A Flintstones Christmas Carol
Encyclopedia
A Flintstones Christmas Carol is an animated made-for-TV movie based on the original 1960s series classic, The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...

and on the holiday novel of the same name
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...

 by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, it premiered in syndication
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...

 on November 21, 1994. It is also one of the last Hanna-Barbera television productions before the death of one of the creators William Hanna
William Hanna
William Denby Hanna was an American animator, director, producer, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of people for much of the 20th century. When he was a young child, Hanna's family moved frequently, but they settled in Compton, California, by...

 in 2001, and before H-B was absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation is the animation division of Warner Bros., a subsidiary of Time Warner. The studio is closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros...

. It was also the final time Jean Vander Pyl did the voice of Wilma, prior to her death in 1999.

Plot

When Fred wins the role of Scrooge in the play of A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...

at the Bedrock Community Theatre, he becomes so obsessed with rehearsing lines that he literally becomes greedy and unfriendly towards his family and friends. He doesn't hear Wilma tell him to pick up Pebbles from the cavecare center, and he forgets to kiss Pebbles goodbye when he drops her off. He also doesn't include Christmas shopping on his To-Do list.

At work, Fred runs into the most beautiful girl in Bedrock, Maggie, who is playing Scrooge's love, Belle. It is also implied that Fred and Maggie have been having a relationship behind Wilma's back. Fred soon realizes that he forgot to buy his family Christmas gifts, so he runs out and buys them the first things he finds or sees. When the clock strikes 4:00, Fred hurries home for a snack, but not before giving a kid his number 86 tag and telling him to wait for him. On the way home, Fred is rehearsing his lines and driving at the same time, but he didn't see a red light that he had passed through. Fortunately, the cop that had pulled him over was Philo Quartz, another member of the community acting troupe, who lets him off with a warning.

At the theatre, a furious Wilma tells Fred that he forgot to pick up Pebbles, but Fred can only think about the show. The start of the show goes smoothly, but Miss Feldspar, who plays the ghost of Christmas Past, gets sick with the flu called the Bedrock Bug and Wilma has to replace her. When Scrooge and Belle's love scene arrives, Fred is thrilled when he sees Maggie and will finally get to kiss her, but is disappointed, once he finds out that Maggie has gotten sick and Wilma had to take her place. Fred is surprised at how real Wilma's tears are during a major scene, and soon learns she refuses to speak to him for forgetting Pebbles.

Fred soon starts living the play and realizes that Christmas isn't about greed, but about happiness and love. He soon apologizes to everyone he was rude to, including Wilma, who is still mad at him for his thoughtlessness, and everyone in Bedrock truly has a very merry Christmas. But then Fred gets sick however because of the Bedrock Bug. This is further complicated when Wilma assures him that he will recover just in time to attend his mother-in-law's Christmas dinner. Fred becomes a better man at the end.

Cast

Fred Flintstone - Ebenezer Scrooge
Wilma Flintstone - Belle/Ghost of Christmas Past
Barney Rubble - Bob Cragit/Fezzewig
Betty Rubble - Mrs. Cragit
Pebbles Flintstone - Martha Cragit
Bamm-Bamm Rubble - Tiny Tim
Mr. Slate- Jacob Marbley
Ms. Feldspar - Fan Scrooge
Dino - The Cragits' pet/Ghost of Chistmas Yet to Come

Voice cast

  • Henry Corden
    Henry Corden
    Henry Corden was a Canadian-born American actor and voice artist best-known for taking over the role of Fred Flintstone after Alan Reed died in 1977. His official debut as Fred's new voice was on the 1977 syndicated weekday series Fred Flintstone and Friends for which he provided voice-overs on...

     - Fred Flintstone
  • Jean Vander Pyl
    Jean Vander Pyl
    Jean Vander Pyl was an American actress on radio, television and movies. Although her career spanned many decades, she is best remembered as the voice of Wilma Flintstone from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Flintstones...

     - Wilma Flintstone
  • Frank Welker
    Frank Welker
    Franklin Wendell "Frank" Welker is an American actor who specializes in voice acting and has contributed character voices and other vocal effects to American television and motion pictures.-Acting career:...

     - Barney Rubble, Dino
  • B.J. Ward - Betty Rubble
  • Russi Taylor
    Russi Taylor
    Russi Taylor is an American voice actress. She is the current voice actress of Disney's Minnie Mouse character. She has held this role since 1986, longer than any other voice actress...

     - Pebbles Flintstone
  • Don Messick
    Don Messick
    Donald Earl "Don" Messick was an American voice actor best known for his work for Hanna-Barbera. Perhaps his most well-known voice creations include Scooby-Doo, Papa Smurf, and Dr. Benton Quest....

     - Bamm-Bamm Rubble, Joe Rockhead
  • John Stephenson
    John Stephenson (actor)
    John Stephenson is an American actor and voice actor. He has also been credited as John Stevenson...

     - Mr. Slate
  • Marsha Clark
    Marsha Clark
    Marsha Clark is an American actress, best known for her roles in soap operas, including the second Hillary Bauer on Guiding Light, the third Tina Lord on One Life to Live and Judge Karen Fitzpatrick on Days of our Lives...

     - Maggie, Miss Garnett Feldspar
  • Will Ryan
    Will Ryan
    Will Ryan is an American voice actor and producer–writer–composer, well-known for singing about the American West. In the late seventies he teamed up with Phil Baron as Willio and Phillio. They had regular gigs on television, radio and comedy clubs and universities throughout the US...

     - Ned
  • Brian Cummings
    Brian Cummings
    Brian Cummings is an American voice actor.-Biography:He is known for his work in radio and television commercials, television and motion picture promos, cartoons and as the announcer on The All-New Let's Make a Deal from 1984 to 1985...

     - Ghost of Christmas Present
  • Rene Levant - Philo Quartz
  • John Rhys-Davies
    John Rhys-Davies
    John Rhys-Davies is a Welsh actor and voice actor. He is perhaps best known for playing the charismatic Arab excavator Sallah in the Indiana Jones films and the dwarf Gimli in The Lord of the Rings trilogy...

     - Charles Brickens

Logical Fallacies

The Flintstones is set in the Stone Age
Stone Age
The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period, lasting about 2.5 million years , during which humans and their predecessor species in the genus Homo, as well as the earlier partly contemporary genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus, widely used exclusively stone as their hard material in the...

; roughly 6000 BCE. The origins of Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

 had not occurred yet so the holiday could not have been celebrated. One could argue that the Flintstones had other technological marvels that did not exist during the Stone Age however this argument does not address that most of the inventions in the Flintstone's are replaced with an animal based equivalent. Christmas was not given a suitable backing so the holiday does not have a place in the Flintstone's universe.

DVD release

On October 2, 2007, Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video . The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979...

 released A Flintstones Christmas Carol on DVD in region 1. An included bonus was "Christmas Flintstone", an episode from Season 5 of The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...

.

External links

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