Buttons the Christmas Mouse Won 4 Telly Awards, and It Started Behind the Tree
Buttons the Christmas Mouse picked up four Telly Awards at the 47th Annual Telly Awards, and I’m still excited about it. The trophies are on a shelf staring at me like they expect a follow-up.
So let me back up and tell you where this idea came from.
Every December I decorate the tree, and every December I do exactly what you do. The front gets the good ornaments. The back gets shoved against the wall and forgotten like a Christmas card from your dentist. The back of my tree has been bald since roughly 2009, and I have never once felt guilty about it.
Then a few years ago I started wondering what would happen if somebody back there noticed.
The 2026 wins:
- Silver, Non-Broadcast Entertainment. Official listing
- Bronze, Non-Broadcast Children. Official listing
- Bronze, Non-Broadcast Writing. Official listing
- Bronze, Non-Broadcast Directing. Official listing
Two of those are craft awards, which is the pair I’m quietly proudest of. Writing and Directing get judged on the work itself instead of the package around it. Also, nobody can claim the mouse carried me, though frankly he did a lot of the heavy lifting.
Watch the episode over at I Spot Santa
Where Buttons the Christmas Mouse Came From
Some scripts you knock out in a weekend. This one lived in my head for years, rent-free, eating my snacks.
I knew what I wanted. Not another episode you watch once in December and forget by the time the tree hits the curb. I wanted a tradition. Something a kid could go do that same afternoon, then want to do again year after year.
That’s a tall order for five minutes of film, so I sat on it until the right door opened.
Then I landed on the back of the tree. Once I asked who lives back there, the script came together in about a day, which is the writing equivalent of finding twenty bucks in a coat.
Turns out it’s a mouse in a red scarf.
Who Are Sam and Murphy?
If you’re new here, Sam and Murphy are two monsters who traveled to the North Pole and became, by an embarrassing margin, the biggest Christmas fans in the monster world.
Murphy is the host. He turns to camera and confidently explains a holiday tradition he learned about four minutes ago. His bright, over-caffeinated warmth is what kids lock onto instantly.
Sam is the sweetheart. He commits to everything at full volume, understands about sixty percent of it, and would rather quietly suffer than tell you he’s made a mistake. His plans are never something a reasonable person would arrive at, or a licensed professional would approve.
They’ve been at this since 2021 across I Spot Santa, and families come back for them the way you come back to a comedy duo you grew up with. That’s on purpose. I write them as monsters who trip face-first into every lesson instead of announcing it.
Meet Buttons the Christmas Mouse
Buttons lives behind the tree, in the part nobody ever sees. He’ll tell you his bedroom sits right under that blue ornament in the back. He’ll also tell you, with a completely straight face, that the branch currently in Sam’s hand used to be his bathroom.
Sam takes that about as well as you’d expect, but you’ll have to watch to see what happens.
He’s little. He knows he’s little. He also knows he’s worth listening to, and he’s right about that.
What I love about Buttons is that he never scolds anybody. He just lays it out:
“Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not real. The best parts of Christmas are love, joy, and faith. They shine even if you don’t believe in them.”
I don’t preach to kids. They’re smarter than most writers give them credit for, and they can smell a lecture through a screen door. So I show them and let them do the math. Two plus two, they get to four on their own, and they’re proud of themselves when they do. Explain it, and you’ve robbed them of that.
The Voice Behind Buttons
Here’s where I get to brag. Buttons is voiced by James Arnold Taylor, who also narrates the closing poem.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, his voice absolutely will. James is Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Rebels. He’s Ratchet in Ratchet & Clank. Johnny Test. Leonardo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Tidus in Final Fantasy X. Fred Flintstone for six years of commercials. He also tours a one-man show where he performs over two hundred voices live, which I assume requires a permit.
And now, a mouse who lives behind a Christmas tree. I choose to believe this is the peak of his career. He has not confirmed.
For I Spot Santa, James is Mr. Tuxedo the penguin. He’s Tootles the Elf. He’s Gordy the Pumpkin. Every one of those characters exists because James said yes and then made me look considerably better at my job than I am.
