The Gift of Winter bonus shorts
These are nine animated short films that aren't actually related to one another in way that I am aware of, except that they were collected as bonus features on the DVD of the TV special The Gift of Winter. And of course none of the shorts are related to that special, either. But I wanted to mention each of them, and they're not important enough to me to list on separate pages, so I'm listing them all here (in the order they appear on the DVD). Runtimes are taken from the DVD; as the shorts appear on YouTube, the times may differ. Also, note that the rating above is sort of an average for all the shorts; some of them I liked more or less than others, but I didn't really feel like rating them individually.

Caution: spoilers.

Jack Frost (8:01)
IMDb; YouTube

This is a musical short from 1934. It's the end of summer, and various forest animals are having fun. A baby bear starts taking a bath, but then Jack Frost shows up. However, he's nothing like my idea of Jack Frost. Instead of bringing on winter, he brings autumn. He carries a palette that he uses to paint leaves and pumpkins and such. Anyway, all the animals start preparing for winter. However, the baby bear doesn't want to go into hibernation with his parents, and when they're asleep, he sneaks out of their home to run away. But he ends up being chased by Old Man Winter... and eventually rescued by Jack Frost, who brings him back home. It's kind of cute, I guess, but it doesn't really seem like anything special, to me.

Snow Foolin' (6:03)
IMDb; YouTube

A 1949 short in which a bunch of random animals play a bunch of random winter games and sports. And at one point viewers are invited to sing along to "Jingle Bells" with the lyrics on screen. (A hen tells us to "follow the bouncing hen fruit," which I think is the first and only time I've ever heard an egg described that way.) It includes some verses I don't specifically recall having ever heard before, but I probably have. Anyway, aside from the song, the short includes a lot of very amusing and unexpected sight gags. So that was fun.

The Candlemaker (13:02)
IMDb; Wikipedia; YouTube

A 1957 short about a candlemaker and his son. The story is set at some unspecified time in the past (I'd say the nineteenth century). For awhile, I thought there'd be no dialog, just narration. But eventually the characters talked a little bit. Anyway, the son always helps his father make candles, and every week the father takes his two best candles over to the church, as a donation. One week the father goes out of town to make a delivery, leaving his son to make all the week's candles by himself, and deliver the two best candles to church on Saturday afternoon, which just so happened to be Christmas Eve. But while the son seems to get all the regular work done, he gets distracted by playing with his pet mouse, Squeaky, and then has to rush to finish one of the church candles at the last minute. He apparently forgets the wick, so of course the candy doesn't burn. And after that evening's church service, he's terribly ashamed of his mistake. But he learns from his mistake, and does better next time. Anyway, I guess there's a good message, or something, but the short is pretty boring, I thought. I mean, if you're a big fan of Sunday school stories, you'll probably enjoy it, but otherwise... meh.

Santa's Pocket Watch (19:39)
IMDb; YouTube

A 1980 short about a young boy named Sam, who stays up on Christmas Eve hoping to see Santa Claus. And when Santa shows up at his house, Sam hides in his bag, and Santa takes him back to the North Pole, where the boy gets to join in Santa's party, along with a few silly elves, a dog, and a reindeer. And eventually, Sam returns home (after Santa gifts him his own pocket watch). The short is rather amusing and absurd, in a singularly British way. So if you're into British humor, you'll probably like this. But I think my favorite part is the fact that the reindeer's name is Garibaldi.

Hector's Hectic Life (6:00)
Christmas Specials Wiki; IMDb; YouTube

This 1948 short is about a dog named Princie, so I have no idea who "Hector" is. But anyway, Princie's owner warns him to stop making a mess of the house, or she'll throw him out in the cold and he'll be homeless. However, she says if he's a good dog, Santa may bring him a present. After his owner goes to bed for the night, there's a knock at the door. Princie finds a basket outside, which he assumes contains bones for him from Santa. However, it turns out to contain three puppies who look just like him (so I'm assuming they were most likely left there by the owner of a female dog with whom Princie must be acquainted). The three puppies start making all kinds of mischief, for which Princie fears he'll be blamed, so he tries to stop them. It's a premise I've seen in plenty of old cartoons by more famous studios than this, so there wasn't much point in it, but it was okay.

