Customer Reviews

Walt Disney Christmas [VHS]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I LOVE this video. I am a Classic Disney junkie and I love this compilation of some of the old Christmas cartoons. I like the old cartoons as I feel they are more family appropriate. This video has some of the best cartoons on it (my favorite being Pluto and the Christmas tree with Chip and Dale living in it). It's a must own!

I bought this video when my children were very young. We watch it every holiday season, without fail. The really old cartoons show how far animation has come since then, but they are also the most charming and easiest to enjoy! The laugh of Santa Claus is pretty much the only "vocals", but, well, what else do you really need at Christmas time. The first video is a singing-only sound track, but it is really cute. The frozen rabbit thawing when his girlfriend kisses him reminds us all of the power of true love. Enjoy with your family, year after year...

I really don't understand the brass at Disney...they have several gems in their vault (namely this Christmas special and the Halloween Treat special) and they are only offering them on VHS? I urge them to dust off the cobwebs on these amazing cartoons and transfer them to DVD so the true fans can enjoy them properly. I want my kids someday to be able to appreciate these classic Disney cartoons as much as I did growing up. I believe they could make a ton of money on this, therefore I wonder why the hesitation?

We received this video when my sons were 3 and 6 years old. This Christmas Eve (2001) they asked to see the video and so we pulled it out and dusted it off. You see, my boys are now 17 and 20 years old. I was so amazed at how much they still love this video. They knew every word to every song and sang them all.They remembered which character did which silly thing in every story/song. They spoke of what they had thought when they were little as they watched the video. It was a special time for us to share this with them again.

I was tired of the usual fare of Christmas shows that are seen countless times each season. These gems are wonderful, and something the kids never get tired of. Besides, who can resist Disney at Christmas since both names are synonomous with MAGIC! and that is what this video is.

I grew up watching this Christmas special, and my family still talks about it at Christmas. I decided to buy a copy to surprise everyone at Christmas this year (luckily I still have a working VCR). My mother's favorite is the cartoon about ice skating--the pond eventually breaks up, and the animals have to save the two skaters. I always loved the episode with the chipmunks that live inside the Christmas tree--they play with the ornaments and lights while the dog goes crazy trying to catch them. This video brings back the good old magic of childhood. You'll like some of the cartoons better than others, but if you like Christmas videos, there's really not much to complain about... except that it's VHS!

I have enjoyed this movie ever since we got it about ten years ago. These cartoons have been a favorite for my family for a long, long time. My mom really enjoys the old Santa Claus on the cartoons. We watch this every Christmas as a part of our Christmas movie tradition. It is pure Disney holiday magic in one small videocassette.

I grew up watching this video when I was younger, I never knew what the title was but I watched it EVERY Christmas with my family. It is a timeless classic that I will treasure for the rest of my life. In classic Disney format the cartoons are family friend and display scenarios that will appeal to all ages. I recommend this for any family that loves classic Christmas stories!

The Walt Disney Christmas is a wonderful set of animations including some favorite characters such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Chip and Dale, plus Santa. The stories are all fun and lively. Burned into my memory is an automatic response to hearing OK, namely "a cake of soap, a cake of soap" from Santa's Workshop. The first show, Once Upon a Wintertime, is cleverly done, with young love's ups and downs mirrored in some animals, and the animals saving the day, all while the music fits very well with the actions and moods.

I owned a copy of this videotape 2 decades ago, and watched it with my kids many times. My two beefs are:
1. The coloring of the first one, Once Upon a Winter Time, is way too dark. Some of the darker regions are essentially black, not at all reasonable.

I had lost the first copy, so when I bought a second copy about 12 years ago, I was somewhat dismayed that the new one had been censored: A scene in Santa's Workshop that had Santa watching dollies come off the line showed each one turning and saying "Mama!" When a black dollie came down, she said "Mammy!" in a more dramatic fashion. Santa laughed heartily. Beef #2: Well, in the second one I bought, the black dollie said something else, and in the most recent one, that whole dollie section is missing. I object to this attempt to change things just because they don't conform to today's standards. That is like the attempt to make Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn into politically-correct stories: use it as a teachable moment to talk about stereotypes, etc., but don't pretend such things never existed.

I see from some of the reviews posted here that this VHS may be at least a segment of a Disney Channel special broadcast in the '80s. Of course, it actually consists of individual cartoons, some (such as the "Silly Symphony" entries)dating back to the 1930s. Others, such as "Pluto's Christmas Tree" are significantly newer and were ones I recall from my own childhood in the 1960s as being part of the Disney WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR Christmas specials aired on NBC at the time.

As a collection of holiday themed cartoons, this VHS works well enough. Children will almost certainly enjoy it, although the "old style" animation of the Silly Symphony cartoons may seem a bit dated and somewhat "foreign" to even the youngest viewers, especially those who cut their teeth on higher tech fare. I was not surprised that this wasn't actually the complete Disney special that I remembered (and looking at other entries on Amazon, I see that may have been issued--again perhaps in edited form--as A JIMINY CRICKET CHRISTMAS), but without Jiminy hosting or some other "framing device" used, this video collection comes off as what it is, a more or less random assemblage of holiday cartoons from the Disney vaults.

Aside from being a pleasant 45 minutes of entertainment, however, it also is a fairly good intro to the history of animation. The Silly Symphony efforts, which looked pretty dated to me and really didn't hold my attention as a child in the early 60s (a mere 30 or so years after their creation), I now find charming as an adult. But I also understand why the "Silly Symphony" cartoons with their relatively primitive technique and their lack of dialogue didn't grab me as much as the more sophisticated Pluto cartoon, which has the hapless hound engaged in a battle of wits with those clever chipmunks, Chip and Dale. There are misunderstandings with Mickey (who seems to side w/ his fellow rodents over his own dog), but a merry Christmas is had by all in the end, which is all that matters.