The 1958 Christmas special has become a much-loved Christmas Eve tradition on Swedish TV and regularly scores viewer numbers among the highest of the year. It was first broadcast in Sweden in 1960 and has seen some reshuffling to accommodate scenes from Disney movies, but since 1983 the bulk of the program has remained fixed. When public-service TV (SVT) attempted to remove it from the schedule because of the costly license to be paid Disney, the popular outcry forced them to relent. Part of the reason the tradition became so strong was that for many years, American-style cartoons were not much shown on television in Sweden.
