Wimzie’s House: The Perfect Christmas (1996)

It was rather odd to find this on the DVD that claimed to be all animated holiday episodes. While intended for children, Wimzie’s House is a show starring puppets. Really boring puppets.

Wimzie and her family are dragons, and Wikipedia helpfully identifies her friends as goblins and a troll, but they might as well have just been kids. Elmo is more of a monster than these guys. And probably smarter.

The plot of this episode revolves around Wimzie’s idea of a “perfect” Christmas, so of course everything goes wrong. Her infant brother misunderstands something and puts all the gifts the kids got for each other in with the gifts her dad is taking to sick kids at the hospital, so the presents disappear. Due to a blizzard, Wimzie’s mom’s plane is late getting home. Her friends’ parents can’t come over to pick them up, so they have to stay over. This is all presented with maximum little-kid whining. “But WHY can’t we [whatever] I don’t underSTAND! Boo Hoo Hoo!”

Oh, and there’s a truly awful song or two.

But then, twist! Or what passes for a twist in well-meaning but boring children’s television. Wimzie’s dad won’t be able to deliver the presents to the kids at the hospital after all! He’s coming home, but the sick kids won’t have Christmas! Good and Bad! Helpfully, Wimzie and her friends make a pact to stay up to meet Santa and ask him to deliver their presents to the sick kids. They feel proud of their generosity, but only Wimzie manages to stay awake. Santa does actually show (it would have been so much more interesting if he hadn’t) although he somewhat nonsensically makes Wimzie forget their conversation, then leaves her a note explaining that per their request, he took the toys to the hospital. It makes it funnier to read this as Wimzie having a dream and the grandmother (who’s watching all these kids) just hiding their presents and leaving the note to make the kids feel good about themselves.

Of course, when Wimzie’s dad gets home finally, they find out their original presents didn’t disappear without a trace after all! And everyone’s parents get there safe through the blizzard! And Santa took care of that pesky feeling-sorry-for-others problem.

So there you have it a truly dull, annoying half-hour of television with the take-away message: trust in magic elves to help the less fortunate.