Once upon a time, there was this giant buzzard creature thing named Eon the Terrible. Eon had many crimes against humanity, and all of them involved scaring people. Like, not killing anyone or anything like that. Simply flying around the Sands of Time and squaking at whoever happened to be in the neighborhood.

Anyway, the prospect of Eon never dying is terrifying to The Great Quarter Past Five (a camel with a clock where his hump should be, so who is he to judge anyone at the end of the day), not because he’s out there eating people or anything, but because it would mean that “he’ll never stop scaring people.” And THAT is something which MUST NOT HAPPEN!

The good news is that Eon can only live until he is one eon old, then he will turn into ice and snow. The bad news is that Eon has the nerve to not want to die, so he goes looking for Happy, the baby new year. Yes, new years are babies. Go with it. If Eon can kidnap Happy before the new year takes place, then time will stand still, and he will live forever, and he will never, ever stop scaring people.

Eon does get a bit more messed up once he actually captures Happy and declares he shall be his slave, but in the end, things work out, because Happy has big ears which are apparently the most fucking hilarious thing in the world, and Eon laughs so much that he doesn’t turn into snow, because it’s a Rankin’Bass special, and also because it would’ve been like impossible to animate him turning into snow with budgeted stop-motion animation during the 1970’s.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that if someone has big ears, laugh at them and tell them it’s cool. Between this and Nester the Long-Earred Christmas Donkey, Rankin/Bass has sent me very mixed messages about big ears.

Happy New Year, all!