Just a Christian,conservative cartoonist targeted by the left for dispensing Biblical,historical,and scientific truths.
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The film is suggested by the books Darby O'Gill & the Good People and The Ashes of Old Wishes & Other Darby O'Gill Stories by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh. The stories originally appeared serialized in magazines that Walt had been exposed to as a boy. As an adult he was determined to make a film.
In the 1950's live TV productions of musicals & dramas were all the rage. Many of these shows & episodes became legendary.Rod Serling is one of the legendary figures who got his start in this format.Of the live musicals most know about Mary Martin's Peter Pan but there were hundreds of these shows.
Based on the works of humorist Jean Shepherd three of the original stories that comprise the bulk of the film originally appeared in Playboy Magazine.What many people miss is that all of Shepherd's stories are parables & often contain Biblical references he observed in real life. 
This big budget film was the follow up to the Christopher Reeve Superman films.The first film had the tag line "You Will Believe a Man Can Fly" and this time they made 8 reindeer fly.During this period big budget special effects films were really taking off with the dawn of Star Wars & everything you see in Santa Claus the Movie in analog effects which makes that achievement all the more impressive.
With the success of A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965, it launched a string of animated specials that were released over decades, other popular American comic strips tried to repeat the success of Peanuts. All failed until Garfield. 
On Christmas Eve 1944 screenwriter Valentine Davies was shopping & wondered what Santa Claus would think of the madhouse he saw.He came up with a storyline & shared it with his wife.She encouraged him to flesh it out & that was the beginning of Miracle on 34th Street. 
Bob Hope & Bing Crosby had been friends since vaudeville.When they each achieved success in film they were eventually paired for a series of films known as the On the Road Pictures.On screen they had a rivalry & were the original friendemies. In their shows & films they'd frequently take playful jabs at each other but off screen they genuinely were friends.
The golden age of Christmas films was the post war era.While there had been Christmas films before WWII these films are in a much different tone than those after.The post war Christmas films have the theme of normalcy.Many of these films were initially flops but became classics over time.
The Santa Claus we know today is a figure from American folklore with many fathers. Washington Irving gave him his name & sleigh in a satirical story about New York.Rev Clement Clarke Moore wrote the poem today known as The Night Before Christmas giving him many of the trappings we still adhere to today.
One of the final Muppet productions Jim Henson ever made was a Christmas special featuring all of his Muppet characters from various properties in a single story.This is the only time all of these characters were ever in one project together & because they're now owned by different companies we'll never see this again. It's never been released to DVD uncut.
The story was written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Phyllis McGinley & is based on her 1957 book of the same name. She also wrote another Christmas story in 1963, How Mrs Claus Saved Christmas. Both stories inspired the Rankin/Bass special. 
The song was written by singing Christmas Cowboy Gene Autry.He had been the original artist on the Rudolph song hence the character's inclusion in the lyrics.Autry went on to record dozens of Christmas novelty songs about various characters.Nestor bookends that career. 
Will Vinton is the creator of the Claymation process & started producing films with Bob Gardiner in 1974 while in college.Together they produced “Closed Mondays”, which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject.(Below)
Ross Bagdasarian was a musician/actor down on his luck (he's the piano player in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.)With his last $200 he bought a two reel tape recorder & began experimenting with recording his voice at different speeds. The result was the novelty hit Witch Doctor. 
The special is suggested by the famous song. This is the first time it was ever performed in Aug 1934 as a charity rallying cry with the forgotten verse. Eddie Cantor is the performer who debuted this song.Given how famous he was he's the most forgotten celebrity of all time.
The book follows the story back to african roots but has a very different take. The unsolicited slaves who were brought to Jamestown were viewed as chosen people like Joseph because that slave ship was lost at sea killing all on board but those sold to the Jamestown colonists. 
