This is a cartoon in the Little Audrey series from Famous Studios. There will be spoilers ahead:This short begins with Santa making his rounds and singing as he does so. There are scenes with children trying to sneak a peek as Santa leaves gifts. The last child shown is Little Audrey. There's a nice gag with a mouse peeking out a hole, Santa spotting him and leaving cheese in a little stocking! Santa returns home and goes right to bed and to sleep. But he had some passengers-Little Audrey and a number of other children, each to one degree or another stereotypes, though the main source of comic relief is a Dutch boy wearing wooden shoes. The kids want to do something nice fore Santa for a change, so they sneak in and clean his home.They do the basic chores involved, rather humorously and a couple of the bits are very stereotypical in nature. The kids sing their own song while working. The Dutch boy, of course, nearly gets them found out more than once, amid disasters, but they finish the job just before Santa awakens. He finds everything arranged and a present under the tree to boot. He opens it and the last gag is too cute to spoil, so I won't.This short is worth watching once.

"Santa's Surprise" is from Famous Studios--the cartoon factory owned by Paramount. Up until the early 1940s, it had been Fleischer Brothers, but the brothers were long gone by the time this cute cartoon was made.It begins with Santa making Christmas deliveries--and several kids from around the world (including Little Audrey in her first cartoon) sneaking onto his sleigh. No, they are not terrorists but nice kids who want to do something nice for him when he returns home. So, the kids clean up Santa's place and leave his a Christmas tree with a present just for him.While this cartoon is pretty cute (especially the very end), I am pretty sure it's damned by good intentions that haven't kept up with changing times. Some of the kids (especially the black one) are real stereotypes and I am sure some folks would take offense, though the Dutch kid is by far the stupidest one and I assume the Dutch have thick enough skins to handle that. All in all, quite enjoyable but not up to the standards of the best cartoon shorts of the day--which were mostly coming from Looney Tunes and MGM.

Actually it is seven children (Lil Audrey, a black child, an Asian, a Hawaiian girl, an Hispanic girl, a Dutch boy and a Russian boy) who sneak into Santa's sleigh and follow him to the North Pole to surprise him by cleaning his home and doing his dishes while he sleeps.Yes, the black child is very Sambo-ish and the Asian child is sinisterly slit-eyed (notice how he sees Santa; by looking over his own shoulder into a mirror), but in the end the comedy relief is all on the Dutch boy; noisy shoes, breaking dishes, caught in the washing machine.In some ways, this is a charming predecessor to Star Trek, with its international lineup (as well as possessing a previous enemy to America, the Asian child, and a product of the upcoming cold war, the Russian).There is a surprise here in this unlikely 1947 cartoon, for Santa as well as for the rest of us as to when people started opening their eyes.And it began with the kids, apparently.

This is a cartoon about some kids who decide that since Santa does so much for them every year, they should do something for him. So they break into his house and attempt to help him clean.Like so many things from the 1940s, this cartoon is full of what would today be considered offensive racial stereotypes in what was probably an attempt at diversity. Check out the design on the black and Chinese kids, especially.The animation is very cheap and the songs are pretty bad, but it does have some charming (cute) sight-gags. And it's only nine minutes long, so you won't waste too much of your life.