What’s the ultimate children’s TV Christmas classic? Some might say Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Or Frosty the Snowman. Or A Charlie Brown Christmas. For many that grew up in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, A Garfield Christmas Special just might claim the title.
Originally airing on December 21, 1987, A Garfield Christmas would be a network television staple for the next 13 years. It even got a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Animated Program in 1988. While it usually aired together with A Charlie Brown Christmas, CBS stopped airing it after 2000. Did America’s original grumpy cat deserve to be canceled or is A Garfield Christmas truly a forgotten Christmas treasure?
A Garfield Christmas tells the story of Garfield, Jon, and Odie as they travel to Jon’s family farm on Christmas Eve. While Garfield looks forward to the binge-eating and present-getting that surrounds the holiday, he’s unenthusiastic about spending the holiday with the Arbuckles and Christmas in general.
The Arbuckles spend the holiday like many other families: they put up the Christmas tree, cook a big meal, and sing carols. Garfield forms a quick bond with Jon’s Grandma, who’s the only other member of the family with some sass. Grandma reveals to Garfield that Christmas Eve is the hardest night of the year for her because her dead husband’s favorite day of the year was Christmas. It was the only day he felt like he could outwardly express love to his children. Spoiler: Garfield ends up switching gears and finding the true meaning of Christmas. After stumbling upon some old love letters written to Grandma from Grandpa, he gives them to her and makes her yuletide gay.
While it may seem like a conventional children’s Christmas special on the surface, there’s a lot here worth discussing. Firstly, is the music. The characters sing several original songs throughout the special and more are used in the background. While a couple are catchy, most of them are just… weird choices for Christmas songs. There’s a reason no one is singing “You Can Never Find an Elf When You Need One” or “A Good Old-Fashioned Christmas” years later.
Speaking of weird, the tone here is very atypical for a children’s Christmas special. Garfield’s whole shtick is that he thinks everything is stupid, including Christmas. Much of the special is him making fun of Jon’s Christmas traditions. It’s the only Christmas special to have the line, “Whoever invented Christmas trees should be drug out into the street and shot.”
Instead of having America’s favorite fat cat have a change of heart through a series of light events, A Garfield Christmas gets pretty dark, having Grandma feel depressed on Christmas, missing her dead husband. This is a stark difference from the light parables contained in Frosty or Rudolph.
Of course, it still ends with everyone happy. The family has a great Christmas, Odie gets Garfield a gift he actually likes, Grandma gets her love letters, and Garfield has his religious moment and realizes he was wrong about Christmas all along. But even then, his change of heart happens in the last minute of the special and doesn’t amount to much more than a quick admission he was wrong: “Christmas. It’s not the giving. It’s not the getting. It’s the loving. There, I said it. Now get out of here.”
A Garfield Christmas focuses on the importance of love and family instead of faith, religious or otherwise. This is very different from something like A Charlie Brown Christmas, which can feel preachy in parts. In fact, the only mention of religion in the whole thing occurs when Doc Boy waxes poetic while giving the family prayer and Grandma whacks him on the head with a spoon. Maybe it’s no surprise then that this seemingly sarcastic and secular Christmas special last aired on network TV the Christmas before 9/11.
For many people, A Garfield Christmas is the ultimate Christmas special. It has enough originality and heart for families to keep it in their holiday viewing traditions year after year. While finding a physical copy has been somewhat challenging and expensive over the last few years, it’s currently streaming for free on YouTube. If there was ever a time for the world to be reminded of what really matters at the holidays, it’s now.
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