Wideo Wednesday: Nagging Christmas Show from the Dawn of Time

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTZpkRH5GRE

It is hard for me to define what effect this Hallmark Christmas special had on me. I was only six when it came out; that is an age where you are trying to figure out the world, and all data seems just as much part of the system as anything else. The Littlest Angel was the story of a young shepherd boy, Michael, who falls off a cliff, dies, and goes to Heaven, becoming ‘the littlest angel.’ He tries to find his place but is restless until he returns to earth and retrieves his ‘treasure’, a crude wooden box of things he’s collected, as boys will. Almost immediately upon his return to Heaven he learns that the Son of God is about to be born and all the other angels are preparing to give him splendid gifts. He donates his beloved box; this pleases God most. And it becomes the Star of Bethlehem.

Of course, not being much of a Biblical scholar I had no idea to what extent this squared up with the Nativity story, what was its exact status. It had at least the gloss of religion, which was its own special area of belief. Was this what Heaven was supposed to be like? (if so, it wasn't very nice). And it showed a kid actually dying, if not graphically at least explicitly, something I had never seen portrayed before on TV. The scene where he hugs his mother, who cannot see him but somehow feels him, which in retrospect I know was supposed to be touching, I found rather eerie. And if you couldn’t be happy in Heaven, what hope was there? It had an actor playing God, I mean visibly and, well, limitedly. Even then I felt somehow that to be a case of lese majeste. I did not care for its many musical numbers, which I found boring. Its green screen effects were primitive and distracting. 

It was full of actors who were familiar to me, or would become familiar to me in time; a case of Sixties and Seventies celebrities. There was Johnny Whittaker as the shepherd boy Michael, Fred Gwynne as Patience the Angel of Understanding, Cab Calloway as Gabriel, Tony Randall as Democritus (a Greek philosopher who somehow finds his way into Heaven), James Coco as the shepherd’s father, and E. G. Marshall (the cockroach guy from Creepshow!) as God.

The Littlest Angel has been in many forms. It started as written by Charles Tazewell (first as a 1939 radio program; then as a 1946 book illustrated by Katherine Evans). It was reprinted several times with different illustrations, performed again several times on the radio, saw life on several records, and was made into animated versions. It has sold over 5 million copies and was one of the 20 top bestselling children's books.

Tazewell also wrote The Littlest Snowman (1956, Captain Kangaroo read it on his show every year at Christmas) and The Small One (1947 book, Disney film 1978). Tazewell seems to have had a penchant for the littlest things; most of his kids' books have 'Littlest' in the title.

The Littlest Snowman (read by Captain Kangaroo)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43_d0u4WeGY

The Small One 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTFK1yr4wpg

And just to be technical, people don’t become angels when they die. Angels are a whole other critter than a blessed soul. This show perpetuates a ton of ‘folk beliefs’ about the Afterlife. Many have found The Littlest Angel to be touching; I've always found it to be ... problematic. But it sits like an unplucked thorn at the bottom of my memory.