‘Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas’ is the True King of Holiday Specials

It’s a peaceful morning in Frogtown Hollow. A fresh layer of snow blankets the earth, and the river is frozen silent. Chilly water drips quietly from icicles stretching toward the ground far below, like a hungry hand grasping for bread that’s just out of reach. Emmet Otter putters outside his humble shack. With a somber expression on his furry face, he flips over Ma’s washtub and steadies a large nail. He takes a small log in his paw like a hammer, and shatters the calm: The nail pierces the tin, a mordant squeak echoing dramatically through the valley.

Emmet just did the unthinkable. He put a hole in the washtub. The act is irreversible. There’s no going back. The washtub will never again hold water. Never. Again.

Only moments prior, he and his Ma, the impoverished protagonists of Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, sang in a bluegrassy chatter about one of the few positive aspects of their ramshackle existence: “Head full of good thoughts, belly full of grub, money in your pocket when there ain’t no hole in the washtub,” the song goes. Getting by is their daily challenge, especially since Pa died. Ma earns a few coins with the washtub, doing laundry for the neighbors, and occasionally turns a modest profit on a pumpkin pie. Emmet does odd jobs with Pa’s old tool chest. It’s a hand-to-mouth life, but they love each other deeply, and find great joy in the little things.

So what the devil was Emmet thinking when he brutally vandalized Ma’s washtub? The heavy moment segues into one of hope: It was a sacrificial act — washtub stigmata, you might say. Emmet thumps his newly assembled washtub bass in his jug band. A beaver plays kazoo and washboard, a muskrat plays cigar-box banjo and a porcupine stomps his boot as he blows into a big jug: WHOOMP, whoomp, WHOOMP, whoomp. They rehearse a jaunty number dubbed “Bar-B-Que” — surely a square-dance staple in the nearby town of Waterville — for the upcoming talent competition. The prize is substantial: Fifty bucks. They’re tight. They’re talented. They’re confident. And Emmet’s going to take his $12.50 and put a down payment on a used piano, a Christmas gift for his beloved Ma.

Unbeknownst to Emmet, Ma hocked the tool chest for dress fabric. She needs something to wear for her own talent-contest performance, a classic riverside ballad called Our World. Her voice is an angelic warble, sure to bring the packed house to tears. That $50 surely will be hers — to buy a guitar for Emmet. It’ll be a lovely, lovely Christmas if she wins. If. IF. Each has crippled the other’s earning capabilities, risking their livelihoods for the dream of a better life.

The tension is unbearable. For these otters, everything is at stake.

Such is the heart of Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, an enduring television classic beloved by millions and featuring a lead character who’s at least as illustrious in his holiday-season fame as Charlie Brown, the Grinch, Rudolph, Frosty and Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey.

Well, beloved by millions in my house, at least. A Muppety musical production by the genius Jim Henson, Emmet Otter originally debuted on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1977, and reached American households a year later via HBO. The pay-cable channel is where I first experienced its magic, over and over and over again, because it re-ran ad infinitum for weeks, much to the chagrin of my older sister, who surely still bolts awake in the wee hours, glistening with cold sweat, the folksy twang of “The Bathing Suit That Grandma Otter Wore” playing over and over in her head.

Forcible viewing was a product of the time, when most of us had only one cable-equipped TV — no doubt a hideous console monster adorned with foam speaker mesh and big knobs that go CLUNK — in our shag-carpeted living rooms. Our channel changer was a zipperish “slider box” that made a bzzzzzzzttttt noise, like when you run your finger over the teeth of a comb — or scratch a washboard. It was a thing of an analog fetishist’s dreams.

I digress, but only slightly, because the aesthetic of the era, and my memory of it, dovetails perfectly with Emmet Otter — lots of earth tones, scads of earnest sentiment, everything a little fuzzy around the edges. It’s a lovingly crafted TV special, with charming hand-built set pieces and a story adapted from a children’s book by Russell and Lillian Hoban, who took the classical comic irony of O. Henry’s eternal The Gift of the Magi and adapted it for anthropomorphic rodents. It’s even endorsed by drop-in guest narrator Kermit the Frog, who was edited from the DVD version in the wake of Disney buying the Muppets, but has been restored for the current version streaming on Amazon Prime. As it should be.

To further date the living crap out of this very special special, the music was composed by ’70s songwriting superstar Paul Williams. His Emmet Otter compositions are clear predecessors to his Oscar-nominated The Muppet Movie centerpiece, Rainbow Connection; they’re the vital heart of this story about melancholy otters cutting the chilly winter days with the warmth of their souls. Mournful number When the River Meets the Sea is ostensibly about death, and expresses Ma and Emmet’s forlorn mourning of Pa Otter, a snake-oil salesman who passed through this mortal coil to frolic in the great river of eternity. The show climaxes with Brothers in Our World, a collection of sweet harmonies capping the story with a message of togetherness and hope. Notably, it does not feature any goddamn worn-out Christmas carols, and is all the better for it.

The musical numbers never fail to make my eyes well up with bittersweet tears. Tears of longing, for peace to be with all human- and animal-kind on Christmas. Tears of nostalgia, for long-ago times when I’d bzzzzzzzttttt the channel gizmo to HBO and my sister would say NOT AGAIN and I’d wallow in the soulful succor of Ma and Emmet harmonizing about grandma’s elephantine swim garb. Tears blurring vision, making it easier not to notice the awkward puppetry, how Emmet only seems to know one chord on the washtub bass, or how insane some of the musical numbers truly are.

Speaking of which. Indoctrinees of the Emmet Otter cult are surely wondering why I’ve yet to mention the Riverbottom Nightmare Band. I was saving it for the emotional crest of my piece. This group of obnoxious, polluting hooligans — a snake, a bear, a frog, a weasel and a fish — provide conflict, showing up last-minute at the talent contest to play the type of acid-fried rock that would make Alice Cooper blanch. Their song is boastful and arrogant, proudly touting how cool and emotionally detached they are from the simple life of this rustic backwater: “We don’t wish to learn, but we hate what we don’t understand,” sneers the lead weasel. Awesome. Terrifying. Strange. So, so strange.

By now, you’ve realized Emmet Otter is the type of idiosyncratic programming that’s a product of its time, and only its time. A musical? About a jug band? Laced with an unvarnished and sincere message of love and hope? How quaint. How weird. How beautiful. How in the hayseed hell did it ever get made? The improbable fact that it even exists is an honest-to-gosh true Christmas miracle. Would you put a hole in that washtub?

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas on Amazon Prime