Well, it’s simple. You see, Technicolor sent a print to Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera by accident and they were shocked to discover a Warners cartoon was almost the same as...oh, wait, that was another cartoon.
Anyway, I suspect the answer to the question is “coincidence.”
Columbia/Screen Gems’ Happy Holidays (released Oct. 25, 1940) even has a “more than one Thanksgiving” gag like Tex Avery’s Warners short Holiday Highlights (released Oct. 12, 1940). However Happy Holidays has a New Year’s Day gag where the other one doesn’t.
The cartoon starts with Scrappy’s brother Oopy on a calendar and suddenly realising the new year has come. He falls off the calendar, ripping off the title page to show January.
The gag? Some people don’t have the stamina for a long New Year’s Eve party. At 11:50 p.m., all is dark. As the minutes tick away, the lights in houses come on, a full moon pops into view. At midnight, there’s a celebration. Even the moon happily rings in the new year.
At 12:05, it’s all over. People go back inside their homes, the moon disappears, and it’s lights out by 12:08 a.m.
Allen Rose received the story credit for this Phantasy. Harry Love is the credited animator (no director is credited) and Joe De Nat supplied the music. Unlike the Avery cartoon, there is no narrator, but Mel Blanc supplies some voices. As you might anticipate from a Columbia cartoon of this vintage, there are celebrity caricatures. Clark Gable and Carol Lombard show up, and there’s a Baby Snooks routine.
I'm not sure if this was a coincidence, or that Screen Gems knew that Avery was making a spot gag cartoon based on holidays. But we honestly know which one is the better film at the end of the day.
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