revenge as his cause, choosing other virtues instead. All anyone really knows about Ben-Hur is that he raced chariots because of the Chuck Heston movie, but that’s only a small part of the story and has little to do with the core of it.

Ironically this mirrors our current cultural approach to Christmas. We love the spectacle and we celebrate that far too often at the expense of its real meaning. Don’t get me wrong, I love the spectacle. I’ve got multi-colored lights all around the house, Mannheim Steamroller on repeat, and candy everywhere. Half my wardrobe is red-and-green for a month. All that’s well and good.

But as a creator and consumer of art, we need to remember to look beyond the window dressing around Christmas. ChatGPT can pump out any vanilla Christmas special by checking aesthetic boxes, but it can’t really grapple with elements of the spirit, because it doesn’t have one. Are we not better than AI? I am. My work should reflect that.

So—now that I’ve rambled—here’s what it would look like if I did a Christmas novel/novella/comic/whatever. I had an idea a week ago and there’s no way I’m even going to attempt to tackle it this year, as I still need to outline FOSSIL FORCE 2. I’ll just keep it in the development phase and pick at it.

First, it’ll take place at the North Pole.

Yeah, there’s a city up there. We’ll call it “Peppermintropolis,” and in addition to Santa’s workshop, it also features his house, plus entire villages for the elves, a wildlife preserve, a Christmas tree forest, etc. The Big Guy is busy gearing up for Christmas, checking his list twice, etc…and while he’s focused on his one annual day of work, something is amiss among his subordinates…

Second, it’ll have a contemporary flavor.

An elf has been radicalizing the workers into staging a strike the week before Christmas, jeopardizing the holiday. (Someone has been spending too much time talking to extremists on the Internet.) Santa’s elite crack security squad, the Sin-Eaters, use dubious methodology to sniff out this scheme and arrest the perps just in time…or so they think.

Third, there’ll be a twist that leads into an insane action setpiece.

The Sin-Eaters will realize they were baited into arresting the dissident elf, so that he could call for backup and trap them in one spot. The dissident elf, who has been collaborating with anti-Christmas goblins, is taking this cold war hot. He knew the only way Santa’s Sin-Eaters would sniff him out is if they inappropriately used the Naughty or Nice List, targeting elves with it instead of humans (this will go against North Pole law.) With evidence of this in hand, the elf and goblins intend to radicalize the elves at large, throwing the North Pole into chaos and literally threatening Christmas.

Fourth, this will lead to a redemption arc.

The Sin-Eaters largely believe they’re following the rules, but it was their leader who broke them by putting the elves under N.O.N surveillance. This is where I’ll reveal that the Sin-Eaters are not elves, but dwarves, who tried to rob Santa’s sleigh on Christmas almost five hundred years ago. As punishment, they all ended up on the Naughty list for the next five centuries, and the only way off is for them to faithfully defend the North Pole from enemy incursion. For 499 years they’ve done just that, crossing every T and dotting every I. On this, the final year, their leader risks it all to find the dissident elf, potentially tacking another five centuries onto the dwarves’ sentences. The Sin-Eaters can no longer follow their leader, so he’s left to hunt down the dissident elf on his own before he can get evidence of surveillance abuse to the workers.

Fifth, the action is going to be unhinged.

There will be recognizable elements, like the sleigh, the reindeer, snowmen, candy canes, all that “window dressing” stuff…it’ll just happen like a fantasy action story, involving explosions, thick dwarves riding polar bears, and anti-Christmas goblins getting completely wrecked in combat. Rankin & Bass doing Die Hard, minus any dialogue from Santa condemning his reindeer for having deformed offspring. The goblins will have an airship. The dwarves will have comically oversized weapons, including firearms and chains and stuff. There will be generational, inter-species beef that gets sorted out, including jabs from the dwarves about how goblins are just inbred cousins to elves, and elves are actually short little goofballs who encouraged Tolkien to write propaganda about their height, beauty, and preferential treatment from Eru Ilúvatar.

Sixth—and finally—it’s got to mean something.

I’m keeping the final turn here under my hat, but it’ll involve a post-action conversation between Tactical Dwarf Number One and Saint Nick, about why they do all this and why it matters. There’ll be a tongue-in-cheek history of Santa Claus, what’s canon, what’s propaganda fed to the humans over the centuries, and what happens next.

It may not be as pointed as Linus dimming the lights and reading the New Testament, but it’ll be there. If I’m going to do it, I’ve got to do it right. In short, if I did a Christmas special, I’d do the obvious thing and make it about the Nativity, and why it still matters 2,025 years later.

With a little spectacle on the way there.

And if you like spectacle, go buy my books.