As you get set to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in a bit (those of you with children or have remained children in your hearts -- or emotionally immature, depending on your view of things), did you ever notice the characters' hands?
All the characters' hands (those who have hands) are very dirty.
Trust my super clean freak friend to point this out to me a couple of years ago. I've watched this show every Christmas since it first aired in 1964, so that's about forty years until Deb mentioned it and up till then I never noticed.
There's a simple explanation of course. The artists had to move the figurines many, many times to get the stop-motion animation effect. Long days of minute movements, of course the clay was going to get soiled. And even if they noticed it, they weren't going to stop and refashion new appendages, or stop to clean the hands, if that was possible.
No big insights or musing on dirty clay characters symbolizing the commercialization of Christmas. I just thought it was interesting and interesting that I'd never noticed the dirt.
If you're not watching, a few songs courtesy of You Tube. I think I've heard Holly Jolly Christmas 1000 times already on the radio, and of course the title song, but these two never get any play. In fact, the second one was cut out for years so they could cram more commercials in. It only was put back a few years ago. I'd have said there were complaints, but the song doesn't seem very popular even on You Tube; this was the only straight version I could find.
