Mitsuko Horie -- Oide White X'mas（おいで White X'mas）

 

I'm not sure what the situation has been of late for those traditional Xmas cartoons and Rankin & Bass stop-motion presentations, but when I was a kid, it was a given that they would be all over the channels. Outside of "A Charlie Brown Christmas", the one that I've known the best is the hour-long "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" with the vets from old Tinseltown, Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney. It was always heartwarming watching Kris Kringle when he was a young man fighting the imperialistic Burgermeister Meisterburger.

Now, just imagine if the life of Santa Claus and his family were made into a regular weekly anime series spanning between October and March. Well, that is indeed what was done back starting from 1984 when Fuji-TV broadcast "Mori no Tonto-tachi"（森のトントたち）. Known in English as "Elves of the Forest", the show depicted jolly ol' Santa and his elves living life large in a Finnish forest with the rest of the denizens.

I came across this one song from the soundtrack devised by Takeo Watanabe（渡辺岳夫）. Although it's neither the opening or closing theme, it's a pretty jaunty number sung by anison singer/seiyuu Mitsuko Horie（堀江美都子）who I have just written about last week for another anime theme song. "Oide White X'mas" (Come On, White Christmas) is about what I would expect for a J-Xmas tune for the kids: light and positive vocals by Horie and optimistic/industrious melody by Watanabe with lyrics by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）.

I'm gathering that the video below is the Spanish-language version of "Mori no Tonto-tachi" since I couldn't find the original Japanese show.