As the Obamas prepare for their first Christmas in the White House, they’re reminiscing on Christmases past in a new one-hour TV special with Oprah Winfrey.

“Getting that first big kid, 10-speed bike – that’s always special,” Pres. Barack Obama said of his favorite Christmas gift from his childhood. “I remember that one.”

But even more profound, the president reflects on meeting his father for the first time at Christmas – an encounter that sparked his love of basketball.

Any film starring a dog and airing for holiday-season consumption raises certain expectations—the right word is probably suspicions. All are borne out in the new, mercilessly affecting Hallmark Hall of Fame production (Sunday, 9-10:30 p.m EST on CBS) titled “A Dog Named Christmas.” (The film is based on the novel of the same name by Greg Kincaid.) The plot is a gut-wrencher, though not lethally so; its hero a creature of many parts, most of them flawless. Christmas endures tribulations and trials whose outcome is never in doubt: Nothing seriously bad is going to happen to a dog named Christmas, or any other kind, in a film like this—or to his supporting cast of humans, the good people who have taken him in.