We recorded him first and played the track out loud on set so the performer could puppeteer to a finished track instead of guessing. That ordering matters more than people expect. When the voice is already alive in the room, the puppeteer stops delivering lines and starts reacting, and the character quits feeling assembled.
How We Made the Magic Work
Two moments in this episode had to land, and they’re mirror images of each other.
Buttons appears through a hole in the branches, and that reveal is entirely practical. No effects, no cheat. Two eyes catch the light back there, and you genuinely can’t tell whether you’re watching a puppet or something a little more magical. I wanted the audience unsure.
That uncertainty is doing a job. Because at the end, when Buttons fades away in a sparkle of light, the trick is already loaded.
The vanish is practical and post. We shot the plate twice, once with a mouse and once without a mouse, then added the glitter and the light afterward. That is the most technical sentence in this article. The reason it works isn’t the effect. It’s that we spent two full minutes convincing you Buttons was really back there, so when he goes, you feel it in your chest.
The Cast Behind Buttons the Christmas Mouse
I got lucky on this one. I usually do!
Ron Binion performs Sam, and I’ll say it plainly. Nobody in the business gets buried under a pile of ornaments with more dignity.
BJ Guyer performs Murphy. He also co-produced with me and built the puppets, including Buttons. The scarf came from somewhere else entirely. My wife, Autumn, made it, which means the most photographed piece of wardrobe in this episode was knitted at my kitchen table. She has asked for no credit. She’s getting it anyway.
Todd Coyle performs Buttons. Buttons is a rod puppet; he’s small, he’s working from behind a tree with almost no room, and he still has to read as completely alive. Todd made it look easy, which is how you know it wasn’t.
Behind the camera, Samuel Robert did set decoration and built a living room I would genuinely like to spend Christmas Eve in. Josh Sterling handled the re-recording mix and somehow made my fifteen layers of audio sound perfect. Claudia Castro-Gomez did the title design.
I wrote it, directed it, co-produced it, shot it, and cut it. That sounds more impressive than it is. Mostly it meant that when something went wrong, there was exactly one suspect.
One Studio, One Day, One Small Crew
Four Telly Awards out of a single day on a stage. I’d like to say that was strategy. It was also a calendar.
I shot on a Canon C400 with a full set of DZOFilm Arles primes, and we kept the crew deliberately small.
Here’s what twenty years has taught me. Every person you add to a set puts a little more distance between the idea in your head and what lands on screen. A small crew means everybody already knows the goal. Nobody waits on a note that has to travel through four people and a lunch break. So you move faster, and the part that surprises people is that the work usually comes out warmer instead of sloppier.
One day is not a lot of time. It only works because the script is locked, the voice track already exists, and everyone on the floor understands the scene before we roll. Take any one of those away, and you’re not making a magical episode, you’re hosting a very expensive party.
Same approach I wrote about in Big Ideas, Small Budgets, and it hasn’t failed me yet.
The Poem That Closes the Film
I wrote a poem for the ending, and James read it:
So don’t forget the spot you think no one sees, Because Buttons is waiting behind the tree.
I’m not a poet. But it rhymes, and past a certain point that’s the entire job.
Then Buttons disappears in that sparkle. Sam and Murphy launch into “O Christmas Tree” while James reads the poem over them, and the whole moment wraps you up in Christmas. After that we cut to Buttons tucked into his tiny bed, and that’s one of my favorite frames in the episode. He’s real. He was back there the whole time.
Start the Tradition This Year
I didn’t make this to be watched once.
I made it so some kid watches it in December, turns to a parent, and says six words. “Can we decorate the back this year?”
That happens in one living room, and the episode did its job. The Tellys are gravy. Very nice gravy, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise, but the six words are the goal.
Buttons the Christmas Mouse was released December 1, 2025. Watch it at I Spot Santa or on the Murena Entertainment YouTube channel.
If you want to see what these two got up to before, Sam and Murphy met a grumpy snowman the season prior. He was rude to them. They hugged him anyway.
And if you’re building family content and need a writer, director, and producer who can deliver award-winning work in one shooting day, let’s talk. I’ll bring the mouse.
Merry Christmas, and happy spotting.