Short Synopsis
Detailed documentation of this half-hour animated Christmas special is scarce, and this summary is based on the surviving television print. It is an animated musical retelling of the traditional carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas", built around a medieval castle at Christmastime. The heroine is a princess with long red hair and a pink gown and tiara, and the story turns on the gifts of the song, delivered day after day, from a partridge in a pear tree onwards, which, as in the song, come from a suitor trying to win her heart. A young squire or page in a green cap and tunic is caught up in the preparations, at one point tangled up in streamers and ropes beneath a castle pennant, and he and the princess are seen together by a decorated Christmas tree. As the gifts pile up, the comedy comes from the absurdity of receiving dozens of birds, pipers, drummers and dancers. How the courtship ends is not described in any source this book could check.
Why It Matters
- The special turns a cumulative carol, one of the most repetitive songs in the Christmas repertoire, into a comic story, using the gifts' growing absurdity as its engine, and its bright, rounded television-animation style is typical of early-1990s American holiday specials.
- Specials like this were a staple of American network television at Christmas, made to be rerun year after year, and they formed a large part of the animation audiences saw outside cinemas. This one has largely dropped out of circulation and survives mainly in recordings of its broadcasts and on home video.
Notes and Trivia
- The carol was first published in England in 1780, in the children's book Mirth Without Mischief.
- Its cumulative form, with every verse repeating all the earlier gifts, makes it one of the longest carols to sing.
- See also: Santa's Workshop (1932), Mickey's Orphans (1931).