I've been waiting on this book since I saw it promoted and learned that it had a chapter about The House Without a Christmas Tree, which is one of my very favorites, if not favorite (it changes by year) Christmas movie ever (it alternates with The Homecoming). Now that I've read it, I loved the House chapter and about half of the rest of the book.
I found the rest...kind of annoying. First, the book seems to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about television variety Christmas specials. I realize they're a rara avis these days, and certainly the biggest of them, hosted by Bob Hope, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, etc., were fabulous and bear examining; I loved it a few years back when MEtv showed a bunch of these gems, including Perry Como's Early American Christmas and Christmas in Paris. It's the one- or two-time specials that seemed out of place, and after the first few chapters they seem all jumbled together.
The remainder of the chapters address animated specials, Christmas television films, and Christmas episodes of series favorites. The quality wavers between detailed examinations of one item (like The House Without a Christmas Tree) to chapters like the one about The Simpsons which basically just lists all the Simpsons Christmas episodes. It would have been better to say there were 21 episodes and mention the first and a couple of notable ones.
Pilato also says, naturally, there wasn't time in 300 pages to mention every Christmas special and every Christmas episode of every series—I was particularly disappointed by the complete omission of all eight Lassie Christmas episodes—yet there is plenty of time, apparently, to mention Thanksgiving episodes and New Year's episodes!—not to mention numerous asides about what star was married to another star who went on to produce fill-in-the-blank famous movie with no connection to Christmas. Not only that, but the subtitle is "nostalgic holiday favorites." Everyone's nostalgic about Rudolph and Frosty and other 60s and 70s animated shows and episodes; who the dickens is nostalgic about some forgettable episode of Reba that's aired ten years ago?
Particularly irritating was the chapter about The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, in which several pages were wasted talking about the dreadful remake they did a couple of years ago which I turned off in disgust after ten minutes when Jason started berating John-Boy about his stupidity in wanting to be a writer! The set decoration looked like it came out of an issue of "Country Living" and makes the Walton family look prosperous instead of just getting by. Ugh! And the chapter about The Gathering devotes two of the four pages to another film the director did called Peege. Huh?
Pilato even gets part of the plot of the memorable episode of That Girl called "Christmas and the Hard Luck Kid" incorrect: Tommy, the little boy Ann Marie is keeping company at Christmas, isn't Jewish; his friend whom he eventually spends Christmas Day with is the one who's Jewish.
I'm keeping this because of The House Without a Christmas Tree chapter, but, really, I wish I'd found it at the library booksale instead of forking over $20+ dollars on it.
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