Advent Calendar House - TV Holiday & Christmas Specials
A salute to all TV holiday specials, but mostly the Christmas ones. Revisit 12 holiday classics and not-so-classics each December and July.
Futurama: Xmas Story

🌴 It’s either 1999 or the year 3000, and a killer robot Santa is…
wait, what month is it?
Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.
Friends: The One with the Holiday Armadillo

🕎 It’s the year 2000, and Christmas and Hanukkah have crossed paths at my doorstep in the form of Santa Claus and his part-Jewish friend… a weird turtle man.
In honor of Christmas Day and the first night of Hanukkah sharing a day on the calendar this year, we’re revisiting some old Friends, an escaped tarantula, a restaurant we may never be allowed in or out of again, and an unforgettable interfaith holiday mascot fit for a new millennium.
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🎙 Guests:
Becca Petunia (ToughPigs.com, Bear in the Big Blue Podcast, Bluesky)
April Ryley...
Babes in Toyland (1986)

🎄It’s 1986, and the only way Drew Barrymore can save her new friends is to believe in the magic of toys… and Cincinnati.
From director Clive Donner comes a bonkers adaptation of “Babes in Toyland” starring Drew Barrymore, Keanu Reeves, and Richard Mulligan as a weird, evil guy who lives in a bowling ball.
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🎙 Guests:
Molly Patton (MollyPatton.com)
Becca Petunia (ToughPigs.com, Bear in the Big Blue Podcast, Bluesky)
Adam Pope (The Retro Network, Wizards: The Podcast Guide to Comics, Remember That Show?, Bluesky)
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💬 Topics & Tangen...
Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol

🎄It’s 2010, and I’m hiding in a closet from a flying shark that ate half my screwdriver.
I’ve finally caught up with the timeline of people who have been requesting that I watch the “Doctor Who” Christmas specials, particularly this twisted take on “A Christmas Carol” starring Michael Gambon in the Scrooge role and the 11th Doctor as at least 2 ghosts of Christmas.
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🎙 Guests:
Andre Bennett (Bluesky)
Jack Ford (Total Christmas Podcast)
Anthony Strand (ToughPigs.com, Movin’ Right Along, Bluesky)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Andre’s revie...
Santa and the Three Bears

🎄It’s 1970, and a couple of bear cubs have jumped through my window and are eating all my marshmallows.
Join us on a deeper than expected dive into a Christmas special by former Hanna-Barbera animator Tony Benedict that almost wasn’t released till the owner of a now-defunct Florida theme park swooped in and saved it.
CONTENT WARNING: No animals were harmed in the making of this podcast. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about one of the 4 versions of this special.
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🎙 Guests:
Gerry Davila (Totally Rad Christmas)
Ethan (The Hun...
Justice League: Comfort and Joy

🎄It’s 2003, and nothing puts me in a festive mood quite like a bar fight.
Join us as we spend Christmas break with the Justice League — well, most of it. Wonder Woman’s off doing something else, and Batman… you know, smells.
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🎙 Guests:
Joey O. (Y-Not Radio, Bluesky)
James Riley (Twitter)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Mike talks “Comfort and Joy” on Tis the Podcast.
2. Paul Dini’s notes on “Comfort and Joy,” including what where Wonder Woman and Batman were.
3. The Shrine of the Silver Monkey from “Leg...
Mama’s Family: Santa Mama

🎄It’s 1986, and Santa looks different after arriving late to the mall due to a flat reindeer.
Unfold that TV Guide you crafted into an angel centerpiece and join us for a semi-festive Christmas episode of “Mama’s Family” that will have you believing in either Santa or ghosts at the end of it.
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🎙 Guest:
Joe Fulton (Christmas Aficionado)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. “Santa Mama” on the Internet Archive.
2. A Mama’s Family reunion on “Vicki!”
3. Vicki Lawrence sings “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.”
4. Mama’...
Count Duckula: A Christmas Quacker

