A Disney Christmas Gift is a 47-minute Christmas television special that aired on December 4, 1982, as an episode of CBS's Walt Disney Presents television program. It was a Christmas-themed compilation of animated shorts featuring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck combined with excerpts from Disney feature films. The opening and closing numbers, featuring the song "On Christmas Morning", showcased Christmas at Disneyland. The special was made as a result of Disney being forced to delay the release of Mickey's Christmas Carol due to an animator's strike. The special was nominated for the 1984 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour); however, it lost to Garfield on the Town.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the original full-length and shortened versions of the special were rebroadcast on CBS and the Disney Channel. "On Christmas Morning" also played during A Disney Channel Christmas.
A different version was also aired in 1986 on the syndicated Wonderful World of Disney program, which removed "On Christmas Morning" and most of the interstitials between cartoons. Instead, footage of The Clock Watcher was used as the interstitial footage, with the toys Donald is to wrap representing the cartoons themselves.
Featured segments[]
- "On Christmas Morning"
- "Once Upon a Wintertime" segment from Melody Time (1948)
- Pluto's Christmas Tree (1952)
- Bambi and Thumper ice skating from Bambi (1942)
- Peter Pan teaching the Darling children to fly from Peter Pan (1953)
- The Clock Watcher (1945) (Edited)
- Merlin, Arthur, and Archimedes the Owl from The Sword in the Stone (1963)
- The Fairy Godmother's scene from Cinderella (1950)
- The Night Before Christmas (1933)
- "On Christmas Morning" (Reprise)
1986 version[]
- On Ice (1935)
- Pluto's Christmas Tree (1952)
- Bambi and Thumper ice skating from Bambi (1942)
- Peter Pan teaching the Darling children to fly from Peter Pan (1953)
- Las Posadas and the breaking of the pinata from The Three Caballeros (1945)
- Toy Tinkers (1949)
- The Fairy Godmother's scene from Cinderella (1950)
- The Night Before Christmas (1933)
Trivia[]
- The toys from the closing of the program were from the Walt Disney Archives.