Holiday Specials that Settle: A Garfield Christmas

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Welcome back. It’s that time of year! Actually, it took me so long to write this that it’s well-past that time. Time for me to ramble on about Christmas movies. But wait a minute. I’ve already written about Scrooged, Christmas Story, Love Actually, Nightmare Before Christmas, Die Hard, etc. What’s left? Do I have anything to even say about National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation? No, I do not. Even watching that movie every year for most of my adult life doesn’t help me come up with anything noteworthy to say. It makes me chuckle. Uncle Lewis burning the tree is pretty funny, but that’s about all I got.

But there’s more to the holiday season than movies. In fact, I’m old enough to remember a time when there were Christmas specials that aired on TV every year. Broadcast TV! And you only knew one was coming on because you saw a commercial or looked it up in the newspaper or TV Guide. And if you knew it was coming on, the entire family sat in the living room and watched it (Well, my Dad was probably downstairs watching sports, but everyone else watched it.) And I don’t mean to get all “That’s the way it was and we loved it,” but it was an event when Charlie Brown Christmas or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was shown, because not only did my family and I watch it, but most of my friends and their families sat down and watched it. And we did love it. And then cable came along, which was really cool, but some of the specials were shown more often, so in fact, less special. And now there's streaming and you can watch Charlie Brown buy his sad, little tree in August if you want. But you would have to pay for Apple TV to do it. So, not quite an event.

There was a loophole, however, when the VCR came along, because we could record the Christmas specials and watch them whenever we wanted. It felt a little wrong to do that, though, so I only recorded a Christmas special one time, and I believe it was because I wasn’t going to be home that evening, and just needed to see it, otherwise I would have to wait another year. And so that is how I came to have my own VHS copy of A Garfield Christmas.

It might be hard for younger folk who are only familiar with the recent Bill Murray movies to believe this, but Garfield was pretty popular back in the 80’s. Daily comics, books collecting said comics, and numerous TV specials (there's that word again… special.) According to Wikipedia, there were 12 in all. Most of these specials were directed by Phil Roman, and several of them won Emmys. If you don’t know Phil, he founded Film Roman, which you see during the end credits of every episode of The Simpsons. So, Garfield was a pretty big deal, which is why I’m kind of surprised all they could come up with to relaunch the brand was a couple crappy movies.

A Garfield Christmas was a little different than most of his other adventures because it wasn’t him and Odie getting into some kind of misadventure. This one was about family, and being together during the holidays. According to creator Jim Davis, it was mostly auto-biographical, and chronicled Jon Arbuckle and his beloved pets, Garfield and Odie, back to his family farm to celebrate the holiday. There we meet his parents, his brother Doc Boy (which was the name Davis’ real brother went by) and most importantly, his grandma. Grandma is actually a fictional character, which makes some sense because she is a total badass. She was added to give the story more heart, and it succeeded. Her and Garfield form a special bond, and when he jumps on her lap during the celebration, it may be one of the few times that Garfield actually behaves like a cat rather than a tiny, fat baby.

Most of the special consists of typical holiday shenanigans; trimming the tree and having Garfield climb it to put the star on top, preparing the meal with Grandma supplying food to Garfield and Odie under the table, and Jon and Doc Boy wanting to wake up early on Christmas morning despite their father’s protests. But the heart comes at the end during the exchanging of gifts. Throughout the night, we see Odie sneaking around various objects with no idea what he is doing. Late at night while everyone is asleep, he sneaks into the barn to assemble his gift, which ends up being a backscratcher made out of a plunger handle and a garden rake. Garfield spies him putting this together, and while he is doing that, he stumbles and knocks over a bundle of old letters. The next morning, he gives the letters to Grandma and we learn that they were love letters from her late husband. She had told Garfield earlier that it is at Christmas that she misses him the most, so this is the greatest gift she could have received. Garfield then tells the family (Well, the audience. I’m still not really sure that he actually speaks to them. Unless it’s telepathically? It’s best not to overanalyze that aspect of Garfield lore.) that Christmas is not about the giving or the getting, but the loving. Awwwww…

HOWEVER, there’s another wrinkle to this, and that involves the book version of A Garfield Christmas, which I owned as a kid, and recently looked up on the Internet Archive just to see if I was crazy. I am not… for that reason. The book contains what you might call bonus material. I thought I remembered certain elements that I didn’t see when I watched the special as an adult. I thought I was experiencing some sort of localized Mandela Effect, but when I read the book again on the Internet Archive, I saw it was true. Namely, in the scene where Odie is putting together the back scratcher, he is having trouble, probably because he doesn’t have any hands. As Garfield watches his frustration, he throws a corn cob to distract him, and when Odie runs to investigate, Garfield rushes in to finish the contraption for him.

Odie returns and is pleased to see it finished, and since he’s a little slow-witted, he doesn’t question how his gift just made itself. Another Festivus miracle!

It’s a cool moment that sees Garfield actually doing something nice for Odie, as he doesn’t know that he actually made his own gift. In fact, the moment that is in both versions when Garfield has to ask what it is after opening it is kind of amusing, since he helped make it, but it’s still nice. I’m sure there were time or budget constraints that made the creators cut that nice moment out, but I guess it’s another example of the book version being better.

As Garfield says, “it’s not the giving, it’s not the getting, it’s the loving.” He loved Odie and Grandma, Jon loved his family, and, as a kid, I loved this special. It doesn’t have jokes that I was too young to appreciate. It was funny and nice with just the right amount of schmaltz. I watched it year after year until VCRs went out, and when streaming came along years later, I put it back in my Christmas rotation. Sometimes, the internet is ok. Sometimes, you can still make things special.

Thanks for reading everyone. I hope you enjoy whatever holiday you’ll be celebrating in the coming days, and have a great 2025. As always, if you have the means, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help keep the lights on. You can also help by shopping at my etsy store, buying my comic or just donating to my Buy Me a Coffee or Paypal page.

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No matter what, your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my stuff this year, and I hope you keep on keepin’ on through 2025 and beyond.

Happy Holidays!