🎄It’s 1990, and Santa’s lost in my confusing network of chimneys.
Prepare yourself for a more silly than spooky Christmas special that takes us from Castle Duckula to a concussion-induced space adventure and back.
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🎙 Guest:
Adam Parker Sibun (Merry Britsmas)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. “A Christmas Quacker” on the Internet Archive (it’s mislabeled as another episode).
2. Nick Knacks on “Count Duckula.”
3. Count Duckula’s first appearance on “Danger Mouse.”
4. UK Christmas TV, an extensive archive of Christmas TV listings for the UK’s main channels.
5. J...
Alien Xmas

🎄It’s 2020, and a gift-wrapped puppy licked my face and made my skin turn blue.
From the Chiodo Brothers comes a charming stop-motion Christmas special about how an alien invasion of the North Pole almost ruined Christmas — and the entire planet’s gravity, but also Christmas. Plus: A “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” Easter egg, some cameos from “Elf,” and Santa with nunchucks.
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🎙 Guests:
Michael DiGiovanni (Pop Culture Retrofit, Bluesky)
Sammy Hain (Sammy’s Easter Tails, Bluesky)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. “Alien Xmas” on Netflix.
2. A behind-the-scenes interview...
The Love Boat: The Christmas Presence

🎄It’s 1982, and I’m trapped at sea while Mickey Rooney butts into everyone’s conversation.
Join us as we embark on a Christmas cruise aboard the Pacific Princess for a very merry episode of “The Love Boat” featuring Maureen McCormick, Donny Osmond, and Mickey Rooney as an angel in disguise as your nosy neighbor.
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🎙 Guests:
Guy Hutchinson (Pointless Nostalgia, GuyHutchinson.com)
William Bruce West (West Week Ever, Remember That Show?)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. “The Christmas Presence” on Paramount+, Pluto TV, and Facebook.
2. Sesame Street’s Love Boat par...
Blackadder’s Christmas Carol

🎄It’s 1988, and the Spirit of Christmas just broke down my bedroom door to say hello.
This edition of Scrooge Sunday turns everyone’s favorite festive tale of redemption on its head and blows it out its enormous, muscular backside as great philanthropist and all-around softy Ebenezer Blackadder learns from watching his ancestors and descendants that it’s good to be bad.
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🎙 Guest:
Jack Ford (Total Christmas Podcast)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. “Blackadder’s Christmas Carol” on Vimeo.
2. Tony Robinson’s “Christmas Wrapping” and the Total Christmas Podcast episode on it...
Barbie in The Nutcracker

🎄It’s 2001, and a rock giant is chasing us across the ocean, which has been entirely frozen over by fairies with minty fresh breath.
From the makers of “ReBoot” and Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” music video comes Barbie’s first feature-length movie, complete with motion capture of the New York City Ballet, revolutionary hair animation, and Tim Curry as an extra sassy Mouse King.
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🎙 Guests:
Kristi and Bri from Bad Princess Movies.
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. “Barbie and the Nutcracker” on the Internet Archive.
2. Bad Princess Movies on “Barbie in...
You Can’t Do That on Television: Christmas

🎄It’s 1984, and Santa’s in front of a firing squad because his executioner didn’t appreciate the socks he got last Christmas.
The slime is an extra festive shade of green in this Christmas episode of the show that defined Nickelodeon’s early years, featuring an all-star cast of the 5 most featured kid actors of “You Can’t Do That on Television.”
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🎙 Guests:
Shawn Robare (Plastic Rocket Pop, Cult Film Club, Wolfman’s Got Nards)
Steven (UFO Club, The Bigfoot Club)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Watch the Christmas episod...
Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree

