[7.1/10] If I didn’t get ADHD from watching this as a kid, I certainly got it now. But in a fun way! Pee Wee and his playhouse Xmas celebration are appropriately zany and frantic for this extremely wacky and extroverted character. Everything in the special moves at an insane pace, jumping from one loony gag to another. Stretched out to forty-five minutes, it starts to become exhausting after a while, but there’s still plenty of chuckles and yuletide lunacy to appreciate in that span.

*Pee Wee’s Playhouse* is basically a live action cartoon, and it works on that principle. The special has some solid running gags, like Pee Wee receiving nothing but fruitcakes from his friends and neighbors and him working Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello like a taskmaster to make Xmas cards. There’s a decent throughline about Pee Wee being rather greedy for the holiday, asking for everything under the sun, only to relent when Santa tells him that fulfilling all of Pee Wee’s requests would mean denying the other kids around the world any presents.

But mostly, the special is just a loose framework upon which to build silly jokes and routines with a light Xmas-y feel, and offer a cavalcade of celebrity cameos and musical numbers. There’s some good diversity here, not only in the cast, but in the recognition of Mexican Xmas celebration and a short segment on Chanukah. I’ll confess that I had no idea who half of the celebrities were, but that’s to be expected from something made 30+ years ago.

Overall, this one will work best for those nostalgic for Pee Wee’s antics from when they were kids. It’s a treat to see the puppeteering, stop motion animation, classic cartoons, and general kid-like zaniness that *Pee Wee’s Playhouse* exuded. It might not work as well for those without a rose-colored fondness for such antics, or those who like their Xmas specials to be quieter and more sentimental, but it’s still a fun lark.