Trey Parker: Matt and I were at the University of Colorado at Boulder [in 1992]. When you’re in the film school, you’re working on someone’s film every weekend, so you’re spending your weekends on set. Matt and I would always end up either running cameras or running sound or something. Shoots are so f--king boring, and we would just sit there doing voices for each other—that’s where it actually started. We would always talk like these little kids and make each other laugh. So we had a year of doing little skits with the voices before we shot anything. The film department showed student films at the end of the semester. I was like, “There should be something Christmassy,” because these screenings were a few days before Christmas. I had done one even before that, called American History, with construction paper cutouts, and I got a student award for it. So Matt and I just did this little Jesus and Frosty thing.

“Jesus vs. Frosty,” a.k.a. the first “Spirit of Christmas,” had many elements that would later define South Park—foulmouthed, crudely animated Colorado kids who become embroiled in a satirical, absurd battle with outside forces.

Parker: [The audience reaction] was huge. It was just the fact that there were little-kid voices and cute animation and that they were screaming, “F---!” People hadn’t really seen anything like that before. It was mostly college kids so we knew our audience. At the time, we were just trying to do something that all our friends and college buddies would think was funny.

After college, Parker and Stone moved to L.A. in 1993 and met Fox exec Brian Graden at a screening of their indie film Cannibal! The Musical. The trio began collaborating on various projects and they showed him “Jesus vs. Frosty.”

Parker: Brian was like, “Show me everything you’ve done,” and we’re like, “Well, here’s this cartoon we made.” Brian totally loved it, and he’s like, “Can I send [this as] a Christmas card to everyone?” So he sent it to a production house and copied it a hundred times onto VHS tapes we’re just like, “Oh, that’s so cool.” He sent it to his friends. They loved that so much that the next year Brian said, “Can you make another one?”