If your favorite part of the holidays is parking your butt on your couch and watching TV, good news. You are not going to lack for holiday entertainment as 2021 draws to a close. Alien shoppers, festive archers, a Santa suit-clad Satan, and a movie called A Boy Named Christmas—which seems to be about a boy who is very much not named Christmas—are all coming to your TV (and a few to theaters, too). We’ve collected them so you can plan your holiday couch potato-ing accordingly.
While the Hallmark Channel produces several billion holiday movies per year, only a handful venture into the supernatural. Normally, it’s the implication that Santa is real, but in A Kiss for Christmas, a man (Desperate Housewives’ James Denton) somehow destroys his entire life by wishing he’d spent more time focused on his career instead of his wife (also Desperate Housewives’ Teri Hatcher) and teenaged daughters. His wish comes true, his marriage never happened, his daughters are ripped from existence, and he’s the CEO of his own real estate company. He quickly realizes this was a huge mistake, and he only has until Christmas to convince his extremely ex-wife they belong together if he wants his old life back.
A Kiss Before Christmas premieres on the Hallmark Channel on November 24.
If you like What We Do in the Shadows, you’d also best be watching the original movie’s spin-off series Wellington Paranormal, in which two officers investigate the supernatural disturbances that abound in the New Zealand city. Here’s Wikipedia’s synopsis of the holiday episode: “Minogue (Mike Minogue) and O’Leary (Karen O’Leary) respond to several supernatural incidents on Christmas Eve including Satan assuming the role of a mall Santa, meat disappearing into a vortex during a barbecue, a demon-possessed doll terrorizing a family, and a photocopying machine serving as a vortex. Following these adventures, Minogue and O’Leary present Sergeant Maaka (Maaka Phatu) with a soft toy as a Christmas present, which turns out to be possessed.”
The episode airs on the CW on November 27, but the regular episodes have also shown up the next day on HBO Max, so you will likely also be able to watch it there as well.
It’s such a perfect idea it’s amazing no one thought of it sooner. Beebo, Legends of Tomorrow’s fuzzy blue mascot/vengeful god of destruction and cuddles, stars in his own, 2D animated special where he... uh... presumably saves Christmas. According to TV Line, which got the first look, “Sprinkles (Chris Kattan), an efficiency-obsessed elf, decides that Christmas would run better without Santa Claus (Ernie Hudson). Beebo (Ben Diskin) and his friends thus travel to the North Pole to, among other things, help discover what truly makes Christmas meaningful.”
Beebo Saves Christmas premieres on the CW on December 1, and also features the voices of Kimiko Glenn, Yvette Nicole Brown, Keith Ferguson (DuckTales, Elena of Avalor) as Fleabo (green), while the dulcet tones of Legends of Tomorrow’s own Professor Stein, aka Victor Garber, as the narrator.
In this Polish film, David is a young boy who’s moved to the big city and is deeply unhappy about it because his busy parents have “forgotten the meaning of Christmas.” After meeting Albert the Elf, who left Santa’s care to “figure out what Christmas is all about”—it seems like he should already have a handle on this, honestly—David runs away from home to visit his grandparents in the Tatra mountains, and the pair have some adventures along the way. I have no idea why Santa is posing like that in the picture above, but I’m digging his energy.
Premiering December 6 on Netflix, David and the Elves stars Jakub Zając, Cyprian Grabowski, Anna Smołowik, Monika Krzywkowska, Piotr Rogucki, Michał Czernecki, and Cezary Żak.
The 1986 Peanuts special Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! failed to conquer the holiday even close to the level as A Charlie Brown Christmas did back in 1965. However, Snoopy and the gang will get another chance with For Auld Lang Syne, which is very weirdly the first-ever Peanuts special with neither “Charlie Brown” nor “Snoopy” in the title. The official synopsis does sound thoroughly true to the franchise, though: “In the special, after the Peanuts gang experience a disappointing Christmas because Grandma can’t visit, Lucy resolves to throw herself the best New Year’s Eve party ever, while Charlie Brown struggles to accomplish just one of his resolutions before the clock strikes twelve.”
For Auld Lang Syne starts streaming on December 10 on Apple TV+. That’s a screenshot from the old special, by the way—there’s no official look at the new special yet.
Of all of these films and series and specials, Merry Little Batman is the one we’re most interested in by far. The reason? “When a six-year-old Damian Wayne finds himself alone in Wayne Manor, he must transform into ‘Little Batman’ in order to defend his home and Gotham City from the crooks and super-villains intent on destroying Christmas.” It’s Bat-Home Alone starring Damian, and we are all here for it.
We know nothing else about Merry Little Batman, including the release date—the logo is all we’ve got. Whenever it does air, though, it’ll be on Cartoon Network’s Sunday evening “ACME Night” programming block.
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