It slows your pulse. This is a Christmas Carol that gets under your skin through voice and song rather than spectacle, and the single strangest, best choice is Walter Matthau's Scrooge, a rasp so tired and mean it sounds like it hasn't been used kindly in decades. Tom Bosley narrates as B.A.H. Humbug, a bug who talks to you directly and keeps the whole thing from curdling into a lecture, and the 1956 musical score carries the emotional load, with Marley clanking through 'Mankind Should Be My Business' and Tiny Tim landing 'Yes, There Is a Santa Claus' without a single wink. The anime credential is real: Rankin/Bass farmed the animation out to Topcraft in Tokyo, the studio that would later dissolve into Studio Ghibli, and you can see it in the soft, patient backgrounds of Victorian London. Watch it once a December and let the bug do the talking.

Machi Ichiban no Kechinbou is a 1978 animated holiday special adapted from Charles Dickens's novel A Christmas Carol. Produced as a Rankin/Bass special, it remakes the 1956 musical television special of the same name, The Stingiest Man in Town. The single episode is a musical, and its genre labels also mark supernatural and mystery elements.