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The Spirit Of Christmas (TV Program)
''The Spirit of Christmas'' is a Christmas television special performed by marionettes. (includes photos of DVD jacket) First airing in 1953, it was produced by Mabel and Les Beaton, through their company, Stringtime Productions. Its half-hour showing time is divided into two marionette segments, one dramatizing the 1823 poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and one telling the story of the Nativity. The live-action part of the film features Alexander Scourby, who narrates and also plays Clement Moore in the ''Visit from St. Nicholas'' segment. The jacket of the DVD version calls it "The Philadelphia Holiday Classic," referring to the region of the United States where it was originally broadcast. The jacket also describes it as a "50s TV Christmas classic, which has led it to being misdated as first being shown in 1950. Into the 1960s, the special was aired multiple times per Christmas season, without commercial interruptions except for opening and closing remarks by "your telephone ...
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Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around the world. A Calendar of saints, feast central to the Christian liturgical year, it is preceded by the season of Advent or the Nativity Fast and initiates the season of Christmastide, which historically in the West lasts Twelve Days of Christmas, twelve days and culminates on Twelfth Night (holiday), Twelfth Night. Christmas Day is a public holiday in List of holidays by country, many countries, is celebrated religiously by a majority of Christians, as well as Christian culture, culturally by many non-Christians, and forms an integral part of the Christmas and holiday season, holiday season organized around it. The traditional Christmas narrative recounted in the New Testament, known as the Nativity of Jesus, says that Jesus was born in Bet ...
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Bell Telephone Company
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company – the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company. The Bell Telephone Company was started on the basis of holding "potentially valuable patents", principally Bell's master telephone patent #174465. Upon its inception, the Bell Telephone Company was organized with Hubbard as "trustee", although he was additionally its ''de facto'' president, since he also controlled his daughter's shares by power of attorney, and with Thomas Sanders, its principal financial backer, as treasurer. The two companies merged on February 17, 1879, to form two new entities, the National Bell Telephone Company of Boston, and the International Bell Telephone Company, soon after established by Hubbard and which became headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.Huurdeman, Anton A''The Worldw ...
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Puppet Films
A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. The puppeteer uses movements of their hands, arms, or control devices such as rods or strings to move the body, head, limbs, and in some cases the mouth and eyes of the puppet. The puppeteer often speaks in the voice of the character of the puppet, and then synchronizes the movements of the puppet's mouth with this spoken part. The actions, gestures and spoken parts acted out by the puppeteer with the puppet are typically used in storytelling. Puppetry is a very ancient form of theatre which dates back to the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece. There are many different varieties of puppets, and they are made from a wide range of materials, depending on their form and intended use. They range from very simple in construction and operation to very complex. Two simple types of puppets are the finger puppet, which is a tiny puppet that fits ont ...
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Marionette Films
A marionette (; french: marionnette, ) is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a marionettist. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms of theatres or entertainment venues. They have also been used in films and on television. The attachment of the strings varies according to its character or purpose. Etymology In French, ''marionette'' means "little Mary". In France, during the Middle Ages, string puppets were often used to depict biblical events, with the Virgin Mary being a popular character, hence the name. In France, the word ''marionette'' can refer to any kind of puppet, but elsewhere it typically refers only to string puppets. History Ancient times Puppetry is an ancient form of performance. Some historians claim that they predate actors in theatre. There is evidence that they wer ...
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Christmas Television Specials
Christmas themes have long been an inspiration to artists and writers. A prominent aspect of Christian media, the topic first appeared in in literature and Christmas music. Filmmakers have picked up on this wealth of material, with both adaptations of Christmas novels, in the forms of Christmas films, Santa Claus films, and Christmas television specials. It also includes animation, comics, and children's books, including '' A Charlie Brown Christmas'', ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas!'', and ''Frosty the Snowman''. Films Many Christmas stories have been adapted to movies and TV specials, and have been broadcast and repeated many times on TV. Since the popularization of home video in the 1980s, their many editions are sold and re-sold every year during the holiday shopping season. Notable examples are the many versions of the ballet ''The Nutcracker'', the 1946 film ''It's a Wonderful Life'', and the similarly themed versions of Dickens' ''A Christmas Carol'', in which th ...