🎄It’s 1995, and Robert Downey Jr. may or may not be holding Kermit the Frog hostage until he gets his perfect Christmas tree.
The Advent Calendar House is back in time for a freakin’ country bear jamberoo as a family of Muppet mice risk their lives to bring home the top of the top of the top of the top of a Christmas tree fit for an eccentric future Iron Man. Also starring shy butler Leslie Nielsen, homesick Swedish maid Stockard Channing, and a pre-Bobo Bobo the Bear.
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🎙 Guests:
Anthony Strand (ToughPigs.com...
It’s a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special

🎄It’s 1992, and there’s no such thing as Buster Bunny.
The Advent Calendar House wraps up Christmas in July with the unofficial series finale of “Tiny Toon Adventures,” when Buster wishes he’d never been on the show, and the horrors within Montana Max’s Biff Tannen Pleasure Palace or whatever.
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🎙 Guests:
Adam Pope (Geekster, YouTube, Remember That Show?)
William Bruce West (West Week Ever, Remember That Show?)
Chad Young (The Horror Movie BBQ)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. I found this special hiding in a 4-hour Christmas spe...
Quantum Leap: A Little Miracle

🎄It’s 1990… or 1962… and a quantum physicist forgot to powder his boss’s underwear.
This Scrooge Sunday edition of the Advent Calendar House involves time travel of a different sort as we follow Dr. Sam Beckett on a mission to save a mission, and the soul of the man trying to tear it down.
* CONTENT WARNING: This episode briefly discusses the death of actor Charles Rocket and the would-be death of his Scrooge-like character, Michael Blake.
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🎙 Guests:
Erin Evans (@mserinevans).
Joey O. (Y-Not Radio, @imgonnadj24).
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💬 Topics & Tangent...
Jim Henson’s Turkey Hollow

🦃 It’s 2015, and in my search for a noisy cryptid I accidentally freed 175 roided-up turkeys, but neither of those things is the real monster.
Join us as we rediscover a long lost Thanksgiving special concept Jim Henson dreamed up in the 1960s and meet the Musical Monsters of Turkey Hollow.
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🎙 Guests:
Ethan (The Hungry Reader, A Special Presentation or ALF Will Not Be Seen Tonight, Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head)
Sammy Hain (Sammy’s Easter Tails)
Tony Whitaker (@muppetdude, Muppet Wiki)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
Adventures in Wonderland: Christmas in Wonderland

🎄 It’s 1992, and my daydreams of snow are melting into a bucket of water getting dumped on my head from an airplane.
Join us as we dive down the rabbit hole to the strange world of The Disney Channel’s “Adventures in Wonderland,” where the White Rabbit wears Rollerblades and the halls are decked with fresh produce, the way Christmas was meant to be celebrated.
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🎙 Guests:
Channel KRT:
Kit Quinn (@missi0nbreakout, Letterboxd)
Randee Martin (@NeonTailzz, YouTube)
Tyler Green (@TylerFG, Bluesky, The Mask: Gone Viral)
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💬 Topic...
Pillow People Save Christmas

🎄 It’s 1988, the monsters under my bed are real, and they’re stealing Christmas.
Follow us under the covers through a wormhole to the home of ’80s kids’ bedding sensation the Pillow People in a Christmas special so obscure, it’s not even listed on IMDb. But it’s real, and it’s ironically nightmarish.
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🎙 Guest:
Ethan (The Hungry Reader, A Special Presentation or ALF Will Not Be Seen Tonight, Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Watch “Pillow People Save Christmas” on YouTube.
2. Pillow People...
The Worst Witch

🎃 It’s 1986, and one student at a magical boarding school is struggling to fit in while having to deal with a hard-nosed potions teacher and bullying from a golden child whose father will hear about this, but finds comfort in broom flying and encouragement from the kindly old headmaster.
No, not that one.
Before Harry Potter, there was “The Worst Witch,” which was adapted into a TV Halloween special starring a young Fairuza Balk, Dianna Rigg, Charlotte Rae in a dual role, and Tim Curry in the trippiest ’80s music video.
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🎙 Guests:
Bec...
The Annie Christmas Show

