In February, 1975, television producer Patrick Loubert and his wife, Judy Ann, were wakened from a deep sleep by a UFO on it’s scheduled run over their home on Algonquin Island in Toronto Bay. They rushed out into the wintry night with their neighbours and stared in wonderment at what was apparently an intergalactic craft as it swooped overhead and was gone.

Right then, Patrick had an idea.

He conceived an animated Christmas special about three spacemen who arrive on Earth searching for an explanation of a huge star which had appeared in Earth’s galaxy 2,000 years ago.

The idea has been transformed into 30 minutes of animated entrancement which will appear on the CBC network on December 6 under the title A Cosmic Christmas. Patrick Loubert is a founding member of Nelvana Limited, a production company which operated out of a warehouse building on Queen’s Quay in Toronto, and the company’s artists fashioned 40,000 drawings to animate his UFO-inspired drama. A Cosmic Christmas has been sold in the U.S. to NBC on a three-year contract, and will first appear on that network on December 7th.

A Cosmic Christmas is closely patterned on Patrick Loubert’s original concept. Almathor, Plutox and Lexicon, three spacemen wearing what appear to be bishops’ mitres, arrive on Earth in a spaceship on a mission to determine the meaning of the great star. They have hastened, but it is a long distance from where they started in space to a forest outside a small town.

The first earthlings they encounter are a red-headed boy names Peter and his pet Canada goose, Lucy. The big bird and the spacemen’s pet, Jellybean, which resembles an airborne jellyfish, become almost instant friends. The spacemen, who are equipped to speak all languages, then enquire about the great star that gleamed over the Earth 20 centuries ago.

“The star that you saw shone over Bethlehem because Jesus Christ was born there,” Peter says. “He was very special. This is his birthday and we celebrate it every year with love, peace and caring for others. And that’s Christmas!”

Peter leads the spacemen through the town to demonstrate the meaning of Christmas. But there they see the greed, the scrambling, the neurosis of the holiday. So Peter takes them home to his parents and his grandmother, whom he asks to tell of bygone Christmases.

“Oh, my, when I was a young girl, Christmas was the happiest time of the year for everyone,” she says. “My father would search for a tree in the forest and bring it home…”

As she talks, the spacemen recreate the tree, the decorations, the food she describes, including the silver star atop the tree. But no sooner are the trappings of Christmas in place than there is a loud squawk outside an the family rushes out to discover that a street punk named Marvin has run off with Lucy who now faces a future that goes no further than a platter.

The family give chase. Marvin, the thief, falls through the ice while trying to cross a pond. Peter, who attempts to rescue him, falls in and the two are in danger of drowning, for a chain the townsfolk form by holding hands is too short to reach them.

Then the three spacemen who are forbidden to interfere in any earthly activity, respond to the cries for help, join the chain and the boys are rescued. The spacemen then reach one conclusion. “Perhaps that is the meaning of Christmas,” Plutox says. “They said help.”

The thief, Marvin, is forgiven and asked to Peter’s for dinner. The townspeople, including the mayor and chief of police, bring food and there is a feast. The wisemen leave, feeling they have at least a rudiment of the meaning of Christmas.

Sylvia Tyson wrote the songs The Way That Christmas Used To Be, and Why Don’t They Look To The Stars for the program. They are happy songs and A Cosmic Christmas is a happy event. It fits the season nicely.

– Wessely Hicks. National Editor, TV Times, Calgary Herald, December 2, 1977