ThomasNATION Classic Reviews - Kangaroo Christmas
December 20, 2025
The best time of the year is finally back! I love Christmas! Season of joy, best time of the year! I love the snow, I love the presents, I love the decorations, I even love those obnoxious little novelty items that burn holes in your wallet like a Yuletide fire. But what if you spent Christmas where things were so different than what you were used to that it almost didn't feel like Christmas at all? Well, if I was asked to review "Daisy's Perfect Christmas" for you all this week, I'd have been singing the praises of this episode for how it perfectly fits with Daisy's persona and how it also felt like foreshadowing for what would become the "Big World, Big Adventures" rebrand. But instead, I'm actually going to be reviewing "Kangaroo Christmas" where we're trading children playing in snowy fields for sandy deserts for a day at the beach. How does the first and currently only international themed episode for the holiday season fare up? Let's head to the land down under and find out!
KANGAROO CHRISTMAS: Thomas is in Australia for Christmas and is disappointed that it is different from Sodor. But in the meantime, he must help a little girl retrieve her toy kangaroo from a real one.
---
I like the Australia episodes more than the India and China episodes, despite their own faults and that's largely due to the fact that they got a writer of Australian descent and culture in order to write these episodes compared to the Australia and China ones. They all just feel connected in a way, if you know what I'm trying to say. However, I find this episode to be a little odd with its moral about Christmas. At the end of the episode, Thomas says that Christmas should be about spending time with those you love and not about snow, presents, trees and all. But when you really think about it, most of the episode was about Thomas trying to get a toy kangaroo back to a little Australian girl named Madeline. I mean, probably to make the episode better, why not have Thomas feeling homesick for his friends on Sodor when it comes to Christmas? I mean, surely, he would've missed them during his world travels. And while we're at it, let's have him feeling sad that there's no snow in Australia as the Aussies actually celebrate it in the summertime on account of the different hemispheres. When this episode was out on the "Here Comes the Steam Team" DVD in the UK in August 2018, I was surprised to see how many people in the fandom were shocked that Christmas is celebrated in that season and it still makes me think that it's great to teach kids in other countries who celebrate Christmas in winter about the different seasons and it makes sense for Thomas' ignorance about the world here.
Back to what I could've been a better version of the plot, why not have Shane telling Isla to make Thomas feel he's right at home by pouring out pretend snow yet that didn't work because it was pretend snow. But hey, we're good as long as it's not what they were using for snow when they made "The Wizard of Oz" (spoiler alert, it was asbestos). Maybe in the end, the Australian Railway controller calls up Sir Topham Hatt and sends Percy to Australia. And thus, Thomas thinks that this was the best Christmas ever that he gets to celebrate with Percy and with his new Australian friends. Maybe not the best way to rewrite this episode, but at least there is something that can be done with this concept, what do you think?
In the end though, as our first Christmas episode of the BWBA era, I don't think that "Kangaroo Christmas" was bad at all. But at the same time, I think that it could've been better and thus gets a rating of a 3/5.
Final Rating: 3/5
0 comments