It just isn’t the Christmas season without Rankin-Bass, the animation company behind such classic specials as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and “The Little Drummer Boy.” For many years, the amiable animators produced as many specials as there are bulbs on a Christmas tree. Some are sublime (“Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”), others are odd but charming (“Jack Frost”), and still, others are simply baffling (“The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold”), but almost all of them are beloved traditions that receive plenty of airtime during the month of December. In fact, the only one I can think of that isn’t constantly aired around this time is “The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus,” by far the most bugnutty of them all. No other holiday special depicts an all-out war between wood nymphs and orcs. And for that reason and many more, it’s a damn shame it’s mostly forgotten. Well, I’m here to rectify that! This is the most Tolkien of all Christmas specials, and the world must know of its wonderful lunacy.
“The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus” is based on the book of the same name by L. Frank Baum, the man who penned the “Wizard of Oz” books. If you are familiar with the original “Oz” tales, that should prepare you for how insane this special is. If not, I’ll just tell you one detail from the first “Oz” book: The Cowardly Lion decapitates a giant spider. For a Rankin-Bass Christmas story, this probably seems like an odd choice of material to adapt. After all, their most famous specials are based on novelty songs from the ’40s/’50s. However, we mustn’t forget that the studio has some history with epic fantasy. In 1982, they gave us “The Last Unicorn,” a fairly popular film in fantasy circles. That’s all well and good, but there’s an even more obvious part of their past that makes some sense of this special: they previously adapted Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and, weirdly enough, “The Return of the King.” Rankin-Bass was clearly chasing a mad Tolkien dream, and they were primarily known for Santa Claus tales. You combine the two, and you get possibly the strangest Christmas fable of all time. It’s made even stranger (and greater) by the fact that this is one of (and the last of) their stop-motion offerings. Yes, this was told with puppets.
The first scene is an absolute bait-and-switch. We see a typically jolly Santa flying through the sky, singing a merry little ditty about delivering toys. You think it’s going to be a fairly standard special, And then we arrive in the Forest of Burzee, where a council of fairies, nymphs, spirits, and other such creatures must decide the fate of a dying Santa Claus. The typical Rankin-Bass aesthetic has been replaced with a style reminiscent of Greg Hildebrandt. The Great Ak, a towering Gandalf-esque figure, hopes to persuade his fellow council members to grant Santa Claus the gift of immortality. The ageless being then tells the tale of how he found an abandoned baby (soon to be Santa) in snow-laden woods, which he then entrusted to the lioness Shiegra. If you haven’t seen this special, you probably think Shiegra is a talking lioness. And you would be wrong. The Great Ak gave the future Kris Kringle to a wild mountain lion. But soon the wood nymph Necile steals the baby and begs the Great Ak to let her raise the child, for no resident of the Forest of Burzee had even seen a child prior to Claus. And so, Santa is raised by a wood nymph whom he calls his mother. And that’s like the first five minutes of this special.
When Claus grows to be a young man, the Great Ak shows the boy some of mankind’s inhumanity. Claus now knows he must live among the mortals and attempt to make their world a little better. Young Mr. Claus leaves the forest and moves to the Laughing Valley of Hohaho. As he grows older, he begins making toys for the children of a nearby village. All is well, until he runs afoul of the dreaded Awgwas! Evil, vile orcs who influence children into doing bad things! They look like shrunken heads with long, nasty teeth. To make them all the more fearsome, they can turn invisible at will. Whenever Claus attempts to deliver presents, these hideous goblins ambush him and take his toys. Infuriated, the Great Ak summons the Awgwas and war is declared. And that’s when things get good!
There are songs, as one would expect in a Rankin-Bass special, but they’re not particularly memorable (save for a bizarre chant about immortality). But that was never what was going to stand out in a special like this. What makes this one a hidden gem is the war of creatures, which is possibly the most metal thing to ever come out of a Christmas special. There’s this pretty terrifying dragon who is incinerated by its own flame projected back. A three-eyed ogre is shrunken down with white magic. A mystical axe blows a monster to smithereens. Does any of this have much to do with Christmas? Probably not. Is it the greatest thing mankind has created? Absolutely. More specials need Frank Frazetta action.
After the Awgwas have “perished” (Great Ak’s word), everything plays out as it should. Santa becomes the man he was meant to be, and he gains his iconic sleigh. The council grants Santa immortality, thus keeping the magic alive forever. And that is “The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus,” at least on paper. I don’t think I could do justice to how bizarre this special truly is with words alone. You can’t describe anything this odd. You have to experience it, which is what I recommend you do.
“The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus” is really unlike any Christmas special before or since. I do love the favorites like “Frosty” and “Rudolph.” The traditional Christmas elements bring me endless joy, but I appreciate it when someone attempts to do something fresh and bold with familiar figures. If you want your Christmas presents delivered with a D&D-like flair, this is the Santa for you.
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