13 Beloved TV Holiday Specials You Can Stream Right Now

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Viewed frequently enough to kindle an emotional attachment but not so often that they lose their charm, TV holiday specials fill a beloved place in the hearts of viewers. The Grinch and Frosty the Snowman have an almost Santa-like stature in the Christmas pantheon. And several Hanukkah specials and more secular tales offers viewers a bit of diversity. Many of the classics are available to stream, along with a few newer favorites. Here are some of the best, along with where to find them.

A scene from the “Rugrats” episode “Chanukah”Nickelodeon

‘Rugrats’
Special: ‘Chanukah’; watch it on Hulu.

Nickelodeon’s immensely popular cartoon “Rugrats” offered an unusually informative primer to Hanukkah with this holiday episode focused on the Pickles family, an interfaith household with a Jewish mother. As Grandma Minka reads Tommy and his diaper-clad pals a story about the first Hanukkah, the children imagine themselves as ancient Maccabees, playacting the Jewish fight for religious freedom. Tommy is first excited by the prospect of potato pancakes for dinner, but he slowly comes to recognize the heroism and virtue in the story of Judah and his compatriots. A subplot about a longstanding feud involving Tommy’s old-country grandpa sneaks in a goodly number of in-jokes for Jewish viewers.
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Adam Brody in “The O.C.”Fox

‘The O.C.’
Special: ‘The Best Chrismukkah Ever’; watch it on Hulu.

Jews and gentiles peacefully coexist under one roof in this early highlight from the glossy teen soap opera ‘The O.C.’ In this episode, the proto-hipster Seth Cohen educates his new houseguest, Ryan, in the ways of his modern-minded family, in which the menorah shares mantle space with the stockings. The series captured the spirit of the mid-’00s with its fashion and musical selections, but the too-cool-for-school dialogue has endured; this episode includes some of the wryest Cohenisms, and offsets them with an earnest celebration of the family as a source of nurturing and acceptance.
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A scene from “The Little Drummer Boy.”Rankin/Bass Productions

‘The Little Drummer Boy’
Where to watch: Amazon Video

In one of their earliest stop-motion specials, the animators Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass avoided the more folkloric and popular Christmas mascots like Santa and Rudolph and returned to the holiday’s roots. Loosely based on the little boy from the popular Christmas carol, Aaron is an orphan who cares for no one and wants only to bang on his drum all day. He slowly learns empathy as he wends his way through the Nativity story, joining the Magi caravan and coming to grips with the deaths of his parents. Emotionally, it’s a notch or two more mature than the usual Rankin-Bass production.
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Kris Kringle (voiced by Mickey Rooney) in “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.”Rankin/Bass Productions

‘Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town’
Where to watch: Amazon Video

Among the most popular Rankin-Bass specials, this origin story for Santa Claus has all the elements that have made their productions perennial favorites every holiday season, including Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney as the as the kindly narrator and a young Kris Kringle. And Rankin and Bass’s sublimely silly sense of humor was rarely better: Consider the villain Burgermeister Meisterburger, who lords over the city of Sombertown. It also contains their sharpest nugget of wisdom — that toys may be just things, but their ability to inspire joy is a powerful thing.
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From left, midground: Paul Shaffer, George Clooney, Bill Murray and Miley Cyrus in “A Very Murray Christmas.”Ali Goldstein/Netflix

‘A Very Murray Christmas’
Where to watch: Netflix

Through one long Christmas Eve power outage, a boozy, hangdog Bill Murray wanders around New York City’s Carlyle Hotel spreading merriment and crooning the occasional tune. This hourlong special from Sofia Coppola gets comfortable with the melancholic side of Christmas, but assuages those lonely feelings with a warming display of togetherness in the final number. In it, Murray joins Miley Cyrus and George Clooney in a snowy fantasia for a rendition of “Sleigh Ride”; it’s a tidy encapsulation of the special’s eclectic guest list and its nostalgic charm.
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The title character in “BoJack Horseman Christmas Special,” voiced by Will Arnett.Netflix

‘Bojack Horseman Christmas Special’
Where to watch: Netflix

Everyone’s favorite washed-up sitcom star who’s also a talking horse, Bojack Horseman, sees the world through cynical eyes, and Christmas is no exception: To him, it’s all a corporatized, phony cash grab. This stand-alone special condenses the show’s signature blend of crushing bleakness and playful, absurdist humor: The series is too unsentimental to fully overturn Bojack’s bitter attitude toward the holidays, but when his couch-surfing “roommate” suggests watching an old Christmas episode of the ’90s comedy that made the horse a star, an emotion or two shakes loose in Bojack’s cold horse heart.
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Little Richard, left, and Paul Reubens in “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse: Christmas Special.”Pee-Wee Pictures

