December 13, 2007 - "Late Show" Christmas - Baby, Please Come Home

My wish for the holidays this year is simple but sincere, and involves the no-end-in-sight writers' strike. I wish Late Show with David Letterman could get special dispensation to resume production of its CBS talk show, if only for one day.

Otherwise, before the month is out, viewers will be handed a big lump of coal, instead of another delightful dose of one of the holiday's most entertaining TV traditions.

Every year on his last show before Christmas, Letterman brings on Darlene Love to have her sing the song she first recorded in the early 1960s on a Phil Spector holiday record: "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." Backed by Paul Shaffer and the band, an augmented orchestra and a stage full of backup singers, this annual treat has been served up since Letterman first shared the Love on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman in 1986.

How long a tradition is that? In TV terms, an eternity. Longer than Law & Order has been on the air. It predates not only the finales, but the premieres, of Seinfeld, Frasier, Friends and E.R.

Look at it this way: The Christmas after L.A. Law was unveiled, that's when Love first belted "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" to the delight of Letterman and his viewers.

Or, better yet, look at it this way: Love and Letterman already had established this number as a late-night TV tradition before the previous strike by the Writers Guild of America - and that was 20 years ago.

Something this venerable, and this beautiful, should not be tossed aside lightly. This isn't a streak that should be hobbled with an asterisk. In the spirit of the season, Late Show should be given the okay to mount one new show, to be telecast either Friday, Dec. 21, or Monday, on Christmas Eve.

A CBS spokesperson said yesterday that not even the rerun schedule for Late Show has been set past this week, so we don't know yet whether any earlier Love holiday appearance, much less which one, will be rerun before Christmas. For my money, CBS and Letterman could have started repeating them already - all of them - in a sequential countdown replaying the entire Late Show Christmas canon.

But that's not the best solution, or the point. The point is, commercial broadcast TV has almost no durable holiday traditions left. Why extinguish one of the few remaining shining stars when there's no real need to?

Love's always thrilling vocal is the most tenured spirit-of-the-holiday reason to cut Letterman a break, but isn't the only one. For 10 years, Jay Thomas has shown up to toss a football, with uncanny accuracy, at the giant meatball atop the Late Show tree. And for four years straight, he's told Letterman the same long, true "Lone Ranger" story.

If you have to ask why these are fun and funny, you haven't been watching, which means you don't know what you're missing. But those of us who have looked forward to and thoroughly enjoyed these annual Letterman shows, we do know what we're about to be missing. And we shouldn't have to miss it.

To all the Scrooges at (or away from) the negotiating table, we, the viewers, aren't asking for much this Christmas. We're not asking for the moon, or the stars, or a quick end to the strike. To paraphrase the Beatles:

All we need is Love.