SANTA AND THE FAIRY SNOW QUEEN (1951)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical,psychological*

While I'm not arguing that SANTA AND THE FAIRY SNOW QUEEN is any neglected Christmas gem, it is much better than your average children's short. Directed by one Sid Davis, this short, less than half an hour, recycles music from Tchaikovsky's NUTCRACKER and SLEEEPING BEAUTY, with the result that the writer put (forgettable) lyrics to the same melody that Disney used in its 1959 SLEEPING BEAUTY for "Once Upon a Dream."

One question inspired by FAIRY: why do children play with toys, whether made in Santa's workshop or by some Eastern conglomerate? One major reason is to exercise the imagination, and this is seen with "proxy-toys," in which kids use dolls, action figures and the like as proxies to enact scenarios of real or hypothetical experience seen through the lens of game-playing. This is the only kind of toy seen in FAIRY. 

On the night before Santa's supposed to load up his sleigh for his Christmas run, he falls asleep in his workshop, surrounded by a half dozen dolls about the size of mice. Since Santa's in dreamland, a helpful female brownie named Snoop (because she snoops around to find which kids are naughty or nice) provides exposition. Santa made a previous appointment to meet with the Fairy Snow Queen to share a sugar cookie. The Queen, just as diminutive as the dolls, finds Santa asleep and decides to make a little mischief, enchanting all the dolls to come alive. The dolls don't really do much of anything-- the Musical Doll dances, the Soldier Doll marches, and the jack-in-the-box repeats everything he says three times.

Conflict raises its head when Santa wakes up. He's okay with the Queen's little joke, but he asks her to de-animate the dolls because he needs this half-dozen toys or he'll have to disappoint a half-dozen children. However, the Queen can't reverse her spell because the toys all want to remain alive. And who can blame them?

For a fellow who spends his whole year crafting toys to give them away, Santa proves remarkably practical-minded. He tells the dolls that although they may enjoy dancing and marching around, such itty-bitty creatures can't prosper in the big mean world. He also mentions an island for lost toys over a decade before the 1964 RUDOLF special conceived of its "island of misfit toys." Snoop brokers a compromise: if the toys will go back to being inanimate and letting kids play with them, the dolls will be allowed to come alive for an hour or so at midnight every night. (Yes, Sid Davis got there before TOY STORY too.) The dolls accept their fate, even though it means that the Toy Soldier and the Musical Doll won't be able to stay together, having fallen in love within a couple of minutes of being animated.

In addition, the toys will have an additional function: if their owners don't take good care of them, the dolls can nark on the bad kids and get them placed on the naughty list. I like to think that most kids would have twigged to the lecture in this slight tale. Yet as lectures go, this one at least speaks to the primary appeal of toys, as opposed to just wanting "stuff," which is a much more frequent "moral" in a lot of Christmas stories.