TV Christmas shows from my childhood

 

Three shows stand out in my memory:   Amahl and the Night Visitors, I Remember Mama, and The Spirit of Christmas. 

All of them were shown at Christmastime in the early and middle 1950's.

Amahl and his widowed mother play host to the mysterious visitors who are in search of the Child.

It's a wonderful operetta my Gian Carlo Menotti.  I can still hear the one visitor singing "This is my box...this is my box... I never travel without my box."

The episode from Christmas is the one I remember: the one called "The night the animals talked."

To quote the Paley Center , "One in this series of sentimental comedies about a Norwegian-American family in World War I era San Francisco. This annual "Mama" Christmas show retells a Norwegian folk tale. According to Mama's great-grandmother Hedvig, midnight on Christmas Eve is a magical time when barnyard animals gain the power of speech. Despite ridicule from the family, old Hedvig trudges through the snow to the barn to talk to the animals."

and this program , a gift from the Bell Telephone Company and played every year for many years, and now available on You Tube, 

I watched this on YouTube and even this illustration is embedded in my memory. 

Also, from "The Visit from St. Nicholas,"  the puppet cats:

and from the part about the Nativity,  the puppet Mary's face:

Television was so limited in those days -  only black and white, and only three channels. But I remember these shows better than anything from the 60's or 70's... or later.