There's no easy reason why, except that these films are seemingly built to be forgotten.

Made-for-TV movies, once known as "movies of the week," because of that very prolific rate of release have become known as sort of disposable.

That, sadly, is the short answer to why it hasn't aired much since its premiere in 1996.

To give you an idea, Sally Field alone has starred in 18 different telefilms.

However, this one's notable because it's one of the few times she's stepped behind the camera. "The Christmas Tree," along with the indie picture "Beautiful" (2000) and an episode of "From the Earth to the Moon" in which she also starred, mark the lone directing entries on Field's incredibly long resume.

"The Christmas Tree" starred stage-and-screen great Julie Harris and Hollywood brat-pack alumnus Andrew McCarthy, as an elderly nun who's been growing an evergreen tree for decades and the Rockefeller Center's head gardener, who wants to cut the tree down and bring it to New York to be the center's famed Christmas display.

McCarthy is no TV-movie dilettante either. He has more than a dozen of them under his belt, though "The Christmas Tree" was one of his first. Prior to that, he was busy starring in such landmark '80s fare as "St. Elmo's Fire" (1985) and "Weekend at Bernie's" (1989).

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