From Emmet Otter to Mr. Magoo, here are some overlooked holiday specials

It’s only about a week until Christmas, and by now, you’ve probably exhausted the run of typical holiday specials.

We all love Charlie Brown and Vince Guaraldi’s instantly familiar piano tunes but you might want to look a little deeper to find a unique Christmas special.

Here’s a handful of holiday programming that’s, well, a little bit off the beaten path. And just to be clear, not all of these suggestions are for the kiddies.

‘Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas’

This one is definitely for the kids. Before the full Muppets gang started making seasonal TV specials, there was Ma and Emmet Otter in 1977, living along the banks of the river and canoeing into Waterville to try and make ends meet.

In addition to being heartwarming tale with some beautiful music, it’s also one of the only Jim Henson productions where you see full-body Muppets walking … or … well … we’ll say attempting to walk. It’s hilarious and reveals why you likely see the Muppets from the waist up in future years.

Highlights include a wacky performance by the River Bottom Nightmare Band — a musical group of misfits that likely evolved into Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem — and an opening song about how gigantic Grandma Otter’s bathing suit was.

Watch the special free on YouTube.

‘A Very Venture Christmas’

“The Venture Bros.” was a send-up of serialized comic and cartoon adventures, satirizing the notion of the genius mad scientist and his quirky family fighting supervillains. The show explored — in a very over-the-top way — the day-to-day grind of being a super-scientist when your sons keep getting into trouble, and how hard it is for a supervillain to find reliable henchmen.

The Ventures’ holiday special, well, I wouldn’t say it has any particular plot, and it’s definitely for a crowd that’s a bit more mature.

In the scene above, Dr. Venture’s sons accidentally conjure up the Krampus at their holiday party.

Watch “The Venture Bros.” on AdultSwim.com.

‘Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas’

From “The Nightmare Before Christmas” to that first Tool video that creeped you out on MTV, creating stop-motion animation with clay figures results in a unique style of entertainment.

Vinton used it to animate a handful of holiday classics for this 1987 Christmas special. Inexplicably hosted by two dinosaurs who spend the entire time trying to figure out what “wassailing” means, it also features my personal favorite version of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” performed by the California Raisins at the peak of their popularity.

Watch the full special on YouTube.

‘24 Christmas Cartoons from the 1960-’70s You’ll Never See Again’

This is a compilation video, and to be honest, the title is ridiculous, especially when you see that classic staples like “The Grinch” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” are on here.

Perhaps “you’ll never see again” refers to the fact that they just don’t make Christmas specials like these anymore.

Then again, there is also some wild stuff as you get deeper into the list, from the 1970 special about a young man named Kris becoming the Santa we know today, to ABC’s “The Night the Animals Talked,” about the animals at the manger with Mary and Joseph having an argument about who was most important to the couple in a story about pride and humility.

For some reason, you can’t embed this video, so you’ll have to go to YouTube to check it out.

‘The Small One’

Don Bluth was once a Disney animator. But at some point, he looked around and decided that Disney wasn’t doing enough to sufficiently traumatize the world’s youth with cartoons.

That’s oversimplifying it a bit, but Bluth definitely set out to create cartoon stories with a little more grit and a few less princesses. The results were classic animated films like “An American Tale,” “The Land Before Time” and others.

But before he started forcing children to confront death via animation, Bluth created “The Small One,” a 1978 holiday special about a young boy outside Nazareth who is forced to sell his best friend, a small donkey who isn’t cut out for most stock-animal work.

Eventually, he sells the donkey to a particular couple you may recognize, on their way to try and find an inn at Nazareth…

‘Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol’

Finally, we have Mr. Magoo, somehow taking on the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in a goofy re-telling of “A Christmas Carol.” No explanation needed!

Watch it on YouTube.