favorite christmas memories of cancelled soaps?

[BKuzak]

I always go back to OLTL Viki Buchanan's library at Llanfair. How it was always decorated beutifully and most of the times there was a nice fire in the fireplace. it was always a nice place to see on Christmas eve before all our guests arrived.

but then there's AW's Mac Cory's christmas wish every year when he looked right at the audience to tell them Merry Christmas! that was always pretty special.

What are some of yours? Sadly we have plenty of cancelled soaps to choose from and decades of happy Christmas Memories to think about.

[SFK]

'80s, '90s Christmases in Pine Valley. I don't care what was going on, just seeing those faces, everyone all bundled up and bursting into doors carrying presents and shouting, "Merry Christmas!" always warmed my heart and put a smile on my face.

I loved OLTL's Christmas '93 leading up to Cassie finding baby River in the manger. It's all on YouTube.

[DRW50]

I think Linda Gottlieb produced some high quality Christmas episodes for OLTL - SFK, as always, was right in his 1993 mention.

I loved Christmas in Oakdale, singing carols, going from the Hughes to Lucinda to the Snyder farm. There was never anything too saccharine.

Mac Cory's Christmas toasts.

The first Christmas on Ryan's Hope, as Johnny and Maeve looked at the tree and remembered the ornaments the kids had made, episode ending in the entire cast singing carols.

GL, Maureen and the Bauer kitchen.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

No one did the holidays better than the CBS PGP soaps, IMHO, at least when these shows actually cared.

[DRW50]

I also liked the Santa Claus story on AMC, with Myrtle. I enjoyed it more than anything else on AMC at that time.

[Steve]

My favorite were the AMC Christmases, especially in the 1980s when former characters like Phoebe's son Linc would return and we'd get to see each individual family celebrate. Later on, I also loved Tad & Dixie's tradition of wishing on their star.

[silascrocker]

Guiding Light!

Christmas In Bert Bauer's Living Room, 1981 and 1982. Dr Sara Mcintyre would play piano and Mike Bauer would sing.

At the end of the 1982 Xmas Show, Bert, Mike and Ed Looked in the camera and wished the audience "Merry Christmas".

Great Stuff!

Years Later, My favorite thing each year was GL's X-mas Credits Crawl at the end of the Xmas Show, with

Ross (Jerry ver Dorn) wishing the audience Happy Holidays and the cast behind him singing .

There was one Xmas Show where Reva,Olivia and Edmund were stuck in an elevator Together. All 3 hated each

other, but Reva told a story that HB had told her,which made the 3 of them be civil to each other while in the the elevator etc

Of course the Christmas shows with Phillp and Beth and their sidewalk Santa(Nick) From when they had ran

away to NYC, Nick would pop up in Springfield like santa claus and give advice

I mIss Guiding Light, the real Guiding Light, before Ellen Weston,John Conboy,Ellen Wheeler etc destroyed the show!

[BKuzak]

GL Christmases were pretty great. In 1995 they looked back on the past for christmas. It was like a Christmas flashback episode. Days of our lives did the same thing in 2001.

I think i have on video a Guiding Light where Reva thought she would be alone for the holidays because it was right after the Prince Richard story and first Josh came. The kids were there but it was a little awkard because they kept remembering how things used to be when Reva and Josh were together.Then everyone else started comming...includding Cassie and Rick who brought Ed's old santa suit.

[amybrickwallace]

Through almost 7 years of episodes of The Doctors on Retro TV, we have seen the late James Pritchett (Dr. Matt Powers) break the fourth wall at the end of every Christmas episode to wish the audience a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I wish that scripted shows would do that now.

[Paul Raven]

SOD had an article (probably by JK Genovese) on how many of the cancelled shows celebrated Xmas.I'll see if I can locate it, or maybe other posters have access?

[Paul Raven]

New York Times Jan 4 1976 by Dan Wakefield

If you, too, have been battered by the barrage of fake togetherness that assaults us every holiday season—that prime time for suicide, crime and marital discord—you may be cheered to know there is .a way to see the Christmas traumas dramatized in their true terror each year. If you need to be reassured that you're not the only one who gets migraine from jingle bells, just tune into the soap operas. The muchmaligned daytime dramas are the one place you'll find acknowledgment that lots of people have a hard time with the holidays. I have found that the best therapy for the crunch of Christmas is to buy a six pack of beer, a couple of pastrami sandwiches, and sit back and watch the soaps on the day before Christmas.

