No one puts us in the mood for the festive season quite like the Muppets, with their pinnacle seasonal film, The Muppet Christmas Carol, serving as a must-watch for millions around the world at this time of year.
But why stop there?
Throughout their decades in the spotlight, weird and wonderful characters have provided a string of equally weird and wonderful Christmas films and TV specials, featuring all of the celebrity guests, show-stopping musical numbers and unpredictable antics that the Muppets are synonymous with.
So, whether you feel like you’ve done The Muppet Christmas Carol to death, or you’ve simply already watched it once this festive season and feel like keeping the fun going, here are nine more Muppets holiday specials you can watch right now…
It’s A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002)
Borrowing heavily from the tear-jerking Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life, Kermit The Frog is down on his luck in this TV movie from the early 2000s, and winds up seeing the world from an entirely different perspective when he declares that he wishes he’d never been born.
Like the source material, It’s A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie has moments that pack a surprising punch, particularly when we see how the likes of Miss Piggy and Gonzo’s lives end up without Kermit to bring them together.
While it might be lacking in songs compared to Muppet Christmas Carol, the two that do feature – a touching duet between Kermit and Gonzo, and a Moulin Rouge!-esque production number that gives Piggy her moment to shine – are pretty strong.
The celebrity cameos might be hit and miss, and it has aged quite poorly in places (yes, we’re talking about Joe Rogan’s cameo, among other rather dated references) but at the same time, you can’t go wrong with Whoopi Goldberg playing God, can you? Helpfully, viewers in the UK can watch it now on ITVX.
A Muppet Family Christmas (1987)
Definitely the cosiest of all the Muppets’ holiday outings, this special sees the gang descending on Fozzie’s mum’s house to celebrate Christmas, and is jam-packed with all of the musical numbers, zany running gags and heartwarming moments you’d expect.
Throughout it all, Miss Piggy finds herself stranded in a blizzard after a photo session, leading to some fabulous diva moments as she tries her best to make it back for Christmas, while some surprise visitors also lead to some unexpected scene partners. Look out for a cameo from Jim Henson himself, too.
Unfortunately, because A Muppet Family Christmas served as a crossover between characters from The Muppet Show, Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock – all of which are now owned by different studios – it’s tough to seek out out legitimately these days… although it can often be found (*ahem* *ahem*) on YouTube.
A Muppets Christmas: Letters To Santa (2008)
In this 45-minute special, streaming now on Disney+, The Muppets are tasked with delivering a young girl’s letter to Santa, after Gonzo The Great’s antics lead to it being missed by the post office.
Not only does Letters To Santa boast impressive cameos from stars like Uma Thurman, Nathan Lane and another star turn from Whoopi Golbderg, there’s music from acclaimed songwriter Paul Williams (whose credits include the entire Muppet Christmas Carol soundtrack and the Oscar-winning Muppets staple The Rainbow Connection) and a rare Muppet-y appearance from Santa himself, portrayed in this version by the late Richard Griffiths.
Our surprising main takeaway from Letters To Santa, though, is that it has some surprisingly on trend winter fashion. We’re still coveting Kermit’s parka.
Lady Gaga And The Muppets Holiday Spectacular (2013)
This is definitely one of the weirder projects the Muppets have ever lent their name to – not just at Christmas, but ever.
Lady Gaga And The Muppets Holiday Spectacular was essentially an hour-long advert for the award-winning singer’s then-new album ARTPOP, and is Gaga at her most chaotic and… well… Gaga.
Over the course of the special, Lady Gaga performs ARTPOP cuts like Applause, MANiCURE, Venus and the title track both with and without the Muppets, interspersed with, it has to be said, some largely laugh-free dialogue from the gang.
However, it’s not without its moments. Sorry to Ms Gaga, but it’s Miss Piggy who gets the best number, tackling Santa Baby in a fantasy sequence in which, ironically, she worries about the Poker Face singer upstaging her.
