Stephen Colbert the thesp-comic loves TV Christmas specials. Never missed 'em when he was a kid: Andy Williams, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, "A Charlie Brown Christmas," "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer," "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," etc.

TV's Stephen Colbert is a reverent Christian and, of course, proud foot soldier in the war on Christmas, fighting the scourge of "happy holidays" and "season's greetings" in public schools, department stores, city halls and wherever else the PC police may patrol.

Put the two sides of Colbert together, throw in seven original songs, a few pounds of fake snow, six notable guest stars and -- shazam! -- you've got a very funny Christmas spesh. "A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!" bows Sunday at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central.

"We tried to make it strangely sincere, but also sincerely strange," Colbert says.

"The Colbert Report's" frontman is always raving about "how there's a war on Christmas and we've got to do something about it. So how would he fight the war on Christmas? He'd have a Christmas special," Colbert explains.

The 67th annual George Foster Peabody Awards ceremony at Gotham's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Monday turned into an impromptu tribute to Tim Russert. Peabody honorees including Christiane Amanpour and Stephen Colbert offering kind words and remembrances about the NBC News stalwart who died Friday at the age of 58.

"60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl stepped in as Peabody ceremony host at the last minute as a sub for NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who bowed out in order to spend time with NBC News staff following his return from Afghanistan.

Colbert recalled Russert's generosity and sense of humor when Russert had Colbert on "Meet the Press" last year during "The Colbert Report" star's short-lived bid for the GOP presidential nomination.

ABC News' Bob Woodruff (pictured left) and CBS' Kimberly Dozier (pictured right), both of whom suffered serious injuries in the line of duty in Iraq, were among those picking up Peabodys for their work. Cast members from two of this year's scripted honorees, "Mad Men" and "30 Rock," were also on hand. (Pics after the jump.)

Unlike the Democrats, "The Colbert Report" had plenty to crow about this past week.

Fresh off of its Peabody win, "Colbert" demonstrated its anything-but-faux clout in the contempo political landscape, drawing brief appearances by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and a sit-down with Michelle Obama. How desperate are these candidate for the approval of "Colbert's" youthful affluent/educated/urban hipster (dare we say elite) aud? Really desperate.

For "Colbert," the show's weeklong stand in Philadelphia (aka the special "Doritos Spicy Sweet Pennsylvania Primary Coverage From Chili-Delphia -- The City of Brotherly Crunch!" edition) added up to the most-watched week in its two and a half years on the air. An average of 1.5 million viewers tuned in Monday-Thursday -- not bad for 11:30 p.m. on cable. It averaged a winning 1.8 rating with the men 18-34 that Clinton, Obama or McCain would love to see in their column on Election Day.

Most important, Stephen Colbert was on fire, taking the foul air out of the gaseous pre-primary atmosphere in Pennsylvania by skewering what the show aptly dubbed "Democralypse Now: The delightful dismemberment of the Democratic hopescape!"

"Shameless!" Colbert inveighed in one of his commentary segs on Obamamania. "Scoring political points using footage of Hillary being booed for scoring political points using comments Obama made to score political points. Who does he hope he is?"

On Friday, Comedy Central was kind enough to send along a highlight reel for the week:

And since they did the same for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," what the heck, give it a spin. Stewart was in fine form too. On Thursday he added his pointed critique to the chorus savaging the perf of moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos in Wednesday's Democratic debate on ABC.

"The first hour of last night's debate was a 60-minute master class in questions that elevate out of context remarks and trivial, insipid miscues into subjects of national discourse ... which is MY job!"

Stephen Colbert comes across as so comfortable in the skin of his "Colbert Report" arch-conservative pundit persona that it's easy to forget he's playing a character that has been developed by him and the writer-producers on his Comedy Central skein.

Chief among those "Colbert Report" truthiness-deciders is Allison Silverman, who was upped last month to exec producer of the show along with Colbert and Jon Stewart. Silverman, whose resume includes stints as a writer-producer on "The Daily Show" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," has worked closely with Colbert during the past two years to fine-tune the character that walks a fine line between arrogant jerk and arrogant-but-lovable-jerk. (And arrogant-but-lovable presidential candidate as of Oct. 17, so long as those pesky Federal Election Commission rules don't drum him out of the race.)

"In the beginning we were conscious that he could turn out to be a real jerk of a character, and we still think about it a lot. We've always wanted him to be arrogant and willfully ignorant, but not someone you'd just hate," says Silverman, who joined "Colbert" shortly after it was picked up to series in 2005. "A lot of times it's all about the tone. Sometimes he'll do something that comes off as too repugnant. He'll say the exact same things but change the tone just a little bit and it makes all the difference."

This just in...Somewhere, Pat Paulsen is smiling.