How a Forgotten Disney Special Became Sweden’s Beloved Christmas Tradition

Of all the Christmas traditions around the world, perhaps one of the most surprising is that every year, at just after 3:00 in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, upwards of 3 million people across Sweden (around one-third of the entire country) will routinely sit down to watch an decades-old animated holiday special starring the character “Kalle Anka”—better known outside of Sweden as Walt Disney’s Donald Duck.

The animation in question is Disney’s 1958 made-for-TV anthology From All of Us to All of You. Hosted by Jiminy Cricket, the hour-long compilation features a mishmash clips and musical numbers lifted from several of Disney’s feature-length movies from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s (including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella), alongside a number of the studio’s early animated shorts, including the suitably festive 1952 short Pluto’s Christmas Tree, as well as one of Donald Duck’s more famous outings, 1947’s Clown of the Jungle.

In fact, it is due to the relative popularity of Donald Duck in Sweden compared to many of Disney’s other characters that From All of Us to All of You has become known as “Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul” in Sweden—or “Donald Duck and His Friends Wish You a Merry Christmas.” To most Swedes, however, the special is known more simply as Kalle Anka, “Donald Duck.”

The Popularity of Kalle Anka

From All of Us to All of You was first broadcast on TV in the United States in 1958, before making its debut on Sweden’s SVT1 channel two years later. The special has been broadcast in Sweden every year since, albeit with several minor changes to the clips and songs included over the decades—changes that have not been entirely without controversy.

When Ferdinand the Bull was swapped out for Disney’s take on The Ugly Duckling in 1982, for instance, there was such an outcry that the original content of the show had been altered that SVT1 was compelled to reverse the change the following year.

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The clips and songs have remained largely unchanged ever since, much to the delight of the millions of viewers who religiously tune in to the show every year. In fact, Kalle Anka frequently ranks among the most watched television broadcasts of the year in Sweden (if not ranking in first place overall), with a new record set as relatively recently as 1997, when just over half the population of the entire country sat down to watch it. 

The History Behind it

But how has this decades-old, fairly long-forgotten made-for-TV Disney anthology become such a big deal in Sweden? Well, in truth, it is little more than an accident of broadcast history. 

At least part of the reason for Kalle Anka’s popularity in Sweden is that at the time of its television debut in 1960, Sweden’s SVT1 broadcast network was the country’s only TV channel (and would remain so for the next nine years). With little option but to tune in, a huge captive audience of Swedish people watched the hour-long special, making it popular enough to warrant a repeat broadcast the following year—and the year after that, and the year after that, and so on up to today! 

Television ownership has also been cited as another reason for the broadcast soon turning into an annual tradition. Relatively few Swedish households would have had television sets in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, but as those numbers increased, more households would be seeing the show for the first time. And Christmastime too was one of the very few times when Swedes could see American-produced films and shows on national television. 

Put all of these factors together—along with a good old dose of Disney nostalgia, and festive overindulgence—and you have the perfect recipe for a Christmas Eve afternoon comfort-watch that has entertained audiences for over sixty years.