Santa Claus is Comin' to Town is one of my all-time holiday favorites and it's hard for me to believe it was made in 1970 because I was fully 12 at the time and I used to think I'd grown up seeing it as a kid. Oh well, memory plays tricks on us from time to time. But it's a timeless classic and is suited for family members of all ages.
How can a children's story hold the interest of adults? Well, aside from the wonderful animation, singing and the extraordinary talents of the various artists -- Fred Astaire as the postman, Mickey Rooney as Santa, Keenan Wynne as Winter Warlock and Paul Frees as the Burgermeister (did you know his most famous vocal role was Boris Badenov in the Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle? If the voice sounds familiar that's why!) -- there's more than meets the eye to this simple tale.
Just look at it and you eventually discover that Sombertown is a metaphor for Germany. I mean, the scenery, the sounds of people's accents, especially the Burgermeister's (Burgermeister, after all, means mayor in German), and the like, make it quite plausible. But that pesky Burgermeister ... bullying, isn't he? And he's so hung up on making kids miserable and he bans toys and every time Kris Kringle comes by with a load and foils his plans he gets madder and madder and at one point he sets fire to a whole load of toys in the town square while the kids cry.
This particular segment of the plot -- I'm not saying, of course, that the WHOLE story is about this -- is a thinly disguised observation on how Hitler banned books and other materials from Jewish artists and everyone dubbed "degenerate" in Germany. The children of Sombertown are metaphors for the Jews in pre-Holocaust Germany during the Nazi years.
Now don't get me wrong; the story is mainly an answer to many children's questions about why Santa comes down chimneys, why he lives at the North Pole and so on. But when you look at the story and read between the lines you discover that the writers, in dealing with that one particular aspect of the script, were carefully concealing a very powerful political statement.
And as Santa is the spirit of giving and love, of course he triumphs over the Burgermeister!
How can a children's story hold the interest of adults? Well, aside from the wonderful animation, singing and the extraordinary talents of the various artists -- Fred Astaire as the postman, Mickey Rooney as Santa, Keenan Wynne as Winter Warlock and Paul Frees as the Burgermeister (did you know his most famous vocal role was Boris Badenov in the Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle? If the voice sounds familiar that's why!) -- there's more than meets the eye to this simple tale.
Just look at it and you eventually discover that Sombertown is a metaphor for Germany. I mean, the scenery, the sounds of people's accents, especially the Burgermeister's (Burgermeister, after all, means mayor in German), and the like, make it quite plausible. But that pesky Burgermeister ... bullying, isn't he? And he's so hung up on making kids miserable and he bans toys and every time Kris Kringle comes by with a load and foils his plans he gets madder and madder and at one point he sets fire to a whole load of toys in the town square while the kids cry.
This particular segment of the plot -- I'm not saying, of course, that the WHOLE story is about this -- is a thinly disguised observation on how Hitler banned books and other materials from Jewish artists and everyone dubbed "degenerate" in Germany. The children of Sombertown are metaphors for the Jews in pre-Holocaust Germany during the Nazi years.
Now don't get me wrong; the story is mainly an answer to many children's questions about why Santa comes down chimneys, why he lives at the North Pole and so on. But when you look at the story and read between the lines you discover that the writers, in dealing with that one particular aspect of the script, were carefully concealing a very powerful political statement.
And as Santa is the spirit of giving and love, of course he triumphs over the Burgermeister!