Sesame Street Christmases: Vinyl and Video

Been so happy to be able to listen to the Merry Christmas from Sesame Street album again since finding it on Spotify a couple years ago. I had it on vinyl as a kid, and it predates the Christmas Eve on Sesame Street special (which has its own associated album). It has one of my favorite renditions of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" because the gifts have been changed to be more appropriate for each of the singers... perhaps with the exception of Hard Head Henry Harris, who is the recipient of "two baby frogs" and then editorializes "what kind of jive Christmas present is that, man?"

I love that, aside from Bert & Ernie's "Gift of the Magi" story and "Keep Christmas With You", the content is different between Merry Christmas from Sesame Street and Christmas Eve on Sesame Street.

The special brings us an all-time great original Christmas song in "True Blue Miracle", as well as an all-time great running gag with Cookie Monster trying to send a letter to Santa just to set up a "Cookie Monster needs to set out cookies for Santa in the hopes of getting cookies from Santa" joke.  There's not a minute wasted, it's great from start to finish.

Watching the special and thinking about the album based on the special, I'm once again struck by how well they translated from video to vinyl: adding a narrator to clarify action that is obvious when you can see it on the screen.