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Q: I know that opinions differ on “A Solstice Carol,” the Christmas episode of Xena: Warrior Princess (I love it), but I’ve always wondered why they didn’t do another holiday episode? — Mehran, Camden, NJ
The Oracle Speaks:
Very few scripted TV shows do a dedicated Christmas episode every year — some, like Xena, just do a single one over the course of their run, which they can then run every year.
Why? Because TV viewership is down during the holiday weeks, many shows go into re-runs, making December sort of a mid-season hiatus.
That was definitely true in the case of Xena, which was a syndicated show: original episodes of the show tended to run from September to November, then again from January to May or June, with re-runs the rest of the year.
In other words, it works perfectly to have one Christmas episode, which they can then re-run every year even during the show’s original run. According to the writer of the episode Chris Manheim, that was always the plan with “A Solstice Carol.”
Incidentally, regarding “A Solstice Carol,” I agree with those who say that a Christmas Carol rip-off is just about the most hackneyed Christmas episode plot possible, but I still thought the Xena folks mostly pulled this one off. I especially like the use of toys as weapons.
Q: Dude, what the hell happened to Santa and his elves between the 1964 Christmas Special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus? They look totally different! The elves don’t even look like the same species! — Mark, Hudson River Valley, NY
The Oracle Speaks:
You’ll recall that between the filming of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill was in a disfiguring car crash (which was “explained” by the Wampa attack)?
Sadly, The Oracle can finally reveal that something similar happened to Santa in 1969: a sleigh crash with a Russian satellite that was so disfiguring that it somehow even managed to move Santa’s eyes much farther apart.
Lest you feel too sorry for Santa, keep in mind that he’s also responsible for altered look of the elves. In 1972, the Rudolph elves unionized in order to ask for both heat and the option to not always be singing a happy tune. Santa immediately fired them all and hired scab-elves, two of whom, Jingle and Jangle, were featured prominently in 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus.
But shortly after the filming of that Christmas special, these new elves complained about the horrible, sub-freezing working conditions, and Santa fired them too, replacing them with the gang from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Since the children from Peanuts never age, and since the North Pole is excluded from international child labor treaties, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and Snoopy continue to toil in Santa’s toy factory to this day.
Q: If an angel gets its wings every time a bell rings, wouldn’t heaven be overrun with angels? – MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada
The Oracle Speaks:
It’s worse than you think. Every single individual “clang” of any bell results in an angel getting his or her wings — which means that a single jingle bell can produce hundreds of winged angels over the course of a minute.
Which means that, yes, heaven should be overrun with angels. Fortunately, there’s another rule that every time someone grinds their clutch, an entire legion of angels is instantly obliterated, so things have pretty much tended to even out.
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>>>Fortunately, there’s another rule that every time someone grinds their clutch, an entire legion of angels is instantly obliterated, so things have pretty much tended to even out.<<<
I almost busted my gut laughing at this! Thanks for the post-holiday pick me up!