The Nights Before Christmas

'Twas the nights before Christmas,

When all through TV,

Not a series was stirring,

Not even Lucy.

For what to our wond'ring

Eyes should appear,

But moldy old reruns

And things from last year.

If TV audiences are bored during the Christmas season, it is understandable. Last week seven regular programs, including CBS's Lucy Show and NBC's I Spy, were repeats. This week another nine shows, among them Lucy again and even NBC's Tuesday Night at the

Movies (Wild and Wonderful) are reruns. The networks explain that the holiday audience drops roughly 10%--so why be bighearted at Christmas and run new episodes? More to the point, the pre-Christmas period is a so-called Nielsen "black week," when national ratings are not tabulated.

Another method of avoiding the effort and expense of a new series installment is to pre-empt it with a replay of what the networks like to call "holiday classics." On NBC, the most persistent ghost of Christmas past is Mr. Magoo portraying Scrooge, which was repeated last week for the sixth consecutive sea son. Other animated perennials are CBS's "A Charlie Brown Christmas," NBC's "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," CBS's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," and a new NBC entry, "The Cricket on the Hearth." Of course, as happened last week, it is always possible to have The Flying Nun conjure up a white Christmas in the tropics or send Dragnet's Sgt. Friday in pursuit of the scoundrel who stole the Christ child from a Nativity scene. But how much easier it is to haul out an old tape of John Huston narrating Christ

Is Born or a musical drama called Christmas in the Marketplace.

Singing Kings. Short of moving midnight Mass at St. Patrick's into prime time, the easy out on the variety hours is to light a yule log and invite the family for a singalong. Not to be outdone by Andy Williams, who featured his wife, two children and 38 relatives on his show, last week Dean Martin turned the cameras on his wife and seven children as well as Frank Sinatra and his clan (Mia was conspicuously absent). But for sheer numbers, no one can outdo the singing King Family, who last week turned out 45 strong for their first Christmas special. Since it followed hard on the heels of their Thanksgiving show, the next blowout viewers can presumably expect is "The King Family Ground Hog Day Special."

Yet "classics" or not, most any show that replaces the dreary situation comedies is a welcome relief. Most notably, ABC's replay of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, powered by the virtuoso performance of Geraldine Page, is one of the finest dramas ever to appear on TV, in season or out.

There was a Christmas bonus, too, as Lyndon Johnson appeared on the three networks in "Conversation with the President" and placed new emphasis on hopes for "informal talks" between Saigon and the National Liberation Front. In all, 20 minutes of the interview, mostly comments dealing with Viet Nam, were deleted from the final tape. Though some network news executives objected to the editing, it seemed not only a reasonable but also an essential request, considering the gravity of the subjects he covered. On one occasion the President, who has often said that he considered his TV image "a national liability," interrupted the taping to see how he was coming across on the screen.

What viewers saw was some of the toughness of the man in the chilly stares he leveled at CBS's Dan Rather when the newsman pressed a point; when ABC's Frank Reynolds observed that many Negroes criticized Johnson's poverty programs as just "white man's talk," the President startled the reporter by sternly firing back: "What is your answer to it, Frank?"

Bright Gift. No TV Christmas season is complete, of course, without violence. That came on both weekends as the pro football teams played with that uncommon ferocity that breaks out when they sniff the big money of playoff and bowl games. NBC opted for violence remembered in "Alamein: A

Monty Memoir," which had Field Marshal Montgomery recalling those bloody days in the North African desert 25 years ago. Among other specials in debut last week: CBS's "Flanders and Swann," a wryly amusing hour, but too familiar to anyone who had seen the British song-and-patter team on Broadway; and CBS's dramatization of Gogol's Diary of a Madman, which, while a triumph for French Actor Roger Cog-gio, who learned the English dialogue phonetically, was too lacking in action to satisfy the visual demands of TV.

The only TV drama that came to life did so in a cemetery. It was Truman Capote again who, coincidental with the national release of the film version of Cold Blood, adapted his short story Among the Paths to Eden into a bizarre yet oddly touching glimpse into the life of the lonely. Filmed entirely in a New York City cemetery, the play starred Maureen Stapleton as an old maid who spends an afternoon roaming the burial grounds on the theory that, acre for acre, it is a better place than most to meet a widowed man-and a possible suitor. When she approaches one slightly retiring fellow, played by Martin Balsam, the dialogue casts its mood so well that it seems perfectly reasonable when she perches on his wife's tombstone and does her imitation of Helen Morgan singing a blues song. In the end, when he gently rebuffs her, she bravely goes off in search of another live one. In TV's "black week," Paths was the brightest Christmas gift of all.

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