The holidays are upon us and while this is the time of year for gatherings with friends and family to celebrate the season, it’s also the time of year for holiday programming. That’s right, we’re deep into Christmas specials season — particularly now that we’re beyond Thanksgiving — and it’s a time of year where there’s a little something for everyone. Particularly in the age of streaming, beloved Christmas classics are easier than ever to watch but there is one major exception, at least for Muppets fans. The best Muppets Christmas special isn’t available to stream on Disney+ and fans will have to do a little legwork to find it.
If you haven’t guessed by now, the best Muppets Christmas special (and arguably one of the best holiday specials period) is A Muppet Family Christmas. A Muppet Family Christmas first aired on December 16, 1987, on ABC. The musical special features different Muppets from across various properties, including The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and Muppet Babies. The special even included a cameo appearance from Muppets creator Jim Henson at the end. The special followed the Muppets as they go to surprise Fozzie Bear’s mother by visiting her for Christmas at her farmhouse, only to discover that she’s planning to go to Malibu and has rented the farmhouse out to Doc and Sprocket instead. The special features 12 musical performances and more than 20 songs, including a medley of carols including “It’s in Every One of Us” from John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together, another Muppets Christmas special that first aired in 1979.
The special is a lot of fun and it does something unique in that it brings together pretty much all of the Muppets making it truly a “family” affair. It allows the special to in a very real way to function as a celebration of Henson’s work, something that is all the more poignant considering that he passed away in 1990. It remains a fan favorite, but unlike most Muppets programs and specials, it’s not something fans can pull up on Disney+ and watch. Instead, fans wanting to see A Muppet Family Christmas have to turn to YouTube where it’s been uploaded in its entirety to get the special in its original broadcast form. Why? That’s where things get interesting.
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As it turns out, A Muppets Family Christmas isn’t available on streaming due to licensing issues for the music. As it turns out the 21 songs used in the special, they were licensed specifically for television and of those, five of the songs never managed to get licensing for VHS or DVD home release either. Because those songs are unable to be used for streaming or home release they have to be cut from the program if it were to appear in those formats. Cutting five songs cuts a quarter of the total and has a huge impact on the overall narrative (and even eliminates one entire group of Muppets, the Muppet Babies. There is an edit of the special that accounts for this, but it’s not quite the same — but can be found on VHS and DVD (VHS versions were released in 1994 and 1998 while a DVD version was released in 2001.) The full, unedited version was also released in Europe, but those are pretty hard to find.
It’s also worth noting that while some licensing things have changed over time meaning that it could be possible for a future release in all its unedited glory, A Muppet Family Christmas still has another hurdle outside of the music: ownership of particular groups of Muppets. Disney purchased The Muppets in 2004, but that doesn’t mean they own all of them. The Jim Henson Company still owns both Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street and characters from those Muppet “families” were major components of the special. This opens the possible situation where there would have to be edits on that front — or see expensive license fees that would likely make the special not financially worth it from a business perspective.
While A Muppet Family Christmas and its heartwarming celebration of all things Jim Henson and collaboration and kindness is only available to watch outside of official avenues or in an edited version for those fortunate enough to have physical copies, there are still two Muppet holiday specials you can stream: both The Muppet Christmas Carol and A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa are available on Disney+.
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