🎄 It’s 1977, and the cast of Broadway’s hottest new musical is taking drastic measures to convince 4 different unions keep the theater open for a Christmas party because they forgot to book a venue.
Join the original Broadway cast of “Annie” as somewhere in between themselves and their characters in a unique TV Christmas special which may very well have been many TV viewers’ first exposure to the musical.
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🎙 Guest:
Guy Hutchinson (Pointless Nostalgia, GuyHutchinson.com).
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Watch “The Annie Christmas Show” on the Internet Archive.
2. Th...
Around the World with Dot

🎄 It’s 1981, and a jolly swagman who may or may not be Santa Claus is flying me around the world in a sleigh built out of a bench and some rope we had lying around to search the globe for a lost baby kangaroo.
Today’s Christmas in July episode begins where it’s actually winter in July, and only gets stranger and more inappropriate from there. It’s “Around the World with Dot,” also known as “Dot and Santa Claus,” starring the title character from an 1899 Australian children’s book, “Dot and the Kangaroo.”
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🎙 Guest:
Dan...
Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo

🐰 It’s 2004, and a stuffed toy rabbit voluntold me to clean his house.
The Advent Calendar House celebrates both Easter in July and Scrooge Sunday with a trip to the Hundred Acre Wood as Rabbit does double duty as both the Easter Bunny and Scrooge, all while Christopher Robin is somewhere else entirely.
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🎙 Guests:
Sammy Hain (Sammy’s Easter Tails)
Matt Spaulding (North Pole Radio, Two Broke Geeks)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Watch “Springtime with Roo” on Disney+.
2. Ads from the 2004 DVD, plus a video of some dude walkin...
Santa’s Magic Toy Bag

🎄 It’s 1983, and my emotional support jack-in-the-box is not providing much help for my Imposter Syndrome.
Prepare for a deep dive into another pre-ALF puppet special from Paul Fusco starring a very depressed elf in training trying to find where he belongs in Santa’s workshop by first finding everywhere he doesn’t belong.
Plus:
Santa’s Swedish Chef-like human hands!
A three-eyed purple teddy bear we never get to see!
Paul Fusco inserting himself into his own Christmas fan fiction!
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🎙 Guests:
Tom Coombs (The Pop Daddy)
Jayme K...
Jack Frost (1979)

🎄It’s 1979, and an evil king is having abandonment issues after his entire kingdom left, so he made an army of robots instead of going to therapy.
The Advent Calendar House has once again emerged from hibernation after declaring 4 more months of winter to pretend it’s still winter. Join us as we encounter what might be the least Christmassy Rankin/Bass Christmas special, featuring a friendlier version of Jack Frost, a groundhog dressed like a pro wrestling manager, and the wintry weather neighbors of those angels your grandmother told you were bowling whenever there was a thunders...
Frasier: Look Before You Leap

The Advent Calendar House has awoken early from its long winter’s nap to take the Leap Year challenge as prescribed by Dr. Frasier Crane on one unseasonably warm February morning in 1996. On the way we look up the “Frasier” cast’s Christmas connections, explore the world of complicated opera solos and bad Western ballads, and call in to a PBS pledge drive to try and talk to Big Bird.
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🎙 Guests:
Erin Evans (@mserinevans).
Joey O. (Y-Not Radio, @imgonnadj24).
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Kelsey Grammer in “Mr. St. Nick” and “The Twelv...
A Christmas Carol (1984)

🎄It’s 1984, and Ebenezer Scrooge is threatening to raise his asking price for a warehouse full of corn.
This Christmas Eve episode not only drops on a Scrooge Sunday, but it’s also the Advent Calendar House’s 150th episode. To celebrate, I let listeners vote for which “Christmas Carol” to cover, and the winner is the 1984 TV movie starring George S. Scott, along with original “Equalizer” Edward Woodward as a sassy Ghost of Christmas Present, and we even spotted our favorite Alfred Pennyworth, Michael Gough, as a not-so-portly gentleman.
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🎙 Guests:
Erin Evans (@mserinevans...
Yogi’s First Christmas

