Retro : Have Yourself a Nostalgic Little Christmas

Consider “Television Christmas Classics,” premiering Friday on CBS, as a big Christmas stocking filled with Yuletide yesteryear.

Hosted by Marie Osmond, the one-hour special features more than 34 clips from Christmas-themed episodic series and specials that are divided into five acts: “Musical Moments,” “Santa Claus,” “More Musical Moments,” “Gift Giving” and “White Christmas.”

“We started going through clips to see what patterns we could find and probably came up with about six or eight different kinds of stories in both drama and comedy,” says executive producer Michael Hirsh. “We ended up using ‘Gift Giving’ and ‘Santa Claus,’ but a close third was ‘Bad Trees.’ Bad trees have been a comedy staple for years apparently. Being Jewish, it was sort of a discovery for me. We could have done an entire act on bad trees.”

Among the musical clips featured are the Muppets singing “Deck the Halls,” Bob Hope and Reba McEntire performing “Silver Bells,” Donny and Marie Osmond performing “We Need a Little Christmas” and The Chipmunks trilling “Chipmunk Christmas.”

Holiday snippets were pulled from the TV series “The Flip Wilson Show,” “Roseanne,” “The Simpsons,” “The Brady Bunch,” “December Bride” and “St. Elsewhere.”

Hirsh’s favorite Christmas clip didn’t even make the special. “It was ‘The Colgate Comedy Hour’ with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in 1952,” he says. “There is a piece from that show in the program, but the funniest sketch (about Abbott wanting a scalp massage) took 12 minutes and it was impossible to excerpt. It puts me on the floor every time. That’s really the joy of working on a show like this. You find stuff like that. ...”

One of the most unusual clips is a 1960 “Kraft Music Hall” sequence with Perry Como and Virginia O’Hanlon, who, in 1897 at the age of 8, wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Sun inquiring if Santa Claus was real.

Her letter inspired one of the most famous editorials in newspaper history, which began with the now-famous phrase, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus ...” When Como talked to Virginia, she was about 73 years old, Hirsh says. “He asks her to read the letter that she wrote to the New York Sun.”

Unlike a lot of clip shows, Hirsh’s “general practice is to run clips longer. I mean we have some things in here that are a minute and half, which in the world of clip shows is sometimes considered an eternity.

“Nat (King) Cole and Danny Kaye did a thing called ‘Jingle Journey’ (from “The Danny Kaye Show”) and in its original version it almost ran four minutes,” Hirsh says. “We are slightly under two minutes.” And viewers will see Judy Garland and Mel Torme perform “The Christmas Song” in its entirety.

Hirsh got a lot of mileage out of the 1960 “Jack Benny Show” episode in which Benny goes Christmas shopping and makes life miserable for the store salesman played by Mel Blanc. “Mel Blanc cracks Benny up and Benny nearly loses it. It is hysterically funny and we use it in five pieces in the ‘Gift Giving’ act.”

Of course, a Christmas gift show wouldn’t be complete without Bing Crosby performing one of his best-loved hits, “White Christmas.” The special has Der Bingle’s last performance of the Irving Berlin standard, taped in London in 1977. Also included from Crosby’s final show is his duet of “The Little Drummer Boy” with David Bowie.

Marie Osmond was Hirsh’s choice to play host. “I don’t believe that the host brings people to a clip show,” he says. “I think people want to see the clips, and what you need is a host who can do the job and frankly stand back and introduce (the clips). For this show, I needed a host who could sing. Marie was just a delight to work with.”

“Television Christmas Classics” airs Friday at 10 p.m. on CBS.