Tune in Tonight: Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
Too many words devoted to Christmas's most irritating song, and the even more irritating TV special spawned from it.
There are two kinds of people in the world—those who hate “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” and those who claim they love it just to annoy the first group (there is a third, much smaller group who genuinely likes it, but those are lizard people and should be avoided at all costs). I’d rather listen to “The Christmas Shoes” at prisoner torture level than “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” it makes “Dominick the Donkey” sound like “O Holy Night.” Sadly, because it’s somehow been deemed a “holiday classic,” it’s also inescapable, like receiving a candle or a picture frame from that one relative you only see once a year. Grit your teeth and give in to the discomfort, we’re all in this together.
If you think that Ross Bagdasarian, the creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, rode the tiniest of gravy trains to success, then you haven’t heard the story of Elmo Shropshire. Shropshire didn’t even write “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” he simply heard it being played somewhere, then began performing it live with his then wife, billed as “Elmo ‘n’ Patsy.” After recording the song, it became an unexpected (and polarizing) hit, and Shropshire has coasted on it ever since, rerecording the track in 1992 and 2000, and performing it year-round with a bluegrass band. Because ones of people1 demanded that the story be fleshed out, Shropshire co-wrote and narrated a TV special based on it, which inexplicably aired on Halloween in 2000.
We’re less than fifty seconds into it when we hear the titular song, while Shropshire introduces the story of what happens both before and after that tragic accident, and somehow this thing is an hour long. The titular Grandma (whose last name is Spankenheimer) runs the kind of “only in Hollywood” small town general store that manages to stay open even though nobody ever has to pay for anything. Only Cousin Mel complains about this questionable business practice. Though she’s right, we know she’s the villain immediately because she has a vague Southern accent, big red hair, and cleavage prominently on display.
It’s not the fact that Grandma doesn’t understand how to run her store that’s the problem, mind you, but that no one in town except her and grandson Jake really cares about Christmas anymore. Even Jake’s parents are indifferent to it, with his dad bringing home an inflatable Christmas tree, manufactured by the sinister sounding OwnAll Corp. When Jake expresses shock, his sister rolls her eyes and proclaims “Nobody gets a Christmas tree anymore, it’s not cool.”
OwnAll Corp is run by Austin Bucks, who wants to buy Grandma’s store. His plan is to automate and monetize Christmas, because people are too distracted these days “by their cellular phones and fax machines” to care about Santa Claus anymore. When Grandma refuses to sell, Cousin Mel, who carries on like a combination of Blanche DuBois and Alexis Carrington, decides to poison the batter for Grandma’s famous fruitcake, in what may be history’s first (and so far only) use of Chekhov’s fruitcake batter.
Twelve minutes in and we get a reprise of the title song, but it’s been given a gentle rewrite. Rather than staggering out of the house drunk on eggnog, as the song originally states, this time the saintly Grandma is forced to go out late at night to deliver fruitcake to a homeless shelter, putting her in the path of Santa’s sleigh. She also doesn’t die, but rather just mysteriously disappears. A few months pass, and nobody other than Jake and Grandpa seem particularly sad that Grandma is gone. The townspeople stop coming to the family store, which, considering they probably owed hundreds of dollars to this presumably deceased woman, is kind of a shitty, cowardly thing to do when you think about it.
Cousin Mel tricks the clearly senile Grandpa into signing away his rights to the store so she can sell it to Austin Bucks, but not before Grandpa sings a song about how Grandma died and is standing under the mistletoe with Elvis in Heaven. There are several “new and original” songs written for the special, all of which sound at least slightly like “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” and all of which mention either Christmas, Santa Claus, or both, even though the second half of the show takes place in September.
Austin Bucks agrees to give Jake time to find Grandma before closing the deal to buy the store. After Jake contacts Santa by email (presumably at sexysanta6969@northpole.biz), he travels to the North Pole, where we find out that Grandma’s just been chillin’ there the whole time, having lost her memory. You may wonder why Santa didn’t just let them know where she was for the past nine months, but frankly he’s kind of an asshole here, and it’s never explained.
When Santa finally gets off his ass and brings Grandma back, Cousin Mel’s lawyer (who’s named I.M. Slime, in what passes for humor here) kidnaps her, and Cousin Mel has Santa Claus arrested and put on trial for “sleighicular negligence.” They take it one step further and decide that after the trial they’re going to sue Santa Claus, assuming that, because he gives out so many Christmas gifts, he must be worth billions. Because all lawyers are smarmy, craven creeps out to make a quick buck, the town District Attorney takes an almost orgasmic glee in prosecuting Santa Claus, telling the jury “If the beard fits, you must convict,” because the one thing a warm, family holiday special really needs is an O.J. Simpson joke.
Luckily, Jake tracks Grandma down to the cabin where she’s being held captive, and finds the evidence he needs pointing to Cousin Mel’s involvement in the plot, conveniently left out in the open for everyone to see. Jake has somehow deduced, during the scenes edited out in favor of Cousin Mel and her lawyer wearing Carmen Miranda fruit hats and singing “Grandpa’s Gonna Sue the Pants Off of Santa,” that all Grandma needs is a bite of her homemade fruitcake, and her memory will be instantly restored.
Santa appears to be acting as his own counsel in the trial, which, as we learned from Ted Bundy, is never a good idea. However, Jake tells the judge that whatever Cousin Mel put in the tainted fruitcake batter acted as “reindeer nip,” driving Rudolph, et. al. crazy and causing Santa to lose control of the sleigh and hit Grandma. Faced with mounting evidence, Cousin Mel admits her misdeeds, but claims it wasn’t because she wanted to get her hands on Grandma’s store, but because she hates kindness, and “all that sharin’ and carin’.” Santa is set free, and Austin Bucks reveals himself to be a good guy after all, offering to franchise Grandma’s store, making the family rich beyond their wildest dreams, except for Cousin Mel, who will presumably spend the rest of her life in prison with only those gross pfeffernusse cookies for sustenance.
A free imaginary being again, Santa Claus returns to the North Pole. On his way out, however, he runs over Grandma again, and, without bothering to make sure she’s okay, flies off with a bellowed “Feliz navidad!”
There’s something hilariously hypocritical about someone who earned a fortune with a novelty song played largely in shopping malls and stores during the holiday season writing a show in which people wanting to capitalize on Christmas for financial gain are the villains. Elmo Shropshire has, as of this writing, released nine different versions of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” since its original recording2. So, you see, the idea of him shaking his old timey homespun values finger at people for daring to choose convenience over tradition sticks in the throat, like a half-swallowed chunk of fruitcake, poisoned or otherwise.
Without the titular song, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer is typical C-grade holiday special fare, lamenting the days of chestnuts roasting over an open fire and sleigh rides in the snow Christmases for an audience too young to ever experience them in the first place. It seems to exist mostly so Shropshire could both make yet more money off a tune he didn’t even write, and work out his issues with both lawyers and Southerners (the eviler she gets, the more Southern Cousin Mel sounds). With the song, it becomes the longest, most excruciating hour of your life, a lump of coal for the eyes and ears, a gaily wrapped lump of reindeer poop left under your tree.
Presumably named “Nelmo Flopfire.”
The ex-Mrs. Shropshire has also continued to this day trying to ride that train into the ground, releasing her own solo versions, one as a country song, and one “in the style of old-school rap.” You may feel free to look that up yourself, I simply don’t have the strength.