‘South Park’ Started as a… Christmas Card?!

The Big Picture

• South Park had unexpected origins, with the series actually starting as a short film that was turned into a Christmas card.
• Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s short film “Jesus vs. Frosty” caught the attention of Fox executive Brian Graden, leading to a collaboration that eventually became South Park.
• The Spirit of Christmas, the short film that went viral before the era of online virality, became the basis for the South Park episode “A Very Crappy Christmas.”

There are many ways for a show to go from idea to airing on television. Some shows are original and built from the ground up, some are adaptations based on movies, books, or other TV shows, and some are spun off from other already established shows. But occasionally a TV show will have a strange origin. The AppleTV mega hit Ted Lasso may seem to have just come out of a love for soccer and being kind, but Ted was actually a character created for a commercial to promote the Premier League on NBC in 2013. The quarter of a century-old South Park has similarly surprising origins. Not only was it not meant to be a TV show, but South Park was supposed to just be a Christmas card. Little did creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone know what the holidays would have in store for them.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s “Jesus vs. Frosty” Short Paved the Way for ‘South Park’

Like many film school graduates, Parker and Stone relocated to Los Angeles in order to get more work in the film industry. Upon their arrival, they began shopping around Cannibal! The Musical, their comedic and musical take on the legendary Colorado cannibal Alferd Packer. Their film did not end up getting bought by a major distributor (that honor went to the company behind The Toxic Avenger, Troma Entertainment), but it did establish the duo as two filmmakers to keep an eye on. There was even a moment when one network saw the opportunity to take the historical musical comedy of Cannibal! in order to create a children’s show. Time Warped never made it to air, but it established a key relationship for Parker and Stone with Fox executive Brian Graden.

Thankfully, Cannibal! The Musical was not the only movie Parker and Stone produced in college. They made many shorts while attending the University of Colorado in Boulder, including one that won Parker the Student Academy Award. But it was the holiday-centric “Jesus Vs. Frosty” that caught Graden’s eye. The short film follows four foul-mouth kids who put a magic hat on a snowman only for it to come to life and try to kill them. Frosty only manages to kill two of the children (one named Kenny) before Jesus intervenes to save the day. The two remaining boys then learn the true meaning of Christmas: presents. As Stone recalls on the Season 1 DVD commentary, Graden loved it and wanted a higher quality version all for the purposes of sending out a Christmas card. With no other jobs, Parker and Stone quickly agreed.

‘The Spirit of Christmas’ Unintentionally Set Up ‘South Park’

With a budget of two thousand dollars, Parker and Stone spent “a week of no sleep” in order to produce Graden’s Christmas card. They repurposed much of the original “Jesus vs. Frosty,” centering The Spirit of Christmas on four boys who get wrapped up in a battle between Christmas icons. This version features Santa in lieu of Frosty and has a dialogue about whether Christmas is about the spiritual side of things, represented by Jesus, or the broader appeal to human nature and commercialism, represented by Santa. Like the original short the boys ultimately learn the true spirit of Christmas presents.

The Spirit of Christmas does hint at what South Park would become, even if that was never the intent. As Parker told Entertainment Weekly later, “We had talked about if it could ever be a show, and that’s why at the very beginning of ‘The Spirit of Christmas’ we put the sign that said ‘South Park’ in it. It was just in the back of our minds. We didn’t even put our names on it because we thought, “Oh, this is just a thing we’re making.”

Beyond that, Parker and Stone’s gifts for profanity shine through, the design of the boys is identical to the ones that would be on the show, Cartman is woefully anti-Semitic, the target is mocking the cultural extremes of what Christmas is about, and when in doubt the boys ask, “What would Brian Boitano do?” The seeds were planted, and not even the exec who had been working in Hollywood could expect what came next. “There was no calculation that millions of people would see this and then we’d get a TV series. I wanted to do something cool for the Christmas card, and those guys are geniuses,” said Graden to Entertainment Weekly.

‘The Spirit of Christmas’ Went Viral Before Viral Popularity Became a Thing

But take off it did. Graden sent VHS copies to a few dozen people in the industry, and soon “The Spirit of Christmas” became the new hottest thing. VHS copies floated around Hollywood, due in part to George Clooney being a big fan and sharing it himself. Graden told The Hollywood Reporter, “I didn’t think much about it, then in January and February I would go to meetings and people would say to me, “Have you seen this crazy video?” And they would pop in The Spirit of Christmas.” Soon, Parker and Stone found out people were getting jobs off of their work (which was easy since their names weren’t on it), but with some clarification from Graden, they eventually cleared up the confusion. This led to meetings with MTV and made minor, in-town, celebrities out of Parker and Stone. But most importantly, as Parker recalled to EW, “We were at bars trying to pick up girls and being like, ‘We’re the guys that made The Spirit of Christmas.’ We were kind of like little rock stars.”

The Spirit of Christmas continued to spread, eventually jumping from VHS to being uploaded to different websites on the internet. Despite the popularity, a TV show wasn’t certain to be the next step. Much like their experience with Cannibal!, even though people liked their work they wanted something different from Parker and Stone. There was even a push to make the show centered more around a family like the other major hit adult animated show at the time. MTV and Fox both passed on making a TV show out of The Spirit of Christmas. It was only the small cable network mostly airing reruns of Mystery Science Theater 3000 that was willing to take a chance on them, and South Park landed at its home to this day, Comedy Central.

‘The Spirit of Christmas’ Eventually Became a ‘South Park’ Episode

Nora Ephron famously lived by the mantra “everything is copy,” meaning any part of life can and should be used as writing material. Parker and Stone applied this for the season finale of the fourth season of South Park, “A Very Crappy Christmas.” In the episode, with the town lacking Christmas spirit, Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny are commissioned by the mayor to make their own Christmas special to boost spirits and by proxy the town’s economy. What results is actual footage of the original Spirit of Christmas incorporated into the show, with the whole town gathering together to watch, and then inspired to buy more presents.

In that episode’s commentary, Parker and Stone once again reference the short’s origins. For this episode, they had to use particular clips from The Spirit of Christmas so as not to violate copyright laws. Since The Spirit of Christmas was never meant to be more than a Christmas card, the songs were never legally cleared. They also cleverly construct the episode around choices in the original short. Kenny dies in the short? Well, that’s because he died when the boys were making it! Cartman’s voice sounds different? That’s because Stan had to do it when Cartman quit. There’s even a meta-reference to having Butters make the cutouts for the short as a nod to Parker and Stone’s long-time collaborator Eric Stough, who served as the inspiration for Butters.

The Spirit of Christmas is a key component of the legacy of South Park. It functions similarly to a “proof of concept,” a short segment filmmakers will sometimes make in order to sell their larger project. Even though that wasn’t the intent, once they saw it had an audience, it was clear something big was to come. Even in moments of doubt, Parker remembered, “All I knew [was] that this dumb little thing we made, people were somehow getting it from a friend of a friend and copying it. People would have these VHS copies where you could barely see the picture because it had been copied 400 times. We were just like, ‘We should not give up on this idea, because for people to work that hard to copy something and get it to their friends meant something.'” And in some way, isn’t bringing people together the real spirit of Christmas? No. It’s presents.

All episodes of South Park are currently streaming on Max and additional specials, including the recent “Joining the Panderverse,” are available on Paramount+.

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