A Christmas Story

A somewhat obscure Hannah-Barbara Christmas special originally aired in December 1972, it was recently aired on TCM as their Wednesday night animated night in December 2025.

I had never seen it before as it was a little before my time on the original air date but I can see how it would have nostalgia appeal to those old enough to remember the original airing. Also, recommended to those with young children who want to show them a "deep cut" as it were for the Christmas specials.

Don't expect much, the jokes are pretty cliche and the animation isn't great, although it's not without a certain charm. The voice actors are pretty good, although a bit cheesy. As a cat person, I always hate seeing cats made out as the bad guys on these old cartoons, although having the cats talk like 1930's gangsters was sort of funny. At 30 minutes it doesn't really wear out it's welcome but unfortunately theTCM outro was cut off on my DVR recording so I'll never know what the guy had to say to Jacquelyn Stewart after the show wrapped up.

I was lucky many years ago..to see this. It is NOT really all that memorable of a story..as other have stated. HOWEVER..I am quite SURPRISED..no one else noticed..that the opening song in the cartoon.."All on Christmas day". was RE_WORKED into the song played on the "Enchanted voyage" dark ride.. at the Amusement park Kings Island, near Cincinnati Ohio. That ride is LONG gone, redid several times..now "boo blasters".. But form 1971-1983.. it was the enchanted Voyage..and this tune with different words..about the " happy friends that live in my tv".. played throughout the dark boat ride !!.

I have fond memories of this. The friendly mouse and dog team up to deliver a letter to Santa. They go all over town but keep running into store Santas or Salvation Army types or whatever. There are the usual Hanna Barbara songs, voicers (Daws Butler and Paul Winchell), treacly images of an ideal Christmas, etc.

And know what, I loved every single second of it. They'd put this on about 7:30 pm in December back in the 70s, and I can remember playing outside in the snow as a kid, coming into the house and seeing this come on. It was a perfect tandem show w/ the Grinch/Rankin Bass/Peanuts stuff that is now better remembered.

It's not a classic per se, but its not that bad, and if you ever get a chance to watch it, do so. You gotta like H-B from the 70s though. Fair Warning.

Here is a Hanna-Barbera Christmas TV special that my family and I loved and still do. But of course my parents refer to the title as "Timmy's Letter."

The special is set in a town and era almost like in Disney's Lady and the Tramp, and it was Christmas Eve. In one house, a little boy named Timmy (voiced by Andy Panda's voice actor, Walter Tetley) was read a Christmas story and tucked into bed. The resident mouse, Gumdrop (voiced by animation regular Daws Butler), while admiring the house all decorated for Christmas, noticed Timmy's letter to Santa on the floor. The letter must have fallen off the table and never been mailed. So he and the family dog, Gobber (voiced by Paul Winchell), set out to deliver the letter to Santa and save Christmas for Timmy.

I was very fortunate (and so is my family) to find it on TV and tape it because they don't show it anymore. So all I can say is that I loved this special from beginning to end. And I don't have any particular scene I like because I love this cartoon. I also love the songs in the special; three of them were replayed in later Hanna-Barbera Christmas programs.

As a one-off, unrelated to any franchise Special (it's also nothing to do with the 1983 movie with the same title) it's clear that A Christmas Story has fallen into massive obscurity. Quite rightly so, as it's a fairly bland story with nothing memorable about it whatsoever.

It begins in some quaint, little, snow-covered town with little Timmy being read to by his dad on Xmas Eve. But he's forgotten to mail his letter to Santa, so the dog and house mouse take off in search of the big-bearded gift-giver (who conveniently just happens to be down the street instead of anywhere else in the world) in order to give him said letter.

Limp hijinks follow. And it ends with a total cop-out, borderline illogical ending which pretty much negates everything that precedes it. But I guess I'm scrutinizing a 1972 Hanna-Barbera cartoon a little too closely.

Forget this one, and stick to Specials based on established franchises.