I watched for the first time "Cannonball Christmas" from 1963 and compared it to "The Santa Claus Special" from 1966 and noticed it was the same plotline. It was the same script from season one only it had Steve and Billie Jo kissing at the mistletoe in a scene. The similarities are:

Billie Jo and Herbie kissing under the Mistletoe at the General Store in season one while it was Bobbie Jo and Eb from Green Acres kissing in season four.

Kate kisses Sam in both versions. He and Herbie knock over the canned goods after they get kissed in the general store.

Joe and his friends are arguing over who will be Santa Claus.

Floyd is milking a cow so he can put her on the train to deliver in both versions as well. Kate gets a little frustrated with him.

Season one, Bobbie Jo is singing in Latin a Christmas song and in season four Billie Jo is singing in latin and both version of ep the purpose is to butter up Bedloe so he doesn't cause trouble. Season one, Pat Woodell was the resident vocalist and when she was gone and Meredith McRae come along, she was the vocalist.

The alleged "hobo" Norman Curtis flies to Hooterville to stop Bedloe from being a menace to the people of Hooterville. He comes into the back door and asks Joe to get Bedloe. Joe is making eggnog for Bedloe in both versions of the Episodes and Homer gets drunk. Joe tells Kate to leave Norman and Homer alone to talk as "hobo's" know how to handle drunks. LOL.

Same plotline and all. THE EXACT SAME! I'm watching back them back to back. Why was this episode redone? Not complaining but this is interesting.

Here are some stills to compare.

Here are the kisses to compare: Mistle Toe kisses. Billie Jo#1 and Herbie and then Bobbie Jo#2 and Eb. Then two versions of Kate and Drucker.

Here's the aftermath of the kisses under the mistle toe.

Some of the 1963 nighttime scenes with exterior footage of the Cannonball, decorated with Christmas lights, were later used for an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies -- with the Clampetts visiting Hooterville at Christmastime. It was edited into a color ep of BH even though the PJ footage remained in its original black and white (very dark).

Also in the season one episode, Betty Jo is hardly seen. When they were filming the episode (November, 1963 the week of the Kennedy assasination) Linda Henning was sick, so she had to dub in her lines when she was upstairs and when she was on top of the Cannonball, They had to use a standin for her. She is seen briefly when all three sisters are singing.

I love both versions just the same! One of my favorite Christmas episodes of all-time.

I noticed this, too - MeTV aired the two episodes two days right before Christmas. I've seen TV episodes remade before, like on "Bewitched", but never so closely. This was practically a scene-for-scene remake.

My guess: the producers realized even then that the B&W episodes wouldn't been seen as much in the future, and like the story enough that they wanted to have a color version of it for reruns.

I watched for the first time "Cannonball Christmas" from 1963 and compared it to "The Santa Claus Special" from 1966 and noticed it was the same plotline. It was the same script from season one only it had Steve and Billie Jo kissing at the mistletoe in a scene. The similarities are:

Billie Jo and Herbie kissing under the Mistletoe at the General Store in season one while it was Bobbie Jo and Eb from Green Acres kissing in season four.

Kate kisses Sam in both versions. He and Herbie knock over the canned goods after they get kissed in the general store.

Joe and his friends are arguing over who will be Santa Claus.

Floyd is milking a cow so he can put her on the train to deliver in both versions as well. Kate gets a little frustrated with him.

Season one, Bobbie Jo is singing in Latin a Christmas song and in season four Billie Jo is singing in latin and both version of ep the purpose is to butter up Bedloe so he doesn't cause trouble. Season one, Pat Woodell was the resident vocalist and when she was gone and Meredith McRae come along, she was the vocalist.

The alleged "hobo" Norman Curtis flies to Hooterville to stop Bedloe from being a menace to the people of Hooterville. He comes into the back door and asks Joe to get Bedloe. Joe is making eggnog for Bedloe in both versions of the Episodes and Homer gets drunk. Joe tells Kate to leave Norman and Homer alone to talk as "hobo's" know how to handle drunks. LOL.

Same plotline and all. THE EXACT SAME! I'm watching back them back to back. Why was this episode redone? Not complaining but this is interesting.

The episode had to be "refreshed" because of the new cast and the GA expanded characters. Peaking and tweaking a script, even before word processors, was more of a typist's tedium than scripting work.

Script doctoring can make one into another what it was not. Huh?

The movie El Dorado (E D) c.1963 IIRC, was supposed to be from Harry Brown's The Stars in their Courses, a cowboy revison of Homer's The Iliad (IIRC), but I read Harry Brown's book from an interlibrary loan, and have watched my DVD many times, the fit of the movie to the story is 10% - at best. The critique that E D is a rewrite of the Rio Bravo 1959 script is credible.

So, updating "Cannonball Christmas" is a gentle and right thing to do for this franchise.

Some of the 1963 nighttime scenes with exterior footage of the Cannonball, decorated with Christmas lights, were later used for an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies -- with the Clampetts visiting Hooterville at Christmastime. It was edited into a color ep of BH even though the PJ footage remained in its original black and white (very dark).

The B&W footage was also reused in the color PJ episode, in its original B&W. I imagine most of the viewers in 1966 didn't have color tvs yet to notice the B&W film there.

My guess: the producers realized even then that the B&W episodes wouldn't been seen as much in the future, and like the story enough that they wanted to have a color version of it for reruns.
That was my guess also, that they wanted a color version of a Christmas episode for some reason.

I saw these on MeTV Sunday, they aired both versions back to back. Talk about deja vu.

I didn't notice that Betty Jo had a stand in the original. I did notice she wasn't around much (she was my favorite of the girls).

the 3 stooges did the same thing piecing together different episodes with former episode snips - that's hollywood lol