That exclamation – which has been absent from the small screen for decades – will be heard again this Christmas when the animated boy Davey, and his faithful dog Goliath, return to television.

The two were stars of a series of 15-minute-long snippets that were distributed to television stations by the Lutheran Church for free in the 1960s.

With its distinctive stop-motion animation and Christian allegories, the show became a touchstone for a generation. It was a TV mainstay, in one form or another, until 1975.

"If you can find somebody between 40 and 60, they'll tell you a Davey & Goliath story," the Rev. Eric Shafer, communications director for the Evangelical Lutheran Church, told the Associated Press.

Along with Joe Clokey, the son of the couple who made the original series, Shafer helped to bring the characters back.
They will appear in Davey & Goliath's Snowboard Christmas on the Hallmark Channel on Dec. 19.

"The church wanted [the original series] to be about love and tolerance, and that's not the face of Christianity in America," Clokey said of his motivation.

"In the '60s and '70s, Christianity was more of a liberal faction. There are still millions of liberal Christians who go to church, but they are not represented on TV anymore."

The new special includes some nods to the cultural changes that have taken place in America.

Davey now has two friends – Yasmeen, a Muslim girl, and Sam, a Jewish boy. In the course of the special, the three compare their different holiday traditions.

According to Shafer, this means the special is "very much an interfaith show about the oneness of the three faces of Abraham."

If it's successful, Shafer says, the characters may return in a new series.