7 Great Christmas Episodes
#3 might surprise you!
Well, it’s that time of the year again! Unfortunately, due to Ms. Omicron, I did not go home for Christmas and am sticking it out in LA. This is my first Christmas away from home, and it’s hard to really get into the spirit in a place where it doesn’t snow (although it did rain!) but I am trying my hardest, and one of the ways I can do that—besides making cookies and drinking boozy eggnog—is watching TV. The Christmas (and sometimes Chanukah or Kwanzaa) episode is a time-honored television tradition, and below is a list of my personal favorite holiday episodes. If I missed any, or if you have any suggestions for me to watch while I’m here away from my family, let me know! Here is the list, presented in no particular order.
30 Rock, “Secret Santa” (Ep. 408)
This episode has it all: Frank (Judah Friedlander), Toofer (Keith Powell), and Lutz (John Lutz) creating a fake religion to get out of doing an office Secret Santa! Jenna (Jane Krakowski) getting into beef with TGS newcomer Danny (Jackson) over a solo! Liz (Tina Fey) calling in a bomb threat to Penn Station! But most importantly, this episode is the introduction to Julianne Moore’s Nancy, Jack’s will-they-or-won’t-they love interest. The character is a lot of fun, but it’s worth it just to hear Moore’s super over-the-top Bawston accent.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, “A Very Sunny Christmas” (Ep. 613)
This episode has a lot going on, even by Always Sunny standards. Charlie (Charlie Day) tells Mac (Rob McElhenney) about how “Santas” would come over on Christmas to cheer his mom up and give them presents, and Mac informs him that his mom was probably just having sex with men for money and gifts and was not actually sleeping with Santa, which results in Charlie yelling at a mall Santa and asking him if he was sleeping with his mom. Meanwhile, Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and Dennis (Glenn Howerton) try to do an It’s a Wonderful Life thing with their dad, Frank (Danny DeVito), in order to prove that he was a shitty dad (but also just to shame him into buying them better presents), and their storyline gave us the indelible scene of a naked DeVito crawling out of a couch that he had been sewn into. Merry Christmas!
Community, “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” (Ep. 211)
At the end of the semester, right before Christmas, Abed (Danny Pudi) has worryingly started seeing everything in Claymation, and he ends up drawing all of the other members of his study group into his Claymation world. The episode is a lot of fun and features some great riffs on the classic Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, and there are some sweet insights into Abed’s character, but the best moment comes at the end of the episode, when Abed and co. get to the end of their Claymation journey and discover that the meaning of Christmas is the season 1 DVD of Lost, which symbolizes “a lack of payoff.”
Happy Endings, “No-Ho-Ho” (Ep. 307)
Happy Endings remains a criminally underseen show that, luckily, seems to be getting a second life as people are discovering it on Netflix and HBO Max, since ABC basically refused to promote it when it was on. Yes, it is yet another “friends hanging out” sitcom, but the cast are all funny and have great chemistry, and the writing is top-notch. In this holiday episode, the friends all find out that Jane’s (Eliza Coupe) birthday is actually Christmas (she has a fake ID with a fake date of birth that lists her eye color as “frosted spruce”) they endeavor to throw her a Christmas-free birthday party, but because they all love Christmas too much, this proves to be much harder than they thought. Come for the hijinks, stay for Adam Pally’s Max chugging as much eggnog as humanly possible.
Doctor Who, “Voyage of the Damned” (Ep. 400)
Like many other British shows, Doctor Who has made it a tradition to do a special Christmas episode every year, although now that appears to have been replaced by a New Year’s special. The special that aired before series (as the Brits say instead of “season”) 4, centers on the Doctor (David Tennant) colliding with an interstellar cruise ship called the Titanic (great name for a ship!) and trying to stop it from crashing. Listen, is this the best Christmas special? Not at all. Does it really even have that much to do with Christmas? Not really. But Wikipedia says it was watched by 13.3 million viewers, a record high for the series that still hasn’t been beaten, and it’s also the only Doctor Who episode to feature Kylie Minogue, so it’s a winner in my book.
Mad Men, “Christmas Waltz” (Ep. 510)
As a Christmas episode, this one probably won’t put you in the festive mood. This is the episode where Lane Pryce (my king Jared Harris) runs into his money trouble, which ultimately leads to his downfall :( (spoiler alert!). This is also the episode where Joan (Christina Hendricks) finally gets served her divorce papers from her very shitty husband. As much of a downer as the episode is, there are various grace notes throughout, a particular specialty of the show, most notably in a scene where Joan and Don (Jon Hamm) drunkenly commiserate in a bar. These characters rarely get the time to interact with just each other, and the scene is sad but also funny and sweet, reminding us that sometimes Don isn’t awful while also providing us with just enough of the Christmas spirit without ever tipping over into cheesy.
BoJack Horseman, “BoJack Horseman Christmas Special: Sabrina's Christmas Wish”
And last but not least, we have the BoJack Horseman Christmas special that Netflix released between seasons 1 and 2. In it, Todd (Aaron Paul) comes over to BoJack’s (Will Arnett) house and wants to watch a Christmas special from BoJack’s old sitcom, Horsin’ Around. BoJack reluctantly agrees, and most of the episode is actually the sitcom episode. The special plays with Very Special Episode sitcom tropes, and BoJack and Todd’s comments while watching it give the episode a meta flair, but the Horsin’ Around episode, centering on an orphan named Sabrina who wants Santa to bring her parents back, showcases what the series, and the titular Horseman, does best: wry and detached humor hiding a beating heart with deep affection for its characters.
And that’s it! I’m gonna eat some cookies and go see Licorice Pizza, but next week I’ll be back with my top 10 albums, TV series, and movies of the year. Until then, merry Christmas!