Someone get ready to comfort the MAGA fucks: turns out Rankin/Bass’s The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974) was —and I believe this is the technical term— woke as fuck.

I mean, they made a Christmas movie where Santa is a narcisstic, entitled old white man whose petty self-indulgence wreaks havoc on a world toward which he is alternately indifferent and resentful. A movie where the plucky, adventurous, overconfident hero isn’t just a girl, but Mrs. Claus herself. A movie where the primary antagonists are avatars of male toxicity who turn out to be using random violence and cruelty to avoid dealing with their mommy issues.

Clearly, the mind-virus has been circulating for decades.

(For the record, Heat Miser scared the shit out of me when I was five.)

I just love this shit. The girls and I are watching it right now, and I still find my toe tapping when the songs come on. I know most people are all about Rudolph, and I’m gonna say that Santa Claus Is Coming To Town is still my favorite of the Rankin/Bass movies, but TYWASC is a close second.