Holiday specials have gone from rare, once-a-year broadcasts to an endless mix of classics, rom-coms, and streaming exclusives that have become available anywhere, anytime.
Tim Havens, professor of communication studies and an expert in TV history and culture at the University of Iowa, offers insight to help you navigate where to find your holiday favorite, and how you can start your own viewing tradition to rejuvenate your holiday spirit.
Q: Why does it feel like there are more holiday specials now than ever before?
A: In the early days of TV, only a handful of holiday specials aired, often only one time during the season. You either watched them when they aired, or you waited until next year. Today, because of cable, subscription streaming services, free streaming like Tubi, and time-shifting, we can find a glut of holiday specials — everything from melodramatic holiday made-for-TV movies on Hallmark, to classics like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, to reality competition shows like Prime Video’s Dr. Seuss Baking Challenge. The market is saturated, and if it was once on TV, it’s likely out there somewhere waiting to be rediscovered. I, for instance, searched for years for a copy of the 1988 holiday special Roots: The Gift, and finally found it this month on Prime Video.
Q: When I was growing up, holiday specials were appointment TV. With that programming now available seemingly anytime, how do I create those traditions for my kids?
A: One good thing about a holiday tradition is that it can spark common memories that lead to family discussions and offer affordable structure to long winter nights. Unlike holiday filmgoing, which offers a sense of occasion, at-home viewing of TV specials and movies is cozier, more intimate, and more cohesive.
If you want to develop traditions or rework your holiday at-home viewing, start by considering what you’re interested in. Of course, more-or-less secular stories about Santa, his elves, his reindeer, and the wayward child or adult who no longer believes are the most common specials. But even Santa specials and films have become more diverse.
There’s straightforward children’s animation like the stop-motion TV specials of the 1960s and 1970s, tongue-in-cheek adult animation like several South Park holiday specials, action-oriented offerings like Disney’s Prep and Landing series, and the Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson vehicle Red One. For the young adult crowd, there is “adult fare” like Bad Santa and Violent Night, all of which are readily available across TV channels and platforms.
There are also several “holiday-adjacent” movies and one-off specials of conventional TV series. I know a lot of people who watch the Harry Potter series or Die Hard during the holidays because some or all of the story is set during the holiday season, and almost every TV series has a special holiday episode: Friends, for instance, has a famous Hanukkah episode.
Q: Where can I find holiday programming that isn’t focused solely on the 25 days of Christmas?
A: No doubt Christianity-themed specials are common this time of year, and it can be a lot harder finding holiday titles for people of other faiths in the U.S., although these are increasing in number, especially Hanukkah specials. The independent Jewish news site, forward.com, has a list of favorites. So, while newer specials are mostly romance-themed melodramatic movies like the Hallmark Christmas specials, some streaming services, including Netflix and Prime Video, have invested heavily in Hanukkah-related rom-coms. Islamic TV specials are quite numerous, although most are produced outside the U.S. and can be hard to find on the major streaming services.
Q: The explosion of streaming services is making it harder to find the shows I grew up watching. Where are all the holiday classics?
A: The growth of streaming services has created a wealth of classic, new, and obscure holiday specials to choose from. The same growth has also complicated the TV rights regime, making it harder to locate specials that appear and disappear from different streaming services with the speed of blinking holiday lights.
For instance, CBS affiliates have broadcast rights for the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special, but streaming rights are owned by Walt Disney Co. However, you won’t find Rudolph on Disney+; it only airs on their ad-supported streaming service, Freeform.
If you are a modern technology novice or need to find something for the kids at your sister’s house, here is a how-to for finding a specific title:
- Search for the title in your cable or satellite system or livestreaming service like YouTube TV or Fubo and DVR it. Lots of services will now let you watch on-demand with limited or no commercials.
- From the home screen of your smart TV, search the title to see if it’s on any of your services. These results may not be accurate, depending on your settings and the specific software on your TV, so if you still have no luck, search each of your streaming services individually for the title.
- If you don’t mind watching it with unskippable ads (like we did in the 1970s!), check out the free streaming services, especially Tubi, Freeform, and Pluto TV.
- If you don’t like ads, remember your local public library for DVD versions. Mine currently has multiple copies of both the original Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman, another hard-to-find classic.