When I spent Christmas in Denmark a couple of years ago, I was told by a local that it is a widespread Danish tradition to watch the broadcast of a Disney Christmas special showing various cartoon clips on Christmas Eve. I thought that the popularity of that tradition must have been exaggerated, but when I looked it up online, I found that it was actually a vast understatement.
Throughout Scandinavia, families gather together on the afternoon of Christmas Eve to watch the same 1958 Disney special, "From All of Us to All of You," year after year, and it gets television ratings that rival the Super Bowl in the U.S.
It seems to be most popular in Sweden, where the show is called Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul (Donald Duck and His Friends Wish You a Merry Christmas). It's broadcast at 3:05 every Christmas Eve, and is usually the most watched show of the entire year in that country, although it sometimes finishes second through fourth.
Every year, about 40-50% of the entire country tunes in to watch. In a 2009 Slate article, American Jeremy Stahl describes his Christmas Eve with his Swedish wife-to-be's family in Sweden.
"The show's cultural significance cannot be overstated. You do not tape or DVR Kalle Anka for later viewing. You do not eat or prepare dinner while watching Kalle Anka. Age does not matter—every member of the family is expected to sit quietly together and watch a program that generations of Swedes have been watching for 50 years. Most families plan their entire Christmas around Kalle Anka, from the Smörgåsbord at lunch to the post-Kalle visit from Jultomten. "At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you can't to do anything else, because Sweden is closed," Lena Kättström Höök, a curator at the Nordic Museum who manages the "Traditions" exhibit, told me."
The special is also broadcast, to great popularity, in Finland and Norway. In Denmark, the show is called Disneys Juleshow: Fra alle os til alle jer (Disney's Christmas Show: From All of Us to All of You) and is broadcast every Christmas Eve at 4:00.
Here is the original 1958 show:
This example of American culture embedding itself into a new Christmas tradition in other countries, reminds me of KFC somehow successfully convincing all of Japan that buying its chicken should become a beloved national Christmas tradition. See Why Is KFC a Christmas Tradition in Japan?