🎄It’s 1980, and my spoiled nephew just got beaten in a ski-jumping contest by a bear who’s never seen winter before.
Join us we fail upward through middle to upper hotel management featuring a simultaneously very mature and very immature conversation about cartoon bears discovering mistletoe. What could be the Jellystone Winter Lodge’s final Christmas carnival manages to wake up Yogi Bear, who hibernates directly underneath it but somehow never knew about it before now.
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🎙 Guest:
Bill Hanstock (@sundownmotel, “We Promised You a Great Main Event: An Unauthorized WWE History”)
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The Great Santa Claus Switch

🎄It’s 1970, and Santa’s been locked up in an underground cave with 2 giant Muppet monsters.
Join us as we venture through the tunnels under Santa’s workshop to uncover Jim Henson’s first ever TV holiday special, presented by The Ed Sullivan Show and featuring the first Muppet performances by Richard Hunt, Fran Brill, Marilyn Sokol, and John Lovelady, as well as the first appearances of Thog and a familiar-looking Frackle who’d later be reworked into the Great Gonzo.
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🎙 Guests:
Tori Schmidt (Muppets No Context, The Muppetwt Awards)
Tony Whitaker (@mupp...
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

🎄It’s 1983, and the Worst Kids in the World are taking over the church Nativity play, smoking in the ladies’ room, and helping themselves to the sacramental grape juice.
Join us as we meet the Herdmans in a classic Christmas story turned TV movie starring Loretta Swit from M*A*S*H and a young Fairuza Balk in her on-screen debut.
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🎙 Guests:
Scott Leopold (Holly Jolly X’masu)
Bob Baker (Festive Foreign Film Fans)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Today’s TV Tropes: It’s the Best Whatever, Ever and Title...
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: Season’s Greedings

🎄It’s 1994, and the Jeffersons are poisoning Metropolis with greed spray from toy atomic space rats.
Join us on an unpredictable flight through the first Christmas episode of “Lois and Clark,” written by Dean Cain and starring Sherman Hemsley as the Toyman and Isabel Sanford as his reluctant assistant, plus Denise Richards, Dick Van Patten, Doug Llewellyn, and terrible special effects.
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🎙 Guests:
Gerry Davila (Totally Rad Christmas)
Paxton Holley (Cavalcade of Awesome, Cult Film Club, Hellbent for Letterbox)
Jeeg (Nerd Lunch)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. C.T. brings up...
Santa, Baby!

🎄It’s 2001, and a magical partridge is sending me on a coat drive for some kind of Karate Kid-style Santa training.
Hop in our light blue ’54 convertible and buckle up as we take you on a joyride through the very last and most forgotten Rankin/Bass Christmas special, featuring a mostly black cast starring Patti LaBelle, Gregory Hines, and a criminally underused Eartha Kitt as a talking cat.
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🎙 Guests:
Andre Bennett (Cult Cinema Cloister, Philadelphia Championship Rock Paper Scissors).
Tim Babb (Can’t Wait for Christmas Podcast).
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💬 Topics & Tan...
Tales From the Crypt: And All Through the House

🎄It’s 1989, and a killer in a Santa suit is making it really hard to hide my dead husband’s body.
You better watch out as we dig up the first filmed episode of “Tales From the Crypt,” a cozy Christmas nightmare directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring his then-wife and talented screamer, Mary Ellen Trainor, and the kid who gets her hoverboard stolen by Marty McFly.
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🎙 Guests:
Jamie Ray (Fave Five From Fans, Complete Disarray with Jamie Ray)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Mike on Fave Five From Fans with my Fave Fiv...
An American Christmas Carol