The Christmas Visitor (7:17)
IMDb; YouTube

This 1959 short is actually shorter than I expected it to be, because for some reason the track on the DVD runs a couple other shorts immediately after this one. (But you can also watch them separately.) Anyway, it starts out with a narrator reading "A Visit from St. Nicholas," though he seems to get a few of the words wrong. And he stops in the middle, when Santa Claus stops in a house to deliver some toys. Santa stumbles and some packages fall out of his bag, but he leaves them there while he goes to enjoy some cookies and milk that have been left for him. Meanwhile, the toys unwrap themselves and come to life. There's a sailor in a toy sailboat, and a figurine on a music box (I'm guessing she's Little Bo Peep, because she has a shepherd staff). The two of them fall in love at first sight, but a moustache-twirling jack-in-the-box hops out of his box, kidnaps the woman, and ties her to a toy train track. So the sailor has to try to rescue her. It's really quite funny, which I wasn't expecting at the start of the short. Anyway, eventually Santa finishes his snack, the toys rewrap themselves, and he leaves. The narrator gets back to the poem, but now it's more noticeably different from the original.

A Christmas Tree (10:35)
IMDb; YouTube

This 1959 short was made in Russia, but it's dubbed into English, in a way that reminds me of English dubs of anime from that era. The short is pretty much made out of "WTF?!" There's this little boy named Kolya, who lives in Moscow, but his father works at a weather station in Antarctica. Kolya loves his Christmas tree, but he's sad because he knows his daddy doesn't have one. So he decides to bring his tree to Antarctica via taxi cab, but the cabbie can't help him. However, he points out Santa Claus, and says he can help. Santa has a sleigh called Star Shooter, which is actually a jet plane that is apparently made out of stardust or something. (At a distance it looks like a bunch of twinkling stars, though in close-ups it looks more like TV static.) Anyway, do you think Santa offers to fly Kolya to Antarctica in Star Shooter? If you do, you're thinking WAY too rationally. No, he loans Star Shooter to Kolya, who has no idea how to fly it, and tells him he must start his flight when the clock tower chimes one, and Kolya must finish his flight by the time the clock chimes twelve. (There doesn't seem to be much consistency about how long there is between each chime, but it definitely takes longer than it would in reality.) Meanwhile, Santa continues on his own way delivering presents, by getting a ride in the cab. Unfortunately, a sandstorm destroys Star Shooter somewhere over Africa, and from there, Kolya gets assistance from a series of animals. Because of course he does. And... I don't want to say how it ends. But seriously, did I mention that WTF?

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (8:09)
Christmas Specials Wiki; IMDb; shortfil.ms; YouTube

This 1948 short isn't as memorable as the 1964 Rankin/Bass version, but it's pretty amusing. The reindeer are slightly anthropomorphic, and the short was directed by Max Fleischer. It essentially follows the premise of the song, so you know the story. But the major difference from the more familiar cartoon is that Rudolph doesn't live at the North Pole, and isn't related to any of Santa's reindeer. Rather, Santa first meets him when he's delivering Christmas presents to the reindeer in the town where Rudolph lives. (They live in houses and sleep in beds, of course.) And I dunno what else to say, but it's definitely... interesting.

Christmas Comes But Once a Year (7:43)
Christmas Specials Wiki; IMDb; Wikipedia; YouTube

This 1936 short was directed by Dave Fleischer. It's set at an orphanage, where a bunch of little kids wake up all excited on Christmas morning. They get their presents from their stockings and start playing with them, but the toys all break immediately. Meanwhile, an inventor named Prof. Grampy is riding by outdoors in his sleigh, when he hears a bunch of crying from inside the orphanage. So he sneaks into the building, collects all the stuff he can find in the kitchen, and constructs a bunch of makeshift toys (MacGyver style). Then he improvises a Santa costume, and delivers the toys to all the orphans, who are thrilled. He also constructs an indoor snow hill (from cotton and soap) that the kids use for sledding and skiing. In the end, he makes a tree from umbrellas, which they all gather around... and the scene seems to change from cel animation to stop-motion, or something. So, that was odd. But it was a cute cartoon, I guess. (Though I seriously wonder why there were no adults working in the orphanage.)

The City That Forgot About Christmas

This tenth short is actually a TV special, so I put my review in the TV specials section.