A New Holiday Tradition | By Daron Faught

Sometimes holiday traditions are caused by happy accidents. For example, the 1946 film "It's A Wonderful Life" wasn't originally a Christmas classic. In fact, it wasn't seen as a classic of any kind. It bombed at the box office during its original release. This might be why the copyright holders of the movie forgot to renew their copyright some time during the 1970s. This meant it fell into the public domain and any two-bit TV station could broadcast the picture without paying any sort of syndication fee to the copyright holders. Add the fact that cable TV grew by several hundreds of channels, and a classic would soon be born.

The same thing happened to an episode of the long-running PBS music series "Austin City Limits." The eclectic, gravelly voiced folk musician, Tom Waits, taped an episode on December 5, 1978. The concert contained everything a fan could want from him and more. The stage props were something you would definitely not see from a Willie Nelson performance, including old gas pumps and a functional streetlight with a little bit of rain during the show causing Waits to break out his umbrella.

One of his more popular fan favorites was a song called "Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis." Just to mix things up a bit, Waits sang the first verse to "Silent Night" before launching into the tune. The concert was first broadcast sometime in 1979 but soon enough, viewers started to call their local PBS affiliate around December to ask if that specific episode could be run again during the holidays. Remember; this was before home recording had reached the masses. Even though PBS would eventually release some ASL episodes on home video, this one remains in the vault and only shows up once a year.

The PBS Website says it will be broadcast this year on Saturday, December 22nd. It doesn't say what time it will be shown, but usually this episode is scheduled after 9 p.m. on most Saturdays. So if you're in the mood for something a little different to view, this is what I would call "Must-See TV." Go ahead and give it a shot. A guy who coined the famous phrase, "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy" can't be all that bad, right?