🎄 It’s 1979, by way of 1933 — or the other way around — and the human from Fraggle Rock has broken into my garage with a haunted choir of singing children.
Join us as we turn the dial on our haunted time-traveling radio to find Henry Winkler at the height of his fame as the Fonz hiding under multiple layers of makeup as a Scrooge figure in Great Depression-era New England.
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🎙 Guests:
Tom Coombs (The Pop Daddy)
Scott Leopold (Holly Jolly X’masu)
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Watch “An American Christmas Carol”...
Full-Court Miracle

🕎 It’s 2003, and a team of Hebrew school basketball players think they’ve found the ghost of Judah Maccabee in a random guy living in a van.
It’s time once again to think about the Seleucid Empire as we watch a Disney Channel Original Hanukkah Movie very loosely based on the true story of former college basketball star Lamont Carr and a yeshiva’s struggling team looking for a leader.
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🎙 Guests:
April Ryley (@where2nextapril, @thefancygeologist).
J.W. Friedman (I Don’t Even Own a Television).
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💬 Topics & Tangen...
A Mouse, A Mystery, and Me

🎄 It’s 1987, and someone stole Santa Claus in the middle of his hot dog break.
Join us as we follow a renowned novelist who may or may not be a teenager and her animated mouse writing partner on a quest find out who kidnapped a department store Santa, while we solve the mystery of how anyone remembers this Christmas special that only aired once.
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🎙 Guests:
Lindy Kempe (Bluesky).
Emily Rowley (Threads).
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Dick Van Patten’s shout-out in “Wayne’s World” and cameo in “Robin Hood: Men I...
The Soulmates in The Gift of Light

🎄 It’s 1991, and Santa Claus is fighting with a talking dog over a park bench.
By some Christmas miracle, this obscure special was rediscovered over 30 years later. For years, people on the Internet tried to identify it on a TV in the background of an old family photo, until finally, thanks to the power of positivity, it was identified as “The Soulmates in The Gift of Light.” Join us as we meet the intergalactic Soulmates in what seems like a pilot that never got off the ground.
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🎙 Guests:
Michael DiGiovanni (Pop Culture Retrofit...
Christmastime with Mister Rogers

🎄 It’s 1977, and Happy Gilmore’s grandmother is surrounded by dancing chickens.
It’s a beautiful day for a podcast, and this season of the Advent Calendar House begins with a visit to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in a Christmas special that hadn’t been available for more than 40 years until it resurfaced in 2022. It’s surprisingly less festive than some might expect, but it makes up for that with some extremely bizarre adventures.
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🎙 Guests:
Guy Hutchinson (Pointless Nostalgia, GuyHutchinson.com).
Tim Lybarger (The Neighborhood Archive, Third Quarter Run, TimLybarger.com).
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Animaniacs: A Christmas Plotz / Little Drummer Warners

🎄 After spending 3 months locked in a water tower, the Advent Calendar House has escaped in time for Christmas Podcast Day, a fake holiday originally made up for a hashtag back when social media was slightly less stupid.
It’s not Scrooge Sunday, but the theme for this year’s Christmas Podcast Day is “A Christmas Carol,” so I’m playing a long, but also cheating a little by covering both segments of a 1993 Christmas episode of “Animaniacs.”
You can follow #ChristmasPodcastDay on Facebook, Instagram, and that other one. And probably TikTok, but I’m not on that.
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A Flintstones Christmas Carol

🎄 Previously on the Advent Calendar House, we watched a cavemen take over Santa’s job after he fell off the roof in “A Flintstone Christmas.”
This time, our reunion tour of previously podcasted-about characters makes its final stop of the season in Bedrock, where Fred Flintstone is letting the lead role of “Ebonezer” Scrooge go to his head, while Wilma is doing the workload of I lost count of how many victims of the highly contagious Bedrock Bug. We also make the strongest case yet that this Modern Stone-Age Family does, indeed, know about who made lame beggars walk an...