Oct 091941
 
two reels

On Christmas eve, Jerry the mouse begins playing with the Christmas presents and goads Tom the cat into chasing him. 9 min.

The third Tom and Jerry cartoon produced, The Night Before Christmas looks like all the other early Tom and Jerry shorts, and has pretty much the same structure as all of the later ones. The two animals run around, occasionally getting in some licks on each other.  Jerry tends to do better in the fights (but if he didn’t, he’d get eaten, so it’s a given he’ll do OK in direct confrontation), but this time around, Tom looks like the eventual winner. However, it’s Christmas, so everything is going to come out well. It is a bit sweeter than the average for the always fighting twosome, but that isn’t a detriment as the best gags aren’t slapstick.

This is viewable as background while wrapping presents, but won’t hold the attention of anyone with two digits in their age.