First showing on CBS in 1978, A Special Sesame Street Christmas is an hour-long commercial TV special produced not by Children's Television Workshop, but by Bob Banner Associates, known for their work on Perry Como's Christmas specials. The special was made with paid right to the Sesame Street set and characters. The special has many celebrities but only features a sizable amount of Sesame Street's cast and only features the Muppet characters of Big Bird, Oscar, and Barkley. The main plot of the special is broken up into several sub-plots but perhaps the most important is that of the cast and celebrities trying to get Oscar to lose his Scrooge-like attitude.