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1953 Television Specials
Events January * January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma. * January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a government-in-exile in Oslo. * January 14 ** Marshal Josip Broz Tito is chosen President of Yugoslavia. ** The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon. * January 15 – Georg Dertinger, foreign minister of East Germany, is arrested for spying. * January 19 – 71.1% of all television sets in the United States are tuned into ''I Love Lucy'', to watch Lucy give birth to Little Ricky, which is more people than those who tune into Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration the next day. This record has yet to be broken. * January 20 – Dwight D. Eisenhower is sworn in as the 34th President of the United States. * January 24 ** Mau Mau Uprising: Rebels in Kenya kill the Ruck family (father, mother, and six-year-old son). ** Leader of East Germany Walter Ulbricht announces that agriculture will be collectiviz ...
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The Nutcracker
''The Nutcracker'' ( rus, Щелкунчик, Shchelkunchik, links=no ) is an 1892 two-act ballet (""; russian: балет-феерия, link=no, ), originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Op. 71). The libretto is adapted from E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". Although the original production was not a success, the 20-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was. The complete ''Nutcracker'' has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s and is now performed by countless ballet companies, primarily during the Christmas season, especially in North America. Major American ballet companies generate around 40% of their annual ticket revenues from performances of ''The Nutcracker''. The ballet's score has been used in several film adaptations of Hoffmann's story. Tchaikovsky's score has become one of his most famous compositions. Among other things, the score is ...
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Public Television
Public broadcasting involves radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing and commercial financing. Public broadcasting may be nationally or locally operated, depending on the country and the station. In some countries a single organization runs public broadcasting. Other countries have multiple public-broadcasting organizations operating regionally or in different languages. Historically, public broadcasting was once the dominant or only form of broadcasting in many countries (with the notable exceptions of the United States, Mexico and Brazil). Commercial broadcasting now also exists in most of these countries; the number of countries with only public broadcasting declined substantially during the latter part of the 20th century. Definition The primary mission of public broadcasting is that of public servic ...
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United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ...
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Television Special
A television special (often TV special, or rarely television spectacular) is a standalone television show which may also temporarily interrupt episodic programming normally scheduled for a given time slot. Some specials provide a full range of entertainment and informational value available via the television medium (news, drama, comedy, variety, cultural), in various formats (live television, documentary, studio production, animation, film), and in any viewing lengths (short films, feature films, miniseries, telethons). Examples The types of shows described as television specials include: *One-time comedy shows *Adaptations of operas, Broadway plays, and other musicals *Celebrity profiles, interviews, or tribute specials * Seasonal programs or parades: Christmas television specials, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, New Year's Eve *Theatrical films and "made-for-TV" movies *Animated cartoons (shorts) *Irregular sports events: Olympic Games, Super Bowl *Beauty pageants: Miss Amer ...
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Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of world's largest metropolitan regions, with 6.245 million residents . The city's population at the 2020 census was 1,603,797, and over 56 million people live within of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker. The city served as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's inde ...
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Clement Moore
Clement Clarke Moore (July 15, 1779 – July 10, 1863) was an American writer, scholar and real estate developer. He is best known as author of the Christmas poem " A Visit from St. Nicholas." Moore was Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature, as well as Divinity and Biblical Learning, at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in New York City. The seminary was developed on land donated by Moore and it continues on this site at Ninth Avenue between 20th and 21st streets, in an area known as Chelsea Square. Moore gained considerable wealth by subdividing and developing other parts of his large inherited estate in what became known as the residential neighborhood of Chelsea. He also served for 44 years as a member of the board of trustees of Columbia College (later University), and was a board member of the New York Society Library and the New York Institution for the Blind. " A Visit from St. Nicholas," which later became widely known by its openi ...
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