Welcome to the 2025 Heistmas Advent Calendar, a daily drop of pop culture Christmas icons, oddities, and joy. Check back every day from now through December 25 for each daily entry!
It ain't Christmas without Rankin/Bass, the creators and purveyors of the queerest and weirdest holiday cheer from the '60s into the '80s. And I'm not talking about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Frosty the Snowman, although those perennial, A-list specials are cuckoo bananas if you stop and think about them. You want to see weird? Read Matthew Jackson's celebration of Rankin/Bass's bonkers output.
But that brings me to 1974's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, which falls somewhere in the middle of the pack when it comes to Rankin/Bass weirdness. It's not an A-lister, which immediately makes it feel weirder than Frosty and Rudolph, two specials whose weirdness has dulled via decades of major network reruns. After its debut on CBS, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas became one of those specials that you'd see on basic cable in the '80s and '90s. Like, something about this animation screams, "This Sunday at 6 on TNT" to me.
Nowadays, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas exists as kind of a half-remembered piece of holiday lore. Just try to explain it to someone: "It's named after the poem but has nothing to do with the poem, aside from the mice. And there's a clock tower, and a nerdy mouse who writes Santa a letter saying that no one believes in him, or something? Also there's a leprechaun at one point." What is this special???
None of that matters. All of that is preamble to what I remember 'Twas the Night Before Christmas for, and why I watch it every year, and why I quote it every year. This special contains the best sentence, the best 13 words ever strung together in a holiday anything. It speaks to the Christmas spirit in a way that nothing else can touch, and it sums up the season with an honesty that is beautifully blunt. Watch the first six seconds of this clip.
Transcript: "Here's our first example of how you've ruined everyone's Christmas with your opinions."
Ain't that the truth? If that's not applicable to your life at some point this holiday season, are you even doing Christmas right? If you remember 'Twas the Night Before Christmas for anything, let it be those thirteen words.
Check back tomorrow for even more Heistmas Advent Calendar Goodies!
If you haven't already, consider supporting worker-owned media by subscribing to Pop Heist. We are ad-free and operating outside the algorithm, so all dollars go directly to paying the staff members and writers who make articles like this one possible.
