The Christmas season is here-in case you need any further reminder-and most TV programs and personalities are saluting the holiday spirit with a richly laden cornucopia of spectaculars, religious services, special dramatic offerings and carol singing. Although many TV stars scheduled their Christmas shows a week or more before the holidays, most still want to wish you a Merry Christmas over the holiday weekend.
Among the top items on the Christmas Eve agenda tonight is NBC's "Babes in Toyland" spectacular. Max Liebman's version of the Victor Herbert operetta was telecast last Christmas, and the repeat production will have several of the original stars in the same roles. Dennis Day, Dave Garroway, the Bil and Cora Baird puppets, Wally Cox and Jack E. Leonard head the cast.
The Perry Como Show will boast an enlarged version of Perry's traditional holiday program. Perry's children, with those of the cast and crew, will be guests. Perry will narrate for the youngsters the story of the first Christmas, and then lead the caroling.
NBC winds up its regular Christmas Eve line-up with Your Hit Parade, on which all songs will have a holiday motif. Dorothy Collins, Gisele MacKenzie, Snooky Lanson, Russell Arms and the other Hit Paraders will once more go out "on location" to New York's Rockefeller Center ice rink for a round of carols.
Christmas Eve on CBS will see the Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show salute the holiday, with Raymond Massey offering a special Christmas reading. Jackie Gleason and his Honeymooners are injecting the Christmas spirit into their show by having Ralph Kramden (Gleason) enthusiastic about the gift he has bought for his ever- lovin' Alice (Audrey Meadows), only to discover that it won't receive the response he anticipated.
On CBS' Two for the Money, Herb Shriner and his harmonica band will play Christmas carols. ABC's Ozark Jubilee has scheduled a Christmas show, and Alice Lon and the choral group will sing traditional hymns and carols on The Lawrence Welk Show.
On a deeper religious note, CBS plans an hour-long pickup of services from the National Cathedral in Wash- ington, D.C., starting at 11:30 P.M. (EST). This is to be followed by 15 minutes of choral singing by the Bell Telephone Chorus, a pickup of the traditional candlelight procession from Boys Town, Neb. and the annual Boys Town mass. NBC is expected to tele- vise services from St. Patrick's Cathe- dral in New York.
As for Christmas Day, TV will de- vote it almost exclusively to special programming. Even CBS' Adventure will salute the day by trying to strike oil on its oil well, Adventure No. 1, which was introduced on the show about two months ago. Dr. Benjamin Spock's program on NBC will feature a choir and narration of the Christmas story. NBC will also present a film of the Nativity, "No Room at the Inn." CBS will dramatize the visit of the Wise Men on Lamp Unto My Feet.
"Amahl and the Night Visitors," the Gian-Carlo Menotti opera that has become a TV Christmas classic, will be the Alcoa Hour presentation Christ- mas Night. It's a Great Life will repeat its Christmas show of last year, titled "There Is a Santa Claus," in which a small boy's faith in Santa is restored and three skeptics (Michael O'Shea, James Dunn and William Bishop) see something to astonish them. Frontier celebrates Christmas with "The Long Road to Tucson," about a group of nuns from San Diego, who set out in a covered wagon to open a hospital in Tucson, and arrive there on Christmas Day after many trials and hard- ships. ABC's Famous Film Festival will present the first of two parts of the British ballet movie, "Red Shoes."
On Christmas Night G.E. Theater will stage a musical version of Stephen Vincent Benet's "A Child Is Born." The Loretta Young Show, too, will pay tribute to the season with an original drama titled "Christmas Stopover." Miss Young, returning to the program after a serious illness, plays a countergirl at a railroad station coffee shop, who has her faith in the Christmas spirit restored.
All these shows climax the TV Christmas season that began, in some cases, soon after Thanksgiving. Jimmy Durante, for example, played Santa's little helper on his show four weeks ago. Shower of Stars repeated its filmed version of Dickens' "Christmas Carol" on Dec. 15. The next night saw a pickup from Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey winter quarters at Sarasota, Fla., featuring the traditional circus Christmas party.
Last week, the Victors (Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray) celebrated the holidays by inviting their commuting friends over to sing Christmas carols on Caesar's Hour. On Father Knows Best, Robert Young, perturbed by his family's accent on gifts, drove them out to the country to cut a real Christmas tree and recapture the true Christmas feeling.
And TV won't soon forget Christ- mas this year, either. The holiday season will be celebrated throughout this week, winding up with an NBC spectacular Jan. 1 to welcome the New Year and with the last of the various football bowl games Jan. 2.
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