On the count of three, readers, let us sing in unison: “We wish you a Jewish Christmas, we wish you a Jewish Christmas. We wish you a Jewish Christmas and a goyish New Year.”
That’s all I could think of at the start of Hallmark’s unusual 1977 holiday television presentation, Have I Got a Christmas for You, which opens with Milton Berle tossing a few bucks to a bell ringer dressed as Santa Claus. Directly approaching the camera afterward, he begins his narration: “As you may have guessed, our story has to do with Christmas. Which, in itself, is not exactly unusual this time of the year. Except for one thing—it began some weeks ago in Temple Beth Shalom, at a board of trustees meeting.”
By then I was already nervous, I’ll confess, and half-expected a cut to an assembly of shadowy money lenders, even though Uncle Miltie grew up as Mendel Berlinger and was unlikely to lead us astray. “I was convinced it would end in disaster,” he admits, as we join a contentious meeting already in progress, with Sydney Weinberg (Jack Carter) making an unusual proposal: That the synagogue perform “a gesture of goodwill and thanks to our Christian neighbors” by covering for essential workers on Christmas Eve, as an Italian coworker did for him ahead of Yom Kippur.
Berle’s cantankerous Morris Glickstein is virulently opposed to the idea, which is supported by everyone else. Debate and philosophical arguments naturally ensue. In an unrealistic touch, when the rabbi (played by Stanley Zbornak himself, Herb Edelman) is asked for his opinion, he keeps his answer brief. Glickstein’s primary concern is the optics. “Just suppose that things go wrong,” he suggests. “An emergency here, a crisis there, an important job botched up because of inexperience. Who gets the blame? What happens to our relations with our Christian neighbors then? I’ll tell you what happens. Disaster.”
Equally improbable is that there’s only one Glickstein in the bunch, imagining accidental electrocutions at the power plant as demand for volunteers outpaces supply. The rabbi calls him “a special case,” telling Reverend Powers (Don Chastain), “He’s a successful man who feels his luck might change if he ever stops worrying.” When the big day comes around, Glickstein’s correct that there are crises, but most are easy to resolve: a taxi driver’s flat tire needs changing; cautious, controlling insurance salesman Leo Silver (Harold Gould, like Edelman a Golden Girls stalwart) must stop smothering his college-aged son (Barry Pearl) long enough for the kid to fill in at a radio station.
On the weirder end of the spectrum, there’s the tale of the Levines, Dan (Alex Cord, who can’t decide whether his character has a tic disorder) and Marcia (Adrienne Barbeau, always entertaining — except maybe in Valentine Magic on Love Island), whose union has turned cold and sexless. They’re conscripted to fill in at an Irish bar the night before their departure for separate vacations. Dan wants free rein to sleep around on their trips but teary-eyed Marcia seems less sure. Will an evening spent in the company of tipsy revelers (including Jim Backus) reverse their connubial fortunes? After all, nothing puts the spark back in a dying marriage quite like serving eggnog to drunks and substituting goulash for Irish beef stew after a kitchen calamity.
Widowed former nurse Adele (Sheree North) is tasked with the film’s most dramatic storyline, which is set in a children’s hospital. More than twenty years out of practice, she’s assigned to Sharon (Kim Fields, soon to learn The Facts of Life), a sickle cell patient whose spleen is on the verge of rupturing. (George Takei appears briefly as a doctor.) North, like Barbeau and Gould, has the right amount of vulnerability to carry her segment, but these flimsy subplots don’t add up to much, no matter how likable the performers.
Jerome Coopersmith’s teleplay relies too heavily on Berle’s asides to the camera, and some of its jokes—as when Glickstein compares the temple’s undertaking to the storming of the beaches at Normandy—fall awkwardly flat. And that’s without getting into the crack about the retired cop who fears losing his pension if he returns to duty for the night, or the moment Backus tells the Levines, “I thought your people didn’t care so much for whiskey.” As with Hallmark’s modern Jewish holiday films, Have I Got a Christmas for You mostly exists to gently reassure Gentiles that Jews are just like them. By the time Adele prays for Sharon’s survival against the backdrop of a hospital room’s wall cross, you might be ready to part with an “oy vey iz mir.”
Streaming and DVD availability
Have I Got a Christmas for You isn’t available on DVD and doesn’t stream in authorized form on any platforms, but you can currently find it on YouTube.
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
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