A BERMUDIAN producer/director's beloved Christmas gifts to the world are actually the television answers to lumps of coal in your stocking claims a Colorado newspaper columnist.In a tongue-in-cheek lambasting of the long-running animated seasonal TV specials produced by Bermudian Arthur Rankin Jr. and his American partner Jules Bass, the Denver Post's Michael Booth initially claims that exposure to the shows always results in him having a scary little Christmas.

"I'm going to make a confession here: Everybody's favorite Christmas specials really creep me out," said Booth in a pre-Christmas column. "The Little Drummer Boy is a heartwarming tale about a kid whose parents were murdered by desert bandits, and he has hated humanity ever since. The bowl cut and starved features are clearly the look Michael Jackson was going for. The baby Kris Kringle in Santa Claus Is Coming to Town looks like the Chucky doll from the Child's Play horror movies. Burgermeister Meisterburger is some small-town Nazi emperor straight out of Springtime for Hitler. Santa in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a small-minded jerk who shames Donner for supporting his (horribly!) disfigured son. Fey little Herbie the Elf doesn't want to make toys, he wants to be a dentist! And Frosty always dies.

"Publicists love to say these old animations by the oddball team of Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass are cherished by generations. But I know at least as many people who fear them more than revere them. That mangy Abominable Snowman turning Rudolph into Kong vs. Blitzen. The ruthless shop foreman who demands more toys, less joy. Santa getting skinnier and skinnier, chided by a shrewish wife to 'Eat! Eat!'

"I watched the entire collection of animated Yuletide specials all the way through again to inoculate myself against this year's holiday excess."

Booth points out that Frosty, Rudolph, Santa and The Drummer Boy have been available since the fall in a special DVD collection that includes a CD of Burl Ives and other songs. The specials also run on broadcast TV at this time of year, with Rudolph racking up its 41st airing — the longest running special on all of network television.

"Rankin and Bass were classic promoters, assembling pieces from old entertainment to fit a newer medium," says Booth. "For the 1964 Rudolph special, they took the famous Johnny Marks song and asked a writer named Romeo Muller to adapt it, then farmed out stop-motion animation to Asian production houses. Fred Astaire signed on for Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Greer Garson for Drummer Boy, Jimmy Durante for Frosty, and Rankin-Bass went on to make full-length animated versions of The Hobbit and other classics.

"Fans of the shows claim the quirky animation was an intentional part of the charm. Rudolph stumbles across the snow like a Tootsie Roll stuck on pretzel legs. I thought Rudolph was the worst animation I had seen, until seeing Drummer Boy again. Aaron the misanthropic drummer, who looks like a refugee from the hard rock group Metallica, and his animal friends skitter across the Sinai like cockroaches on Red Bull. .

"In Santa Claus, the dolls' chin lines slice their faces like an insane ventriloquist posse. The woebegone Kringles make toys all day, but no one wants to buy them, kind of like Ford and GM."

But Booth's Scrooge-like humbugging of Rankin/Bass productions abruptly ends when he talks to one of their chief boosters.

"I'll let Chicago's Rankin-Bass nut Rick Goldschmidt speak for those who hold the collection dear," says Booth. "Goldschmidt wrote a book on the specials and runs a website dealing in terrifying (sorry, no more editorialising) Rankin-Bass memorabilia. 'It's the writing,' he says. 'You don't even think of them as puppets - you think of them as personalities'. (Yes: Chucky, Michael Jackson, Charles Manson - sorry. No more comments.)

"Goldschmidt credits writer Muller for always employing underdog characters, and reforming the villains in the end. Kids who felt out of place tended to identify, for example, with Rudolph's 'Island of Misfit Toys', and take heart that life might improve.