"The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus/ Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey"

 

          “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” was the last Rankin/Bass animated Christmas show to use their “Animagic” (stop-motion puppets) feature. It first aired on December 17, 1985, on CBS. The special retells the story of a more obscure book (1902) by L. Frank Baum (he of “The Wizard of Oz” fame), which gives Santa an origin narrative with a more fantastic twist. The special is paired with “Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey” and was first released on DVD under the Warner Archive brand on November 17, 2009.

          The story is told as a flashback, framed by a meeting of the Immortals, a group of elemental spirits, who are gathered together by the Great Ak, the Master Woodsman of the World. Claus, a mortal who had been adopted as a baby by the wood-nymph Necile, has led an exemplary life of good and charitable deeds, but is now on the verge of death. Ak recounts ‘the life and adventures of Santa Claus’ to convince his fellow Immortals that the man is indeed worthy of their one and only Mantle of Immortality. Along the way his Northern residence, reindeer, gifts to children, stockings, and decorated trees are all given yet another explanation. The main villains of the piece are the Awgwas, a kind of evil goblin who try to make children do bad things by making them miserable. It ends, of course, with Claus being gifted the Mantle and becoming the immortal present-giver that he is.

          The “Life and Adventures” holds a rather odd place in the Rankin/Bass Christmas shows. Most of their other holiday specials have at least a tenuous continuity, starting with “Rudolph” in 1961 and lasting into the Eighties with only a few flat contradictions here and there. Their stories (even non-Christmas holiday specials) could be ‘calqued’ together into one long narrative.

These stories grew more fantastic (in the literary sense) and outré as time went on and less based on existing lore, with “Frosty and Rudolph’s Christmas in July” unfolding like a fever-dream Stephen R. Donaldson might have had after drinking too much eggnog; the evil Winterbolt bears a passing resemblance to his Lord Foul in machinations and manipulations. Perhaps Rankin/Bass was influenced by the fantasy works being produced in-house at the time, like “The Hobbit” or “The Last Unicorn”. Anyway, “Life and Adventures” appears in its own discrete bubble in 1985 and puts a period to the original cycle.

My personal memories of this show are, of course, not as steeped in nostalgia as others. Although still keenly interested in holiday specials at the time, and more so because it was based on a Baum book I had never read, I was in my early twenties and was bringing a more critical eye to any new offerings. If I’m recalling things correctly, I had to work my shift at Mr. Gatti’s the night it premiered but had someone record it via VCR for me. I was able to catch most of the beginning on the big in-store TV by lingering while I bussed some tables, then intermittently saw bits of it for the next hour or so. I certainly was impressed (and still am) by the opening number, “Ora e Sempre” (Today and Forever). [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlcQ3hO-EPY]

This special is not to be confused with the 2000 animated film, the similarly named and based “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus”, created by Mike Young Productions and starring (among others) Robby Benson, Jim Cummings, Maurice LaMarche, and Hal Holbrook. This version might be fine, but somehow I have never had the patience to watch it all the way through.

“The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” is paired on this DVD with another Rankin/Bass Christmas Animagic special, “Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey” (1977). It is based on a 1975 song sung by Gene Autrey, who had previously popularized “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman”. The show is more in line with the Rankin/Bass strand typified by their “The Little Drummer Boy”, although Santa and his sleigh make an early appearance. Narrated by Roger Miller (you know, the rooster Alan-a-Dale from Disney’s “Robin Hood”) as Santa’s donkey (don’t ask), he explains how Nestor, a long-eared misfit living in the Roman era, saves the first Christmas by bearing Mary and Joseph safely the Bethlehem, thus finding his place, ‘going down in history’ like a more famous quadruped with a shiny nose. It has some few similarities to Disney’s “The Small One”, released in 1978 but based on a 1947 book, and no similarity (save one) to the 1960 song "Dominick the Donkey" (Santa's Italian Christmas donkey!) . As a show, I find it neither especially memorable nor offensive. It is simply a sort of extra bonus to my Rankin/Bass collection.