What is it with Christmas & the Muppets?
I don't know what it is about the Christmas specials, but there hasn' been one yet that doesn't get me to this day. Someone else mentioned the SS Christmas when Oscar tells Big Bird that Santa can't possibly get to every child on Christmas Eve, pointing out that 123 Sesame Street doesn't have a chimney for Santa to come down. The image of Big Bird sitting on the roof, desperately waiting for Santa, shivering like mad because it's so cold that icicles are forming on his beak...I'm getting misty now just writing about it.
The Christmas special at Fozzie's Grandmother's didn't make me cry at the time, but looking back it's hard not to feel a little sad when I see Jim Henson looking out at them all and saying how glad he is when they're happy, then turning to wash the dishes.
In the last Christmas special I lose it when Kermit vists Miss Piggy in the world in which he was never born. It's a funny scene, I'll grant you, but there is such an underlying sadness in that scene that I start crying from the moment she opens the door.
Ousdie of Christmas, the song "Saying Goodbye" gets all of us I think; no one who loves the muppets could ever be okay with them going their seperate ways.
Of course the best thing about tear-jeker moments with the muppets is having the confidence to let yourself cry for that moment because we knows that it will ALWAYS be okay in the end.