This special – which is not available to stream anywhere but (again *ahem* *ahem*) can often be found on YouTube – was also the birth of Lady Gaga and RuPaul’s iconic duet of Fashion!, in which the latter is at peak Glamazon and the former appears to be dressed as some class of contraceptive…
The Christmas Toy (1986)
The “why yes, this does sound an awful lot like a Pixar film that came out a decade later” plot of The Christmas Toy centres around Rugby the toy tiger, who is feeling nervous about being replaced as the anniversary of his first unwrapping approaches.
While this special doesn’t feature any of the Muppets characters we’ve grown to know and love over the years, it was produced by The Jim Henson Company, with performances from the original cast of Muppeteers, and even features an introduction from Kermit The Frog himself.
Perhaps more geared towards younger viewers than a lot of The Muppets’ work, The Christmas Toy is available to stream now on Amazon Prime.
John Denver And The Muppets: A Holiday Together (1979)
For a long time, this was considered the Muppets Christmas special in America thanks to its long list of musical numbers, John Denver’s chemistry with the Muppet characters and the overall cosiness and festivities it evoked.
Unfortunately, the fact John Denver is less of a household name on this side of the Atlantic – and the fact it was never released on any home video format (although its accompanying vinyl album was a hit in the US) – it’s kind of slipped under the radar here compared to the likes of Muppet Christmas Carol and It’s A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Carol.
However, you can still dig it up on sites like YouTube if you feel like tuning into something warm and fuzzy this Christmas.
The Muppet Show with Hal Linden (1981)
The Muppet Show never went as far as a full-blown Christmas special, but it did come close when Hal Linden was a guest during the fifth season.
During the episode – which first aired in January 1981 – hecklers Statler and Waldorf are put in charge of the show, and can’t agree whether they should devote the big production number to Christmas or the Fourth Of July… so they end up mixing both.
Admittedly, this is a bit of a tenuous one, as the rest of the episode doesn’t really allude to Christmas all that much, but the sight of Gonzo in a chicken-drawn sleigh is festive enough for our liking. Hal Linden’s episode, along with almost every other instalment of The Muppet Show, is available to watch on Disney+.
The Muppets. (2015)
Sadly, not enough people know about The Muppets’ venture into the world of the mockumentary-style sitcom, which lasted just one season between 2015 and 2016.
The premise of The Muppets. (note the full-stop, which sets it apart from the 2011 film of the same name) saw the usual gang putting together the oh-so-brilliant-why-doesn’t-it-exist-for-real talk show Up Late With Miss Piggy, with the episode Single All The Way focussing on plans for the porcine diva’s holiday special.
Once you’ve watched this on Disney+, go back and watch the rest of the season. Be warned, though, The Muppets. took place during that period when Kermit and Miss Piggy had briefly called it quits, and the sight of another pig on his arm is something we’re still not used to.
Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021)
The Muppets proved they were anything but one-season ponies (and frogs and chickens and bears and things) in 2021, when they tried their first ever take on Halloween for the Disney+ original Muppets Haunted Mansion.
Admittedly, when the special was first announced, our expectations were pretty low, as Disney’s show Muppets Now had been so hit-and-miss and Muppets Haunted Mansion had the potential to be little more than an ad campaign for a fairground attraction with a few Muppets gags thrown in.
Imagine our delight, then, when it proved to be one of the best things Kermit and the gang have gifted us in years. True, it’s not going to give you the festive fuzzies like Muppet Christmas Carol, but if you’re sick of back-to-back Christmas specials but still feel like some Muppet fun, then step this way and prepare for an out-of-season spooktacular.
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Then again, if it ain’t broke… right? There’s a reason people return to The Muppet Christmas Carol year after year, and that’s because it is, quite simply, the perfect festive film. And what’s more, if you watch it on Disney+ in 2022, you’ll actually be gifted with a whole extra musical number that’s not usually in the streaming version.
When Love Is Gone, a love ballad performed by Scrooge’s ex-fiancée during his visit from the Ghost Of Christmas Past, was originally cut from the film’s cinema release, and while Disney initially promised it would be reinstated, it’s been noticeably absent from subsequent re-release, after the production company apparently lost the negatives for the sequence.
To coincide with the film’s 30th anniversary, it’s now available to stream in its full version – just get ready to cry even earlier in the film than usual when you tune in.
