nineteen-wonderful

In case you had forgotten the about the pure, unbound theological and metaphysical bizarreness that comprises Rankin and Bass Christmas specials, here’s a brief plot summary of Rudolph’s Shiny New Year. Spent from having just helped deliver Christmas gifts, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer finds himself again in contract by Father Time, seeking his help urgently to find the missing Baby New Year—Happy, before the strike of midnight on New Year’s Eve, else the year will never progress with the incumbent never able to retire.

Father Time conjectures, rightly, that Happy, bashful, has hid somewhere on the archipelago of years past, where superannuated, old Babies-New-Year step down to rule an era similar to their calendar year. Having enlisted extra help, they locate the baby only to see him abducted by a vulture called Eon the Terrible, who is predestined to expire at the passing of the year and is determined to stop the procession of time to avoid dissolution into ice and snow. The vulture is a bit endeared to Happy and by being persuaded to release the baby back into Rudolf’s custody, is spared his fate and Happy is flown back to Father Time’s castle to herald in the year ‘Nineteen-Wonderful,’ Rudolph adding that he wishes it a shiny one.