Thomas and the Winter Holiday Debate

Ah, Christmas - whether you think it's the most wonderful time of the year or a bunch of "bah, humbug," it has always played an important part in the world of Thomas the tank engine and all his friends. It had begun back in 1952 in the final story of Toby the Tram Engine, Mrs. Kyndley's Christmas, where the elderly lady herself rescues Thomas and his passengers from a landslide outside her cottage, and in return, the Fat Controller sends her to Bournemouth to get better. One year later (in the books' timeline), Thomas and Toby repay her with a Christmas party at Tidmouth Sheds in Thomas' Christmas Party in 1984, which was adapted for the season one finale.

The significance to Sodor celebrating Christmas is because the Rev. W. Awdry was a clergyman, and therefore, Sodor was largely Anglican (Christian if you're unfamiliar with British terms).

Come 1986, for the season two finale, Christopher Awdry wrote Thomas and the Missing Christmas Tree, and in 1992 for season three's finale, Britt Allcroft and David Mitton wrote Thomas and Percy's Christmas Adventure, which was also poorly rewritten for Thanksgiving in America. Seasons four and five had no Christmas stories, but they had one winter-themed episode each.

In 2002, for season six, we had our first Christmas-themed Thomas episode in ten years with It's Only Snow, involving Thomas helping to deliver a tree to the villagers with an old snowplough, but there was one teeny little issue here... The term Christmas had been dropped and replaced by Winter Holiday to make an inclusive holiday for all religions.

NO. You can't do that. You cannot change a holiday's name when the holiday in question is shown on the television screen! If you change the name, then it sounds like you're changing the meaning of it! That's like changing "shell shock" to soften the language like "post-traumatic stress disorder". Simple, honest, direct language is all you need - it takes much less syllables! Winter Holiday has five, and Christmas only has two!

For years, the issue went unnoticed, barring Not So Hasty Puddings in season seven, and in the Nitrogen Era, the term Christmas returned, but the writers kept flip-flopping between that and Winter Holiday. For example, someone says Christmas tree in one scene, and then Winter Holiday in the next.

Come October 2011, Awdry's daughter Hilary Fortnam called out on the 2006 UK DVD Little Engines, Big Days Out (Tales from the Tracks in the US) - specifically, the episode Keeping Up with James, as well as an interactive segment - for calling Christmas "Winter Holidays" and a Christmas tree a "tree with decorations". Hit Entertainment tried to defend by saying it was not a seasonal release, but because of the issue, Merry Winter Wish was delayed for the UK by a year in order to redub the audio.

There are several problems here:

1. Changing Winter Holiday to Christmas Holiday - extra word: "holiday". Unneeded; just Christmas is enough! Simple, tells the story!
2. Speaking of Christmas, it has been used in several episodes since Keeping Up with James aired.
3. Why on earth would people complain over an episode that's six years old (at the time of controversy) when there's far worse being spewed out at the time? Racism and discrimination, rhyming and alliteration, reckless behavior, real-life heroes in a bad light, etc. - why did people not care?

What I'm trying to say is you can't have your money and spend it (you can't have it both ways, in other words), and that's what they did trying to be politically correct by not using the term Christmas. If you allow me to go off on slight tangent here, parents don't want children to see cripples or homosexuals on television, but pet abuse, murder, and suicide appear to be fine with them! If pet abuse and neglect is shown, parents need to take action and call out the studio for showing such abhorrent behavior! If I have children, I'd never let them see the likes of A Pal for Gary or One Coarse Meal; they deserve better than that crap!

Back to the Winter Holiday issue, in 2012, the UK broadcast of season 16 used the term Christmas, sometimes as Christmas Holiday, but the US was still annoyed with the use of Winter Holiday. Come season 17, we finally got Christmas back full time in Santa's Little Engine and The Missing Christmas Decorations. We thank you, Hilary Fortnam, for bringing this issue to an end; your father must be proud of you, I'm sure.