Sabrina is very upset with Salem because he ruined her favorite Christmas sweater. (Um, she’s a WITCH why can’t she just zap it back to perfection?) When Salem won’t say he’s sorry, the family leaves him alone to reflect on his actions (which no cat has ever done ever.)
While Salem is in timeout, Sabrina goes to a pizza place to meet Harvey. Harvey gives Sabrina a silver choker for Christmas. Sabrina gives Harvey a scarf, but she notices that Salem has ripped up the wrapping and she gets mad again. Just as they are about to kiss under the mistletoe, Salem causes a ruckus. He’s snuck into the pizza place and is chasing a mouse. They get tossed out of the pizza place when Sabrina is accused of brining a cat into the building.
In the alley out back, Sabrina and Salem argue and he refuses to come home with her. Salem’s plan is to sulk for a while and make everyone worry about him before he makes his way home. But as he heads back to the house, a kid hits him with his bike. He’s worried about Salem, so he takes him home.
OMG THE GUY PLAYING THE KID’S DAD IS THE GUY WHO PLAYED THE DAD IN CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL. IT’S A WEIRD CLARISSA/SABRINA REUNION!!!
Salem manages to call Sabrina while the kid is away for a moment. He comes back into the room while Sabrina is on the phone and tells her that the cat his now DUN DUN DUN!
So they can’t use magic to find him because you have to wait 24 hours to file a missing witches report. This means they have to search for him “the mortal way.” But apparently the mortal way involves zapping Coolio out of an advertisement in the alleyway, so he can tell them what he saw.
Most importantly, poster-Coolio saw that the kid’s bike had a vanity plate that said “Rex,” so we at least know the youth’s name. Coolio points them in the right direction and they start going door to door. (There’s a lot of going door to door for pets in this year’s very special holiday season posts.)
Sabrina eventually find the right house, but Rex won’t give Salem back. So Sabrina disguises herself as Santa and gives the kid a spatula and a Neil Diamond box set, to which he replies, “Didn’t you get my fax?”
1996 A YEAR WHEN CHILDREN FAXED THEIR LETTERS TO THE NORTH POLE!
She tells him he’ll get more presents in the morning, but she’s really there–I mean SANTA is really there–to take the cat back because there was a mixup and he got the wrong cat. When he still refuses to return Salem, Sabrina grabs the cat and runs. So then the kid screams and cries, “SANTA STOLE MY CAT!” repeatedly until his mother comes running into the room.
His mother (who never knew about the cat, only his father knew) tells him that he must have had a bad dream because he doesn’t have a cat. So the little boy says, “I saw him. He was real. He game me this spatula.” His mother looks bewildered and this poor kid is probably going to need years of therapy…though he did steal a cat so maybe he needed years of therapy anyway and hopefully this will speed along that process.
Very Special Holiday Lesson: As Salem says, “There are worse places to be during the holidays than with your family.”
But the best part is when Howard lets Fonzie take over all of the Christmas traditions. Fonzie wants to do EVERYTHING and Howard gladly passes the baton. He realizes how fortunate he is to have such a lovely family and he’s finally happy to share that with someone outside of it.
It is too cold in New England for Sabrina and she desperately hopes for a trip to a warmer climate. Instead of using magic to zap herself to the equator, she calls into a radio contest and has her Aunt Zelda answer a “science question.” I’m assuming they do use magic at some point though because Sabrina hangs up the phone before telling the DJ what her aunt’s name is.
So Sabrina tries a spell to change the weather. Unfortunately, she ends up changing herself into a snowman instead. And then she starts melting…and melting…and by the time her aunts come home, she’s nothing but a snowman’s head.
Anyway, Mr. Spacely (the Scrooge here) has poor George (presumably, the Bob Cratchet) working overtime on Christmas Eve. Interestingly enough, George is aware of A Christmas Carol and even says that Mr. Spacely is a “Scrooge,” who he wishes would be visited by some Christmas ghosts.
Spacely wakes up at his desk for a moment and then quickly falls asleep again, only to be visited by the Ghost of Christmas present. In the present he visits the Jetsons’s house, where poor Astro is near-death, having injured himself by chasing around his gift: “a robot cat.”
This show really creeped me out as a kid. But I also LOVED it. I think it was my first encounter of something so interesting and freaky that I couldn’t look away from it. But honesty, it’s an awesome show and it is not creepy at all. In fact, the things that “creeped” me out as a kid are things I appreciate about this show more as an adult.
The garbage man is a really scary looking dude, who loves to throw dried-up Christmas trees into the truck as a metaphorical destruction of Christmas. Yeah, this guy’s a real winner. In an attempt to teach his kid about the “real world,” his dad invites the garbage man to come back to the house and take the tree out in the middle of the night. But Little Pete is ready. He’s rigged an alarm on the tree and has a nutcracker setup to shoot a tranquilizer dart at the garbage man.
This pisses off all of the neighbors, who threaten Little Pete’s life if he doesn’t give up the Christmas tree. So Pete does the only reasonable thing anyone could do in this situation: He organizes a wrestling match between Santa Claus and any takers. Pete nominates Pit Stain (the school bully) from the crowd to be Santa’s first challenger. But Santa can melt even Pit Stain’s heart. He refuses to fight. As Pete says, “The Christmas Spirit lives!”
The twins and the E.L.F. crew head to Roger E. Bencoseeze’s house to confront him. He lives in a mansion with a butler and everything. This dude turns out to be a real Scrooge. He pretty much just hates Christmas. This leads the twins to sing another insufferably pitchy song to teach this kid about the spirit of Christmas. But the song messes this kid’s icy cold heart. He fixes the E.L.F. computer and wishes them all a Merry Christmas.
This is one of my FAVORITE Christmas episodes ever. I am SO glad you voted for it.
They arrive to a very long line of children waiting to see the big man. Cindy insists that she can wait in the line by herself. Since he needs to exchange Carol’s gift (which would have been a poorly timed voice recorder), Mike let’s her wait alone. He arrives to pick her up just as an elated Cindy hops off of Santa’s lap.
In the middle of the night, the four eldest Brady kids meet downstairs and decide to postpone Christmas because Carol is sick. Alice finds them in the midst of their discussion and says they might as well return the presents, take down the tree, and throw away the turkey. But that might be A MAJOR BUMMER since their parents planned this whole freaking Christmas for them. And then they’re like okay, just kidding.
The Very Special Blog 