by Isabelle Camoin ’26 on December 11, 2025
A&E - Film & TV
Produced in 1977, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas is a 48-minute-long puppeted musical film that played every holiday from the DVD player in my grandma’s living room.
The story is a timeless one that celebrates the gift that really matters in the spirit of Christmas: love. Ma, the only living parent to Emmet, is a widow. She lives paycheck to paycheck by doing laundry and rowing along the riverbank. Notoriously kind, the family is always willing to lend a hand, which has helped them build a community of friends.
As Christmas approaches, the Otters find themselves experiencing a sense of bittersweetness. Wishing they had more money in the bank to spend on a gift for each other, they find beauty in life’s simple pleasures; in play and in song. What keeps them grateful, outside of their cherished relationship, is that there “ain’t no hole in the washtub,” meaning that as long as there isn’t a hole in the wash tub and everything can be kept clean, it’s a sign that everything will be alright.
A talent show with a $50 cash prize is set to take place a few days before Christmas. Both Emmet and Ma seek to enter to win the prize to buy the other a Christmas gift. In order to enter, they must make sacrifices, participating in the economic cycle of spending money in hopes of making it. Ma sells the deceased Pa’s tool kit, which Emmet typically uses to do side jobs, to afford new materials for a costume, and Emmet puts a hole in the washtub to make a tub base.
Emmett enters a competition with friends to start a jug band, where they perform “Brothers,” a song about treating each other with brotherly love and acceptance. With each of them playing instruments made out of household appliances, including a jug, the group demonstrates that music does not take much to create and share.
Ma sings solo in the competition, a beautiful rendition of “Our World,” a song about the shared beautiful place in which we all live. As she sings, Ma poetically characterizes the Earth as “ours.”.
Both performances are rooted in an appreciation for one another and in the life that brought them together.
The antagonist of the story, The Nightmare Band from River Bottom, comes into the competition last minute, loud, rowdy, and with all the instruments and technology money can buy. With a performance of deep intensity and electronica, the band wins the competition and the $50 prize.
Ma and Emmet are left without a toolbox, a washtub, and money to buy each other Christmas gifts. During their walk on the River’s ice home, they still connect with their love of music and each other. They are overheard by the locals, including Doc Bullfrog, who says they had lost the competition because they were missing something, and it wasn’t until they came to work and sang together that they really made something amazing. Recruiting the band and Ma to play in his restaurant for regular gigs, their paycheck crunch is solved, and the hole can be plugged up in the washtub!
The movie’s themes of love, joy, harmony, community, and music all tie into the larger spirit of Christmas. It’s not about what you get or how new your materials are; it’s about who you’re sharing your time with and the love you share in the face of any sort of adversity.