December, 2025
By Isaiah Washington, News Editor
The movie The Year Without A Santa Claus is a stop-motion Christmas movie. As you might’ve guessed the movie is about a Christmas without Santa Claus. There is a narrator in the movie which is Mrs.Claus, but Mrs.Claus and Santa Claus play more of a side character role in the movie rather than being the main characters. The main characters in the movie are actually two elves named Jingle and Jangle, and a boy named Ignatius Thistlewhite.
The movie starts off with Mrs.Claus and Santa Claus at the north pole revealing to us that Santa Claus is sick, and the doctor elf convinces him that no one would really miss him, so he takes a holiday which evidently means “canceling” Christmas. In order to save Christmas from its doom Mrs.Claus comes up with a plan to send two elves, Jingle and Jangle, out into the world to find people who do care. Jingle and Jangle take Vixen, one of the reindeers, with them for travel. After the two elves fly off Mrs.Claus accidentally lets slip her plan to Santa Claus and he decides to go after them because the world is a dangerous place for a couple of elves.
After this we’re introduced to the main antagonists Snow Miser and Heat Miser, aka the Miser Brothers, when Vixen accidentally flies Jingle and Jangle into Heat Miser’s territory, getting hit with a beam of light causing them to crash land into a place called Southtown U.S.A. When getting there they disguise Vixen as a dog and go to a school yard to see if any of the children there will show some christmas spirit, but upon arriving they realize that the situation is worse than they thought when the children reveal that they don’t really care all that much. This is when we’re introduced to the third main character Ignatius Thistlewhite seen as he is one of the children that the elves speak to, the conversation is cut short when Ignatius tells the two elves that the dog catcher got their dog, aka Vixen, so Jingle and Jangle run after the dog catcher and Ignatius goes home.
Santa Claus shows up under another name, Mr.Klaus, and asks Ignatius where the two elves went. After Ignatius tells him that they went after the dog catcher “Mr.Klaus” goes in a hurry on his own flying reindeer Dasher, which makes Ignatius realize that he’s actually Santa Claus so he goes to the mayor to try and help free Vixen. The two elves are also at the mayor’s office and the three end up making a deal with the mayor to make it snow in order to get Vixen back, not realizing that Santa already got Vixen from the dog catcher. Mrs.Claus helps them by going to Snow Miser to ask him to make it snow, but he can’t because it’s the territory of his brother Heat Miser. They go to Heat Miser to ask him to let his brother make it snow in Southtown, but the Miser brothers couldn’t agree on a deal so Mrs.Claus goes to their mother, so Mother Nature forces her boys to cooperate.
After this when Santa Claus makes it back to the north pole with Vixen he realizes that people do care after receiving letters from children around the world, one specifically from a little girl who wrote a sad letter saying how she’ll have a blue christmas which is a reference to a famous christmas song. Santa miraculously starts to feel better and less sickly, and he decides to go on with Christmas after all, causing the movie to have a happy ending with Santa Claus delivering presents. The movie ends with Mrs.Claus saying to the viewers “Well, I’ve heard the old people often say…that there never was such a Christmas Day…and that’s one reason, you may believe, why children are merry on Christmas Eve. You know yourself, as you hang your stockings…it doesn’t matter if the winds are knocking. Though the great gale roars, though nobody else would budge outdoors…snug in your bed while the tempest strums…you can count your blessings on fingers and thumbs…for yearly, newly, faithfully, truly…somehow Santa Claus always comes.”
I’ve loved this movie since I was a kid and I watch it every year along with several other Christmas classics made by Rankin/Bass like Rudolph the Red nosed reindeer, Jack Frost, Frosty the Snow man, and Santa Claus is coming to town. And there’s so much more that I haven’t mentioned that I think are all worth checking out and giving it a watch. The Rankin/Bass Christmas specials will always have a special place in my heart, it’s more than just nostalgia, and I hope that you too decide to give a couple of their movies a chance. If I were to rate The Year Without a Santa Claus from a one to a ten I could give it a ten because of the story telling with Mrs.Claus as the narrator and the art style giving it a sort of warm feeling, but to be honest that might just be a biased opinion.
Well that’s the end of my movie review, I hope I’ve piqued your interest enough to make the decision to watch one of the movies I’ve mentioned during the Christmas break. Feel free to also look up some of their other movies that I haven’t mentioned. I hope you have a merry christmas, and enjoy your winter break no matter what movie you chose to watch.
The Cardinal Post 