SESAME STREET: ELMO'S POTTY TIME

Details

• Release Year: 1978
• Genre: Family
• Plot: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street is a Sesame Street Christmas special first broadcast on PBS on December 3, 1978.; ; The story has three principal plotlines. In the main one, Oscar the Grouch tells Big Bird that there will be no Christmas presents if Santa Claus is unable to get down chimneys. Distraught, Big Bird enlists the help of Kermit the Frog and Grover to ask children how Santa does it. Their responses vary. Big Bird's friend Patty (a girl around age seven) tries to comfort him, but fails. Big Bird winds up trying to stay up all night on an apartment roof, watching for Santa Claus, but falls asleep while the residents of Sesame Street become very worried looking for him. At one point, sleighbells and hoofprints are heard, and a person's shadow falls over the dozing Big Bird. He is startled awake, but sees nothing unusual. When Big Bird tries to go inside the apartment building to warm up, Gordon and Susan make sure he stays. They comfort him by showing that there were indeed presents brought. The mystery, of how Santa gets down the chimney, remains unsolved.; ; Meanwhile, Bert and Ernie want to give each other Christmas presents, but have no money. Bert trades away his prized paper clip collection to buy a soap dish for Ernie's Rubber Duckie, but Ernie has bartered Rubber Duckie to get Bert a cigar box for the paper clips. Mr. Hooper, the store owner, realizes what is happening, and gives both characters their treasured possessions back, while also reminding the audience that although he himself does not celebrate Christmas (being Jewish), he understands the spirit of the holidays. This story is a retelling of the O. Henry story 'The Gift of the Magi'.; ; While all this is going on, Cookie Monster tries to communicate with Santa Claus and request cookies for Christmas. However, as he talks to himself about the many different kinds of cookies he would like to get, he gets hungrier and hungrier, absent-mindedly devouring the instruments he is trying to use: the pencil, typewriter, and telephone in turn. With the phone ringing inside his belly, he finally catches on to the problem. At the Christmas party, he laments that he was unable to contact Santa. Gordon reminds him that he might get what he wants - if he leaves a plate of cookies for Santa. At the end of the show, he ends up eating the needles off the Christmas trees, lamenting that Scotch Pine is good but Douglas Fir gives him indigestion. Some of the closing credits are displayed on a black screen with Cookie Monster's numerous belches heard on the soundtrack ('Brrrp... Oh, that a long one!')
• Cast: Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Linda Bove, Northern Calloway, Debbie Chen, Will Lee, Loretta Long, Sonia Manzano, Bob McGrath, Roscoe Orman, Caroll Spinney, Alaina Reed Hall, Chet O'Brien, Jon Stone
• Director: Jon Stone
• Runtime: 0