TV Talk: Joe Wos reads his ‘Yinzer’s Night Before Christmas’ on WQED-TV
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Emmy-winning “Cartoon Academy” host Joe Wos brings his “Yinzer’s Night Before Christmas” to WQED-TV as a three-minute short that will air throughout December beginning after the 4 p.m. airing of “Lucy Worsley’s 12 Days of Tudor Christmas” on Dec. 11. The video also will post online at youtube.com/@WQED and at wqed.org/cartoonacademy.
After publishing the storybook “The Three Little Pigsburghers as told in Pittsburghese” in 2014, Wos had the idea to translate Clement Clarke Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas” into Pittsburghese. The result was published in the Tribune-Review in December 2015.
In the years since Wos first adapted the Christmas classic, he learned the original author, Moore, is his second cousin.
Among the lines in Wos’ versions, he’s partial to, “And mawm in her babushka and me in my hat, Had just settled dahn for a long winner nat.”
“I was very proud of that line because it was taking the classic line, which is, ‘And Mama in her kerchief, and I in my cap, had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,’ and just giving that a Pittsburgh twist, not just with the words but what they were wearing, playing with the language and the garb and everything else.”
Wos said as the years passed, every holiday season he’d hear from people who had clipped his adaptation out of the newspaper. Some had even laminated it.
“They’d have grandpa read it every Christmas,” Wos said. “One of the military groups here in Pittsburgh did a reading of it where they had their people stationed all over the world each read one line. So it’s developing this little Pittsburgh following that I didn’t know was there.”
As Wos was noodling around ideas for WQED’s “Cartoon Academy,” he had the notion of a Christmas special because, he said, “cartoons and holiday specials go hand-in-hand. My major influences were the Peanuts specials and the Grinch.”
Wos’ live-action reading was filmed at The Woods House in Hazelwood in October.
“(The building is) from the 1700s, which is great because it’s also the (time of the) early origins of Pittsburghese,” Wos said. “The Scottish settlers who came here, that’s where a lot of that early dialect was just beginning.”
In addition to Wos’ reading, he also created color illustrations that will be displayed “Reading Rainbow”-style for “that illusion of motion.” Wos worked on the illustrations last week during an artist’s residency at the California home of Charles M. Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts.”
“What a great way to do the illustrations for your holiday special — at the home of Charles Schulz!” Wos said.
With those illustrations completed, Wos plans to use them to create a “Yinzer’s Night Before Christmas” storybook that will be published in time for Christmas 2024.
“The Yinzer’s Night Before Christmas” is WQED’s only new Christmas program for 2023, but plenty of shows from holiday seasons past will re-air including “It’s Pittsburgh and a Lot of Other Stuff: I Think Santa Will Like The Sled” (4:30 p.m. Dec. 8), “It’s Pittsburgh and a Lot of Other Stuff: Gingerbread Lane” (4:30 p.m. Dec. 21), “WQED Holiday Sessions 2022” (12 p.m. Dec. 24 and 7:30 p.m. Dec. 25), WQED Holiday Sessions 2020 (12:30 p.m. Dec. 24), “A Christmas Cookie Story” (1 p.m. Dec. 24) and “Happy Holidays in Pittsburgh” (2 p.m. Dec. 24).
In addition, WQED-TV will broadcast PBS’s “Call the Midwife Holiday Special 2023” (8 and 9:30 p.m. Dec. 25).
KDKA-TV
KDKA-TV debuts “The 70th Annual Children’s Hospital Free Care Fund Telethon” (7-8 p.m. Dec. 14), hosted by Lynne Hayes-Freeland and Ken Rice and with appearances by other current and former KDKA-TV and KDKA-AM talent.
WPXI-TV
No local holiday specials on Channel 11, but the station will offer two syndicated programs, “An American Christmas” (1:30 p.m. Dec. 24) and “Mark Milovats 2023 Christmas Wonderland Special” (1 p.m. Dec. 10, 12:30 p.m. Dec. 24).
WTAE-TV
Channel 4’s annual “Project Bundle-Up” fundraiser will be held Dec. 1 during newscast cut-ins.