The Christmas Raccoons, on CBC (Canada) / syndication (USA)
Christmas Specials Wiki; IMDb; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: YouTube

Caution: total spoilers.

This first aired in 1980, on CBC. I'm not sure if I saw it then (when I would have been just 5 years old) or some later year, but either way it's definitely nostalgic to me. It was followed by two more TV specials, "The Raccoons on Ice" and "The Raccoons and the Lost Star"; and a regular series, The Raccoons. I'm watching it on YouTube in 2025 to refresh my memory and write a review. I'm putting the review under "Christmas specials" because it is set around the holiday, and has some of the trappings of Christmas, but it really barely qualifies as a Christmas special. That's not what it's actually about.

So, there's this place called the Evergreen Forest, Which is looked after by a forest ranger named Dan. On the day before the day before Christmas, he learns that thousands of trees have been disappearing, so he goes to investigate. But first, he tucks his young children, Julie and Tommy, into bed for the night. The special gets kind of weird, because supposedly the kids are having a shared dream about playing in the snow, but meanwhile, some other stuff is going on nearby, that is taking place in real life. A raccoon couple named Ralph and Melissa, and their friend/houseguest, Bert, live in one of the forest's trees. Ralph reads in the newspaper that trees have been disappearing from the forest. And before they know it, their own tree gets cut down, by an aardvark named Cyril Sneer. Before Cyril can take the tree away, Julie and Tommy discover it lying on the ground, and they, along with their dog, Schaeffer, take the tree home to use as a Christmas tree.

The raccoons see the kids and the dog take the tree, and assume they're the ones who've been cutting down all the trees in the forest. So they follow them back to the kids' house. Later, the kids go out to do some Christmas shopping, leaving Schaeffer to guard the house. He goes to sleep, and the raccoons sneak in through the chimney. For some reason, all they want to do is retrieve their Christmas stockings (and not, like, any of the other furnishings or stuff in their home). But Schaeffer wakes up and chases them around, until they all end up outside Cyril's lumber mill. When the raccoons learn that Schaeffer can talk, they tell him about his Christmas tree being their home. So he asks forgiveness for chasing them, and they become friends. Then they discover that Cyril was the one behind the disappearing trees, and wait for him outside the mill. Meanwhile, Cyril's college-educated son, Cedric, tries in vain to get his pop to stop cutting down trees, as they've already gone way over their quota, against forest rules. But Cyril wants to cut down all the trees in the forest.

When Cyril and Cedric leave the mill, Schaeffer and the raccoons jump them, and get into a big fight. Finally, they force Cyril to agree to stop cutting down trees, and replace the ones he'd cut down with seedlings. (Personally, I thought that happened way too easily. The solution really felt half-baked.) Still, the raccoons have no home. They go back to Schaeffer's house, where they say goodbye to him. Then the kids find the stockings on the floor, and Schaeffer tugs on one of them, dragging the kids to the window. They see the shivering raccoons outside, and somehow realize their tree must have been the raccoons' home. So, they decide to get their dad to find them a new home.

But then, the kids wake up, expecting it to be Christmas Day, but it's only Christmas Eve, and they haven't gotten a tree yet. But their dad tells them about new trees being planted overnight, to replace the ones that had been cut down. So, this is the weird part: it seems like parts of what had happened throughout most of the special had been just a dream, but part of it really happened, and the dream and reality seem to be mashed up, somehow. I really didn't get that. But the raccoons moved into a tree outside the kids' house. So there's a happy ending.

There's actually a lot about this special that seemed weird to me. For example, humans obviously have no idea that animals are intelligent and can talk, and everything. But if that's the case... then really, nothing makes any sense. Aside from all the strange, inexplicable aspects of the special, I thought it wasn't a bad story, though I don't think it's as amusing as it tries to be. And it's nowhere near as good as the regular series (which I remember a lot better than I remembered this special). It's also weird that the narrator says the Evergreen Forest would never be in danger again, because anyone who's seen the series knows that's not true. But I suppose the writers couldn't have known there would eventually be a series. I definitely got the impression this was meant to be a one-off special. Anyway, I don't really know what else to say. Except I'm glad the special was a success, because I'm quite fond of the series it spawned, even if I only kind of liked the special itself. And I'm glad to have seen it again, decades after I first saw it.