This Week’s Holiday Specials

12:42PM

December 20, 2011

WOSU TV Program Director

Contact the Author:

I’m always checking the special holiday TV listings guide to make sure our programs are in there. Most of the time they make it but a few get left off here and there. This week we begin the Hanukkah celebration and count down the final days to Christmas with several specials throughout the schedule.

Kids can look forward to a special SHALOM SESAME, and follow Grover as he searches for the missing menorah. On Friday, December 23rd CURIOUS GEORGE is back in his own special movie. PBSKids and PBSKids Go! will celebrate all week with special holiday themed programs.

For the bigger kids, Lidia Bastianich presents her first special, LIDIA CELEBRATES AMERICA: HOLIDAY TABLES AND TRADITIONS. Lidia shows us four very different holiday tables and traditions: an Italian Christmas Eve with actors Mo Rocca and Stanley Tucci; a Mexican-American Christmas with four generations of the Cortez family in San Antonio; a Chinese New Year celebration with the Fong-Torres family in San Francisco; and a Jewish-American Passover in New York.

The beautiful choirs of St. Olaf and Belmont are back with brand new Christmas concerts. St. Olaf’s annual musical celebration marks the 100th anniversary of the annual Christmas Festival from St. Olaf College in Minnesota. This centennial performance will debut newly commissioned works by American composers Andre J. Thomas and David N. Childs. Down in Nashville CHRISTMAS AT BELMONT is an annual Belmont University tradition celebrating the holiday season. The concert features a collage of familiar carols, classics, and light-hearted seasonal favorites. Then we’ll mix it up a bit on Friday evening with a B.E. TAYLOR CHRISTMAS CONCERT. The one-hour concert features Taylor’s modern arrangements of perennial Christmas favorites. The set list will include: “Away in the Manger,” “O’ Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Joy to the World” and many more.

NATURE is back with viewer favorite, CHRISTMAS IN YELLOWSTONE. As snow falls and Christmas lights glow in Jackson Hole, a holiday season of a different sort settles in the great winter world of Yellowstone. Breathtaking landscapes frame scenes of wolves and coyotes, elk and bison, bears and otters as they make their way through their most challenging season of the year. For some human celebration, join TRAVELSCOPE’S Joseph Rosendo as he explores CHRISTMAS IN SWITZERLAND. Experience a Swiss-style Christmas at some of the country’s holiday markets, where food stalls feature some of the best regional fare. I can say from personal experience, there is nothing like eating a bratwurst fresh off the grill on a cold night in the Christmas Market! Rosendo enjoys a scenic train ride to Rocher-de-Naye (where he meets Father Christmas and his trusty companion, the Schmutzli, at Santa’s Village), takes in the sights of Montreux atop a Ferris wheel, watches an artist create hand-blown glass ornaments and witnesses a 600-year-old clock-tower tradition in Lausanne.

To know when all of these special programs and more will air, please check our website, http://beta.wosu.org/television/schedule/ for complete schedule listings.