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.
Meanwhile, Salem has ordered himself “The 12 Days of Christmas” from the other realm’s 89-cent store. The gifts are kinda jacked up though. Here they are in order of their appearance on the show:
Danny “Partridge” in a pear tree.
*Two dead turtles with wings stapled onto their shells. (ick.)
*Three French Women sitting under those globe hair dryer things (They’re the “hens,” apparently. I also just learned that a Bachelorette party is also called a “Hen Party.”)
*4 – 8. Who knows. They’re not featured.
*9 very large, uncoordinated ladies dancing on the second floor of the house
*11 pipers piping and 12 drummers drumming, indoors, all at the same time
They’re also going to bring Harvey on the trip! But unfortunately, a large snowstorm has other ideas. I guess they could just magically zap themselves down to Jamaica, but that wouldn’t really work with Harvey…
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.
As it turns out, the only way to turn Sabrina back into a human is for her to plead her case directly to Mother Nature (depicted as a high-power CEO). So her aunts put her in a pail and take her over to corporate headquarters. Too bad Sabrina didn’t just check the weather because it turns out that the snow was going to stop that night anyway.
Luckily, Mother Nature is feeling charitable, so she turns her back into a human and determines her punishment to be as follows: Sabrina must spend time with Willard Kraft and fill him with Christmas cheer. Mother Nature gives her a little Christmas tree lapel pin and tells her that Mr. Kraft will be “sufficiently cheered” when the star at the top of the tree lights up.
So Sabrina takes Mr. Kraft back in time through the grandfather clock aunt her aunts’ store. She hopes to show him a good Christmas memory, so he will feel a little holiday cheer. Kind of Ghost of Christmas Past-y. It turns out that Mr. Kraft doesn’t really have any happy Christmas memories, but he DOES actually feel cheered up by their tour of the past. He decides all he needs to do is lower his expectations for Christmas and then he will never be disappointed. Aw, bummer.
So Sabrina decides to invite Mr. Kraft to Jamaica instead of Harvey. Sadly, Hilda ruins everything by casting the same spell that Sabrina did earlier (except this time to make the snow come back). She’d rather be a snowman than go to Jamaica with Mr. Kraft. But Mr. Kraft is okay with not going to Jamaica. He’s just happy to not be alone on Christmas.
Also, Salem complains to the 89-cent store and they send him a baker’s dozen of donuts as restitution. So…looks like I’ll be celebrating the 13 Days of Christmas next year.
Very Special Lesson: No one should be alone on Christmas, but if you really want to be alone on Christmas then you should be a snowman.
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.
Mark is signing The First Noel at church. He and the other kids have to wear robes with letters that spell out N-O-E-L. Mark is the N and he thinks his robe “looks geeky.” Meanwhile, Brad wants to skip-out on Christmas with his family, so he can go skiing with a friend from school. (Brad was always the shittiest kid in this family).
A mysterious man arrives at Cheers on Christmas Eve. He reveals to Carla that he is a spy and she of course tells everyone in the Cheers crew. He’s quite taken with Carla, which flatters her to no end. As she brags to Diane about her new friend, Diane begins to poke holes in his story. He doesn’t know the right currency for Norway and misidentifies a city to Turkey as a city in Bulgaria.
Will and his extended family are hitting the slopes for the holidays, which Will says is “for white guys named Sven and OJ Simpson” (because this was back when people thought OJ Simpson was delightful and hadn’t yet realized he is a colossal turd person). They’re all driving separately to the airport (omg please say this is going to turn into a Home Alone episode) and Uncle Carl hands out the tickets in advance.
So here’s the thing. I had originally planned on this post being longer, but then my neighbor’s smoke detector went off for 45 minutes. We have faulty smoke alarms in this building (uhhh not reassuring at all now that I’m typing that out…) and there have been many false alarms. So I was banging on his door and then running around the building, calling the emergency after hours number, going outside and across the street to see if the light was on in his apartment, as one does, etc, etc. I’m sure I look like a creep on the security footage because then I was feeling his door and doorknob and sniffing the air for smoke, looking at the hallway to see if it looked cloudy, saying curse words like F*** WHY DO WE NOT HAVE A SUPER?? By this time, I was pretty confident that there wasn’t a fire (but don’t follow my example because if any of you die while following my instructions, I will never forgive myself) and then I convinced myself that my neighbor must have died while cooking and now his dinner was burning in the pan.
Anyway, I also now cannot find my playbill, so I’ll keep this actual review brief. 
The Very Special Blog 