Santa Claus Is Trippin' Into Town Tonight on ABC

Today's cuppa: Barry's Classic Blend Irish tea

Tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT, ABC offers up "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town," a 1970 stop-motion-animated special from Rankin/Bass Productions, also known for such perennial faves as "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (one of my personal obsessions -- much of what I know about life I learned from "Rudolph," such as, if you look a little off, cultivate usefulness instead) and "Frosty the Snowman" (yes, I do yell, "Hap-py Birthday!" from time to time).

(More on "Rudolph" tomorrow, which is when it airs on CBS. "Frosty" comes up on CBS on Dec. 12.)

Despite the folksy presence of the voice of Fred Astaire as as postman S.D. Kluger, be warned, this is one seriously whacked-out mind trip of a Christmas special.

It's also one of the few animated specials still airing regularly, along with "A Charlie Brown Christmas," that explicitly refers to God. This is often edited out these days because the world will no doubt spin backwards on its axis if we have any religious references to a religious holiday like Christmas.

But there's nothing to be done about "Charlie Brown," unless you want to lose the whole pivotal scene where Linus recites the Biblical Nativity story  -- yet the world keeps on turning. The half-hour show airs at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Monday, Dec. 8, and Tuesday, Dec. 16, on ABC as part of a one-hour special that includes a group of animated vignettes featuring the Peanuts characters, called "Charlie Brown Christmas Tales."

And by the way, Hanukkah is just about the pretty candles and chocolate coins. No religion in that one either. Nope. Not a bit of it.

Anyway, "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" has only a cursory relationship to the popular song from which it takes its name. It purports to be a biography of Kris Kringle -- if that biography was written someone preoccupied with the idea of an orphan blowin' in the wind, the dark side of Bavaria (there's a lot of lederhosen in this one), busty Victorian women whose buns are undone by birds (click here to see that scene, also sometimes trimmed, either for time or because it's an exuberantly tacky example of '70s hippy-dippy graphics) and magic channeled from Tolkien by way of Disney's "Cinderella."

So, you may want to think once or twice before letting your youngest tykes watch this special, unless you don't mind doing some 'splainin' afterward.

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