TVSquad

• TBS is showing A Christmas Story all day and night.
• Lifetime has Christmas episodes of shows all day, including Frasier, The Nanny, and The Golden Girls.
• HGTV has holiday shows on all day and night.
• TV Land has Christmas episodes all day, including All in the Family, Good Times, and Three's Company.
• FOX Movie Channel is showing Miracle on 34th Street all day.
• At 7am, NBC's Today, ABC's Good Morning America, and CBS' The Early Show have Christmas music and segments.
• ABC Family starts their marathon of Christmas movies and TV shows at 7.
• At 8, A&E has a Crossing Jordan marathon.
• Bravo has the Radio City Christmas Spectacular at 8.
• Comedy Central has a Mad TV marathon starting at 8.
• Sci-Fi has a Stargate SG-1 marathon at 8.
• Hallmark has a Christmas episode of The Waltons at 8.
• At noon, USA has Elf (also at 2, 7, and 9pm).
• At 9, NBC has Christmas Mass.
• At 10, ABC has the Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade.
• At 11, CBS has a new Price Is Right.
• At 2, ESPN2 has a World Series of Poker marathon.
• At 4, TNT has a Cold Case marathon.
• At 6, FX has Home Alone.
• Also check your local listings for Christmas episodes of many shows, including Friends, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Still Standing, Everybody Loves Raymond, According To Jim, and That 70s Show.

Check your local TV listings for more.

• At 7, CBS has 60 Minutes.
• NBC has a new Football Night In America at 7, followed by It's A Wonderful Life.
• Lifetime has All She Wants For Christmas at 7, followed by Holiday Wishes.
• ABC Family has Frosty's Winter Wonderland at 7, then 'Twas The Night Before Christmas, Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town, The Year Without A Santa Claus and Rudolph's Shiny New Year.
• There's an Xmas episode of The Honeymooners on American Life at 7.
• Nickelodeon and Food Network are running holiday programming all night.
• AMC is running Miracle on 34th Street all night.
• TBS has A Christmas Story all day and night.
• Nickelodeon is showing Xmas eps of many shows, including Fairly Odd Parents, Full House, and The Cosby Show.
• TV Land is doing the same, with The Andy Griffith Show, Three's Company, Little House on the Prairie, Good Times, All in the Family, and others.
• Also: Hallmark has various holiday movies all night.
• At 9, CBS has A Very Married Christmas.
• Comedy Central has Bad Santa at 9.
• At 10:30, TCM has Christmas In Connecticut.
• At 11:30, ABC, CBS, and NBC have Christmas Eve services from Rome and other places around the world.

Family Circus is widely considered to be one of the more lame comic strips. I've always found it more innocuous than irritating, though I will admit I don't think I've ever even cracked a smile after reading one of them. Some people downright hate the thing. I just can't muster the energy to care that much about it.

But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy this, A Family Circus Christmas. I don't remember the special at all (it was first shown in 1979 but I don't remember seeing it then or since then), but thankfully we have the cool folks over at X-Entertainment to guide us through it scene by scene. The reviewer (Matt) says it's a lot more heavy-handed than most Xmas shows, and deals with "death and loss and God and big pointy momma tits." It also has an invisible Santa Claus.

At the end of the review are four videos from the special.

• At 7, CBS has a new 60 Minutes, followed by the season finale of Survivor and the reunion show.
• ABC has A Charlie Brown Christmas at 7, followed by The Santa Clause 2.
• NBC has a new Football Night In America at 7, then the Chiefs vs. the Chargers.
• Also at 7: Food Network has the Nigella Bites Christmas Special, followed by Emeril's Happy Happy Holidays.
• At 7:30, The CW has a new Reba.
• At 8, FOX has a new Simpsons, followed by new epsisodes of American Dad and Family Guy, then a repeat Family Guy.
• How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the Jim Carrey version) airs on ABC Family at 8.
• TBS is showing National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation all night.
• At 9, Discovery has Holiday Mythbusters.
• Hallmark has A Boyfriend For Christmas at 9.
• At 10, Showtime has a new Dexter.

This is my favorite movie of all-time. It's really a perfect film, not just in the quality but in the way it's the ultimate slice of Americana.

You know the story by now. George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) longs to get out of his small hometown of Bedford Falls and see the world. He's been striving for it since he was a kid. But through a series of events, he's forced to stay in Bedford Falls, and when a financial mistake puts him on the brink of going to jail, he decides to end his life. But an angel steps in to show him what life would be like if he had never been born.

This is the way the web works.

I'm over at Adjab today doing some work, and I put up a post about favorite and least favorite christmas commercials. So I start to list mine, and I remember that classic ad for Folger's coffee they used to run every year. The one where "Peter" comes home early in the morning and wakes his family up by making coffee. So I surf around to see if I can find a video of it. No such luck. But in my search I came across this Yahoo answers page, which has some info about the commercial (it first aired in 1982!), including the names of the cast. Peter was played by Greg Wrangler, so I head on over to the IMdb and check out his resume. He's been on a ton of stuff, including Friends, ER, All My Children, The West Wing, The King of Queens, and recent gigs on Heroes and CSI:NY.

If anyone can find a link to a video of the commercial, let me know. I saw it last year but haven't seen it this year yet.

Update: Reader Hmmm let us know there is a video of the commercial here.

Remember the days when they would take characters from a TV commercial that you would see all year long and then put them in a Christmas-oriented ad around the holiday season? This commercial for Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles will bring back memories for those of a certain age. I'm not certain when this is from, maybe the 1980s? One thing's for certain: they don't even say "Merry Christmas" in the ad. Even back then there was a war on Christmas! Bill O'Reilly was right, those bastards!

It shows Santa coming down the chimney at Fred's house (Wilma and Betty must be out shopping, not sure if this was before Pebble's was born or not), and Fred gives him some Fruity Pebbles, which of course makes Barney jealous until Santa tells them to share. Can someone tell me what the hell Barney is wearing? A dress? Did he get that from Mrs. Claus? And Dino is carolling? I thought he couldn't speak? Is he just going "ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh?"

Another thing I'm not clear on: what exactly is the timeline that The Flintstones follows? They're from B.C. but they celebrate Christmas? Video after the jump.

(S01E11) I've never understood how people can celebrate Christmas in California (or Florida or Texas, for that matter). I grew up and live in New England, and I don't understand how you can have Christmas without the cold air and the possibility of snow. I mean, it just doesn't seem right, roaring down the 405 with the top down as the temp hovers around 78 degrees, with no Jack Frost nipping at your nose (job). But that's just me.

But it's also Matt Albie, who wants to bring a little Christmas spirit to Los Angeles and the set of Studio 60...