"Simple Gifts"

This was a unique Christmas special presented on PBS in 1977 and repeated for a few years afterward, then it disappeared. I found a videotape copy on e-Bay a couple of years ago. Together are stitched six animated segments and an introduction, all in different styles: limited animation, stills combined with animation, etc. Colleen Dewhurst introduces the program.

The Introduction

From Moss Hart's book Act One

"Lost and Found" (done in the style of the old "Toonerville Trolley" animated silent cartoons)

"The Great Frost" from Virginia Woolf's Orlando (This is probably the most remembered sequence of this program; many people think it was a separated animated piece)

An excerpt from the diary of young Theodore Roosevelt

A narrative of the 1914 Christmas Truce

And lastly the "No Room at the Inn," by R. O. Blechman