Welcome to December! Each day until the 25th, I will be posting a festive music video. They will mostly be Christmas-themed, but there are other holidays this month, too, so why not get them all in? (I would carry this on right up to New Year’s Eve, but even I deserve a holiday break, arguably.)
There’s just something about stop-motion animation that evokes that Christmas feeling. And when I say “something”, I of course mean “memories of Rankin/Bass TV specials from the 1960s and ’70s”. I’m talking about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, and The Year Without a Santa Claus. Yes, they’re dated and corny and quite honestly not all that good, but that’s all part of their charm.
That Rankin/Bass style continues to inspire filmmakers looking to trigger instant nostalgia in sentimental viewers. Think of Leon the Snowman and Mr. Narwhal from Jon Favreau’s Elf, for example.
Pop singer Sia borrowed some of the Rankin/Bass vibe when she tapped Lior Molcho to direct animated videos for some of the songs on her 2017 album Everyday Is Christmas, including the two chapters of “Snowman” and “Candy Cane Lane” (which you can watch below), in which a mischievous living snow creature wreaks all kinds of holiday havoc.
Fun fact: Molcho is an Israeli Jew and Sia is from Australia, where December 25 falls in the middle of the blazing-hot summer. Which just goes to show, I suppose, that the holiday spirit knows no cultural or geographic boundaries.
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