For most of us, fond memories of the Christmas season are inseparable from TV’s holiday presentations. The world loves everything from iconic cartoons like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas to the ground-breaking Julia sitcom segment, “I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas,” Christmas in Rockefeller Center, and the 1992 TV-remake of Christmas in Connecticut directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Christmas TV Memories: Nostalgic Holiday Favorites of the Small Screen embraces it all, offering a tinsel-decked traipse down memory lane and chronicling animated classics, variety shows, made-for-TV features, and holiday-specific episodes of series like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. With a Foreword by best-selling Free to Be You and Me author and That Girl star Marlo Thomas, along with commentary from other celebrities, historical quotes, and insights from entertainment journalists and archivists, Christmas TV Memories serves as the go-to companion to the small screen’s most cherished holiday programs.
Herbie J Pilato is an award-winning writer, director, producer, actor, and TV personality. Pilato’s acclaimed and extensive list of pop-culture books, biographies, and memoirs. Pilato has served as an executive producer, director, writer, and/or on-screen cultural commentator for several TV documentaries including CNN’s History of the Sitcom, and various home entertainment productions.
Christmas TV Memories will be published on October 15, 2024. Applause Books, a Rowman and Littlefield subsidiary, provided an early galley for review.
Seeing the festive cover of this book instantly took me back to my childhood. Growing up in the 70's when we only had three major television stations, everyone got excited when December rolled around. With the snow falling outside, I'd curl up on the couch in my pajamas to watch all the various Christmas specials that would be aired as the nights counted closer to the 25th.
Broken down into several sections (variety shows, animated specials, merry movies of the week, and holiday episodes of ongoing shows), Pilato takes the reader down a very nostalgic memory lane lined with candy canes, wreaths and lights, with sweet songs filling the air. He is very thorough in his discussions, providing all the details of these productions in one handy reference and including some great insights from folks who were involved in some of the special moments.
For folks like me that are huge television fans, this book will warm their hearts.
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