‘Pee-Wee’s Playhouse: Christmas Special’
Where to watch: Netflix

Pee-Wee Herman’s hyperactive kid show was the perfect venue for some old-fashioned Yuletide cheer — a playful space for the actor-creator Paul Reubens to both embrace and goof on such seasonal standbys as inedible fruitcake and awkward regifting. Reubens’s grey-suited man-child added a little camp to the holidays, from its sublimated homoeroticism (a choir of strapping military men perform the opening song-and-dance number) to its guest list full of cult icons, including Joan Rivers, Little Richard and Grace Jones. This program is indeed fit for children — Pee-Wee learns a valuable lesson about being greedy with presents — but it always winks to the knowing adults in the audience.
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Heat Miser (voiced by George S. Irving) in “The Year Without a Santa Claus.”Rankin/Bass Productions

‘The Year Without a Santa Claus’
Where to watch: Amazon Prime

The Rankin-Bass team gave some bit players their moment in the spotlight with this special, sending the elves Jingle and Jangle out into the world with Vixen the Reindeer after Santa decides to take a year off. The posse brings a miraculous snow to a town in the American South and restores the jaded locals’ faith in Christmas, a moment of pure Rockwellian homeyness. But the breakout stars were Heat Miser and Snow Miser, bitter rivals and brothers with control over the elements. Their jaunty tune ranks among the catchiest original songs that a Rankin-Bass production ever yielded.
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The title character in “Jack Frost,” right, voiced by Robert Morse. Rankin/Bass Productions

‘Jack Frost’
Where to watch: Amazon Prime

Rankin-Bass expanded its wintertime repertoire a touch by moving beyond Christmas to conjure a more broadly mythical fantasy for “Jack Frost.” In this special, the titular winter sprite falls for a mortal lass and willingly transforms into a human so that he may court her. But first, he’ll have to rescue her from the clutches of Kubla Kraus, the nefarious Cossack king. The animators kept the borscht belt humor coming (Kubla has a smart-alecky ventriloquist dummy for a sidekick and a butler named Fetch-Kvetch) in a fable that fits right in with the bedtime stories of Hans Christian Andersen.
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A scene from “Frosty the Snowman.”CBS

‘Frosty the Snowman’
Where to watch: Amazon Video

Rankin and Bass laid fair claim to the world of two-dimensional animation as well, and none of those efforts matched this one for sheer ubiquity. The eponymous Christmas song lays out the basics: A magical silk hat brings a snowman to life, who then befriends the children of the town. This special expands on that plot, assigning the kids a mission to relocate Frosty to the North Pole, where seasonal changes won’t threaten to dissolve him. The humor is broad and the emotional content gentle; this special should be easily digestible for even the youngest viewers.
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The Grinch (voiced by Boris Karloff) in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”ABC

‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’
Where to watch: Amazon Video, iTunes

Audiences of all ages cherish the overflowing imagination of the ageless verse in this 1966 animated adaptation of the Dr. Seuss tale: the roast beast feast, the town square of Whoville, the Grinch’s suitably shrunken heart. The longtime Looney Tunes mastermind Chuck Jones brought it all to life on the screen, coding sneakiness into the Grinch’s every movement and lighting up Cindy Lou Who’s big, watery eyes with the innocence of childhood. The story has a potent simplicity, the art is subtly sophisticated, and Boris Karloff tied it all together with perfect archness as the voice of the narrator and the Grinch. Christmas specials don’t get much better.
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A scene from ”A Charlie Brown Christmas.”ABC

‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’
Where to watch: Amazon Video

Perhaps you can already hear Vince Guaraldi’s dejected jazz theme just from reading the title alone. It provides a downbeat counterpoint to a special that begins in a sadder register than most child-focused entertainment, with the eternal sad sack Charlie Brown feeling depressed over the coming holidays. A Christmas pageant, a lopsided twig of a tree and a heartfelt monologue from Linus raise his spirits and remind him that love is the true meaning of Christmas. Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comics always contained an undertone of existential woe, and Christmas proves a fine vessel for Charlie Brown’s funny little miseries.
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Bob Hope and Madeleine Hartog Bell in Danang, Vietnam in December 1967.Dang Van Phuoc/Associated Press

‘The Bob Hope Christmas Special’ (1967)
Where to watch: Amazon Prime

From the ’60s through the early ’90s, the comedian Bob Hope gathered America around its TV sets every year to share in some laughs and a little national regrouping around Christmastime. A standout example comes from December 1967, when he went on a U.S.O. tour through Vietnam and Thailand that was recorded, edited and then beamed to the folks back home. These variety programs offered plenty of military jokes, guest comedians and musical performances in the pop and traditional styles of its time. As much as a document as entertainment, this special is a snapshot of America during a pivotal moment in history.
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