Here is a great moment in television modesty: labeling as “miracles” such small favors as TV and movie stars showing up to do nice things for a few kids who wrote to Santa. Among other sins, this certainly exaggerates the place of the celebrity–here, “Party of Five’s” Jennifer Love Hewitt, the movies’ Halle Berry and “Home Improvement’s” Richard Karn–in the cosmos. Done this way, with cameras in tow and a production budget to pay for it all, it’s not a miracle, it’s P.R. The one-hour ABC special (8 p.m., WLS-Ch. 7) suffers from terminal dullness and lackluster presentation; it’s too slow to stir kids, yet too simple for their parents. The better moments, by a little bit, come when “ordinary people,” as the news release has it, tell of their favorite Christmas memories, but even these hardly challenge the classics. The true miracle here would be if more than 10 million homes tuned in.
