Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas

Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas is the 1999 direct-to-video Christmas compilation movie featuring three segments - Donald Duck and his nephews in "Stuck on Christmas," Goofy in "A Very Goofy Christmas," and Mickey and Minnie Mouse in "Gift of the Magi." The stories were introduced by actor Kelsey Grammer.

Donald Duck and the Nephews in "Stuck on Christmas"
The first story is based on "Christmas Every Day" by William Dean Howells. It is Christmas morning, and Donald's three nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie are excited because they get lots of presents, including three sleds from Donald. When Daisy, Scrooge, and their Aunt Gertie come over for Christmas, the boys rush pass them to go out and enjoy their new sleds. When Daisy calls the boys in for dinner, they rudely eat their food by shoving it into their mouths and burping a lot. When Scrooge asks everyone to sing carols, the boys do not participate because they want to play with their toys. When it is time for bed, the boys are sad because Christmas is over, so they make a wish on a star in the sky that it could be Christmas every day.

When the boys wake up the next morning, they find that their wish came true and it is now Christmas every day. The boys initially enjoy this, but they soon grow bored with experiencing the same events every day. They then decide to change the day with pranks, including swapping a live turkey with the cooked one. Unfortunately, this day turns out to be a bad Christmas. After learning how hard their family has tried to make Christmas better for them, the boys feel guilty for their pranks. They decide to make amends and make the next day the best Christmas Day ever. They switch the turkey with ham, give Aunt Gertie exclusive kisses, and build a boat (made from their sleds) for Donald. The next day, the boys wake up happy to find out that Christmas finally ends. The narrator explains that Christmas can't always be here but that its feeling it gives us can always be here.

Goofy in "A Very Goofy Christmas"
Goofy and Max are writing their letter to Santa Claus. They finish it and rush off after the mailman, chasing down his truck on Max's bike and taking a shortcut through the mall. After Goofy accidentally loses the letter in the mall, he stays behind to retrieve it while Max goes after the mailman. Once Goofy gets the letter back, he manages to catch back up to Max and the mailman just in the nick of time.

Back at home, Max reveals to his dad that he wants a snowboard for Christmas and hopes Santa will bring it, but their neighbor Pete insists that Santa does not exist. Goofy tells Max that Santa does exist and that he should never stop believing in him.

That evening, Goofy and Max go next door to the Andersons, a less fortunate family, to give them a Christmas dinner. Goofy then dresses up as Santa Claus to impress the kids, but one of the family's kids pulls off his hat and exposes him. This upsets Max, making him think that his dad was lying to him about Santa, and he runs home upset.

Goofy tries to prove to Max that Santa Claus really does exist by staying up late and watching for Santa. After quite a few hours of waiting, Goofy sees someone coming out of the chimney on Pete's roof, but it turns out to be a burglar robbing Pete's house. Goofy then falls off the roof and goes into a deep depression, now believing that everything Max said was true. Max eventually cheers his dad up by dressing as Santa Claus himself. After Goofy finds out it's actually Max, they look up into the sky and see the real Santa Claus, who gives Max the snowboard he wanted and then blows the snow from Goofy's house onto Pete's house to teach Pete a lesson. Max then tells his dad that he is going to go share his present with little Jimmy, the poor kid next door. The narrator explains that Christmas is found in the way that we live by not what we receive but by what we give.

Mickey and Minnie's "Gift of the Magi"
It is Christmas Eve, and Mickey wants to get Minnie a chain for her watch, while Minnie wants to get Mickey a case for his harmonica, but neither of them have any money. Mickey is working at Crazy Pete's Tree Lot and makes a lot of money for his kindness and helping people. But when he suggests a poor family buy a small Christmas tree that he found out back instead of one of Pete's ten-foot Christmas trees, Pete takes away the money he has earned and kicks him out. Pete then accidentally puts his still-lit cigar into his pocket, which eventually results in him setting his trees on fire. Meanwhile, Minnie is working in the gift-wrapping department at Mortimer's department store, hoping that her Christmas bonus from her boss, Mortimer Mouse, will be enough to pay for Mickey's present. Unfortunately, her Christmas bonus is nothing but a fruitcake.

Mickey plays his harmonica for a Charity Toy Drive and is told that his harmonica plays so great that it must be worth lots of money. Mickey gets the idea to trade his harmonica for the chain, so he and Pluto rush off to the store. Later, at Minnie's house, Mickey gives Pluto a bone for Christmas and Minnie gives her cat, Figaro, a ball of yarn. Mickey and Minnie then give their presents to each other. Minnie's present to Mickey is a case for his harmonica, and Mickey's present to Minnie is a chain for her watch. Both of them reveal that they gave up what meant the most to them to buy each other a present for Christmas. The narrator explains that giving a present from the heart is cherished forever and that a present is best when love is given too.

As the movie comes to a close, we see Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, Max, Donald, Daisy, Huey, Dewey and Louie joining each other in the streets outside, singing a medley consisting of "Jingle Bells", "Deck the Halls", and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", and wishing the audience a happy holidays.

Cast
Clarabelle Cow, Horace Horsecollar, Owl, and a Beagle Boy make silent cameos.

Trivia

 * Cameo: One of Goofy's Christmas tree ornaments resembles Angelique from Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.
 * Recycled Animation: In The Gift of the Magi segment, Mickey performs one of his dance moves from Mickey's Birthday Party.
 * The cover art for the home video releases was done by Rick Law.
 * Scenes from this movie were used for the 2002 version of Very Merry Christmas Songs.
 * Continuity: Chronologically, as Max is presented as a young child in this special (younger even than his appearance in Goof Troop), along with Huey, Dewey, and Louie likewise presented as kids and still living with their Uncle Donald, this Christmas special would seem to take place at some point prior to the events of both DuckTales and Goof Troop.
 * However, there is a potential continuity error between this special and Goof Troop. In this special, Goofy and Max already live in a house next door to Pete, who acts like Goofy and Max have been his next door neighbors for quite some time, as Pete behaves in a rather chummy manner with both Goofy and Max in one scene. This is at odds with the pilot episode of Goof Troop having Goofy and Max start off by living in a trailer and only just then moving into the house next door to Pete for the first time, even moving to Spoonerville from another city entirely. Plus, everyone in that episode acts like Goofy and Pete hadn't seen each other in years (since high school), and like Max and Pete had never met each other beforehand.
 * On the other hand, Goof Troop itself also tended to forget that Goofy and Max first moved to Spoonerville at the beginning of the series, with several episodes of the series treating Goofy and Max as having always lived in Spoonerville next door to Pete for many years. So, this is just a case of Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas simply reiterating a preexisting continuity error.
 * Officially, no fix for this has ever been given, but one possible, theoretical solution would be to consider the Pete from this special as a different Pete from the one seen in Goof Troop, A Goofy Movie, and An Extremely Goofy Movie, since the Pete who lives next to the Goofs in this special doesn't seem to harbor the same deep-seeded irate intolerance of Goofy that the Pete from Goof Troop has for most of that series's run. And since the city in this special is never actually named, it very well might not be Spoonerville (as it seems to be the same city that Mickey, Pluto, and Minnie all live in, and none of them live in Spoonerville either), and could very well be the other city that Goofy and Max first live in before they move to Spoonerville (the two would have simply had to have first moved out of the house from this special and into their trailer at some point between this special and Goof Troop for everything to line up).
 * This also raises the possibility that Goofy and Max might have moved to Spoonerville from none other than Mouseton, the traditional hometown of Mickey, Pluto, and Minnie (as well as Goofy himself in certain media external to the Goof Troop universe).