The soaps generally work Christmas into their stories as a natural part of the lives of the characters, and this year as usual most of the serials had Christmas trees, girtwrapped packages, and carolling by the cast. But none of them shrank from the psychic perils of the occasion, the truth that the pressure of the season heightens the tensions of everyday life.

“The Doctors” episode of December 24th, on NBC, opened with a smiling, happy lady bubbling over with good cheer about how she was looking forward to going home and spending Christmas with her son and daughter. A handsome, sympathetic man was listening to her, and for a moment I thought I was in for a taste of spun sugar, but then the kindly man said, “Eleanor, it might be best if we put you on thorazine for the duration of your visit,” and the woman got hysterical. For Eleanor was a patient in a mental hospital and she was talking to her psychiatrist.

Back home, her husband Scott and daughter Wendy were merrily trimming the Christmas tree, and Wendy said she felt “we're going to have a good, relaxing holiday this year.” But I knew better.

The phone rang and it was the Doctor telling Scott that he was sending Eleanor home to him for Christmas. Scott's jaw and voice dropped to doom level, and Wendy, seahung what the news meant, grabbed a pretty ornament from the Christmas tree and smashed it on the floor. Later, apologizing to her father, she said, “I guess I wanted to beat mother to it.”

Scott then rushed over to tell Althea, his lover, that his wife was coming home from the booby hatch and so he and his daughter couldn't come to the big Christmas dinner Althea was cooking for them. Althea, who just before Scott's arrival was singing ” ‘rig the season to be jolly” as she added a bauble to her tree, said in a frozen voice, “I've really been an idiot—I was actually looking forward to this Christmas!” A shouting match ensued, and it was obvious that the holiday be fullscale disaster.

The program ended with Althea's younger daughter Penny trying to comfort her. wondering why it was that true love always causes such pain. Althea said, “I wish I could tell you it gets better as you get older ...”

But she couldn't, so they both sang “Jingle Bells” until Althea could stand it no more and clutched her head in agony while Penny continued the mocking lyrics. The Christmas tree twinkled in the background.

Meanwhile, over at “Ryan's Bar & Grill” in the “Riverside” section of New York City, most of the cast of ABC's “Ryan's Hope” was assembling to sing carols and hang wreaths and pine boughs, but all was not sweetness and light Young Interns Bucky Carter confessed to the matriarch Maeve Ryan that he had “a bad case of the Christmas Blues,” brought on by seeing his best friend Pat Ryan smooching It up in a corner with Faith Coleridge, the girl Bucky had wooed but failed miserably to win. As Faith nuzzled Pat, Bucky sighed, “It would have been wonderful if she could have related to me like that."

The gang around the piano was belting out “Come All Ye Faithful,” but we kept getting closeups of Bucky's favorite aunt Nell, who, we knew, has an inoperable aneurism. With all the tension and excitement, couldn't. help fearing when the camera zoomed in on Nell that her aneurism might pop in the last chorus of “Good King Wenceslas.”

Again to keep things in balance, we cut from the jolly group of carolers to Jill Coleridge, alone at home mourning the end of her three‐year affair with City Councilman Frank Ryan. The liaison having been discovered by local gangster Nick Szabo, Jill knew she must give up Frank in order to save his political career. No merry Christmas for Jill, who wrapped her arms around her shoulders, squeezing, shivering.

Even soaps that didn't throw Christmas parties this year managed to sneak in some comment on the seasonal pressure. As the beautiful young Carol on NBC's “Another World” told a friend after her man broke their holiday lunch date, “Christmas has always made me uneasy.”

Over in Pine Valley. where ABC's “All My Children” faced the holiday with a pack of troubles, the usually eventempered Kitty Shea, lost her cool when Margo, her boss at the Boutique, mocked her low mood with a “Ho, ho ho, and a meerrry Christmas!” Kitty wheeled around, her eyes flashing with anger, and shouted, “Lay off, will you?”

Say it again, Kitty.

 

[amybrickwallace]

Now those episodes sound interesting. 😂

[watson71]

Starting at the 28 minute mark in part 1 of 5  was the Another World Christmas montage in 1992 that Jake gave to Rachel on a videotape that looked back on past Christmas memories.  While far-fetched that Jake would have access to all these "memories" on videotape,  viewers could overlook that to relive all those great Christmas episodes with Mac, Ada, and the rest of the Cory family.  Ingenious and well done!

 

 

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