A Flintstones Christmas Carol
Fred Flintstone stars as Scrooge in a Stone Age retelling.
A Flintstones Christmas Carol is a 1994 American animated made-for-television film based on the 1843 novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, featuring characters from The Flintstones franchise. Produced by Hanna-Barbera, it first aired in syndication on November 21, 1994, with voices by Henry Corden, Jean Vander Pyl, and Frank Welker.
Quick Facts
- Company
- Hanna-Barbera Cartoons
- Writer
- Glenn Leopold
- Director
- Joanna Romersa
- Based on
- A Christmas Carol; by Charles Dickens
- Executive producers
- William Hanna
- Joseph Barbera
- Buzz Potamkin
- Music
- Steven Bernstein
- Network
- Syndication
- Runtime
- 70 minutes
Facts from the source article.
Plot
Mr. Slate is Jacob Marbley, Wilma Flintstone serves as stage manager, Pebbles plays Martha Cragit, and Dino plays the family pet. Fred lets his role go to his head, neglecting his job and family to rehearse. On Christmas Eve, he forgets to take Pebbles to cave care and later to pick her up, causing Wilma to confront him in tears at the theater. The play begins with narrator Charles Brickens. After stage fright, Fred enters. In the second act, Miss Feldspar, playing the Ghost of Christmas Past, contracts the Bedrock Bug, so Wilma takes the role. Later, when Maggie, playing Belle, also falls ill, Wilma dons the costume. Fred realizes he forgot presents and runs to the store, where the hooded Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come—revealed as actor Philo Quartz—drives him back. The third act shows Scrooge an abandoned gravestone reading 'EBONEZER SCROOGE. Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning, sends a boy to buy a Turkeysaurus for the Cragits, and meets Wilma, now playing a Piltdown Charitable Foundation member due to another actor's illness.
Production
The special followed three earlier Flintstones Christmas productions: 'Christmas Flintstone' (1964), A Flintstone Christmas (1977), and A Flintstone Family Christmas (1993). It was directed by Joanna Romersa and produced by Hanna-Barbera in Los Angeles, California. Glenn Leopold wrote the teleplay based on Charles Dickens's novella. Steve Bernstein composed the music. Jean Vander Pyl reprised her role as Wilma Flintstone, which she had performed since 1960. Animation was done by Fil-Cartoons in Manila, Philippines.
Broadcast and release
The special premiered in syndication on November 21, 1994. It has been rebroadcast on Boomerang and Canada's YTV, with Boomerang airings later part of Warner Bros. Discovery's All I Watch for Christmas campaign. In 2024, MeTV Toons aired it as part of its 'Tis' the Season for Toons event. Turner Home Entertainment released it on VHS on September 26, 1995, in the Turner Family Showcase collection, debuting 24th among children's video rentals in October 1995. Warner Home Video released a Region 1 DVD on October 2, 2007, with the bonus episode 'Christmas Flintstone.'
Reception
The special won a Film Advisory Board award. TV Guide rated it two stars, criticizing how the story-within-a-story format cuts away to backstage events, breaking up Dickens’s narrative flow, and questioning how prehistoric people could celebrate a messiah not due for thousands of years. Phil Hall of EDGE Boston called the idea of cavemen marking Christmas “decidedly peculiar.” The Flintstones takes place in a fantastical Stone Age around one million years B.C., and its Christmas specials have been noted for the anachronism of depicting a Christian holiday tied to an event that, in the show’s timeline, occurs roughly a million years later. Animation historian Christopher P. Lehman observed that the series gets much of its humor from deliberate anachronism, using a modern 20th-century society in prehistory to satirize postwar suburban life. In their 2005 book Christmas’s Most Wanted, Kevin Cuddihy and Phillip Metcalfe ranked the earlier A Flintstone Christmas (1977) seventh among “not-so-classic” Christmas cartoons, pointing out the anachronism. This observation has become a running joke among fans and critics. A popular fan theory tries to resolve the paradox by suggesting the show is actually set in a post-apocalyptic future, with the Christmas celebration as key evidence. The franchise has generally embraced these inconsistencies rather than explained them. One retrospective noted that the anachronisms show more commitment to an ongoing joke than to building a believable setting, fitting the show’s identity as a satire of 1960s suburbia set at the dawn of time.
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