ByVal Hull
We all know the concept of a Christmas movie – it takes place around the winter holidays, is usually packed to the brim with cheer and tinsel, and primarily exists so you can claim it as a tradition when you want a distraction from the inevitable family bickering or the seasonal blues.
These days, however, the small screen is king. With all the streaming services and on-demand viewing, TV shows have become our go-to form of passive entertainment. And besides, who now has the two-something hours of spare time and undivided attention needed to learn the true meaning of Christmas by watching Kevin McCallister foil the Wet Bandits, or John McClane crawl through the ducts of Nakatomi Plaza.
That’s why we bring you a new holiday tradition. Instead of watching Christmas movies, you can now watch select Christmas special episodes of your favorite TV series. To that end, we’ve put together a list of 16 of what we believe are the best Christmas special episodes from a wide range of shows. Whenever you need a break from listening to your black sheep of an uncle’s thoughts on the current state of the world, simply pop one of these on and enjoy some festive entertainment.
Here’s our list of the best Christmas TV specials in no particular order:
To start with, we have an episode that emphasizes the idea of Happy Holidays as opposed to just Merry Christmas. Friends is generally a show famous for its Thanksgiving episodes, but its Christmas specials are nothing to scoff at either. In The One with the Holiday Armadillo, Ross – the largest friend – wants to teach his son Ben about Hanukkah. Ben, being a little kid, is resistant to the idea of learning about his Jewish roots and instead just wants Santa. Hilarious sitcom hijinks ensue, eventually putting Ross in a giant armadillo costume and Joey dressing up as Superman to greatly confuse Ben and put us all out of commission with uproarious laughter.
The episode also gives some decent screen time to Phoebe, her own weird Christmas traditions, and her abandonment issues that lead to her attempting to put a wedge between Joey and Rachel. And just as Santa and dreidels are holiday staples, so are those things. But while this sub-plot packs a decent emotional punch, it also gives us such scenes as Joey playing the drums in safety goggles and Phoebe offering everyone candy from a skull. This all comes together to create a hilarious and well-rounded episode that’s a great example of why Friends remains one of the most popular sitcoms out there.
The first season of the American version of The Office sticks too close to the British show that spawned it. If you’re looking to get into this workplace sitcom these days, a lot of people will recommend you to just push through the short first season or outright skip it. And then in its second season, the show develops an identity of its own and actually becomes good.
The second season’s Christmas special comes around the halfway point of the season when we’re still learning to love all these crazy characters and are getting used to their zany antics. It’s a great showing for Michael Scott, the boss who cares too much but thinks too little. In order to boost his team’s morale, he buys plenty of booze for the Christmas party at Dunder Mifflin and breaks the rules of the office’s Secret Santa exchange. This leads to a lot of alcohol-soaked plotting and bickering between the staff, and some legendary displays of pettiness from Michael himself. The episode ends on a jaw and garment-dropping finale and serves as a good reminder as to why work parties are so dreaded by many.
If your primary reason for watching The Office is the famous Jim-Pam romance, then Christmas Party is also a great episode, as it plants a lot of seeds of that burgeoning relationship. But first, Jim has to overcome Michael’s quest to get his hands on an iPod.
On the surface a show about an American coach managing an English football team, at its core, Ted Lasso is a show about kindness, forgiveness, and coming together to work as a team even despite our differences. This makes it the perfect vessel for a Christmas special. Carol of the Bells is a very well-made episode that perfectly mixes the show’s signature humor with some personal drama into a sweet, but not cloyingly so, 30-minute episode.
Unlike most sitcoms out there that tend to use an A-story and B-story for their formula, Ted Lasso’s special combines three separate stories that show off different aspects of Christmas. First, we have Roy and Keeley, whose attempt at a “sexy Christmas” gets ruined when they have to save the holidays for Roy’s little niece. Then, there’s the Higgins family and how they end up hosting a huge Christmas dinner for most of the Richmond team. And finally, there’s Ted, who misses his kid stuck across the pond, and Rebecca’s attempt to cheer him up by helping out some underprivileged local families.
Despite its relatively modest run time, the episode gives each of its stories a satisfying little arc and feels like Christmas throughout. And then comes a timely Love Actually parody, ensuring this episode’s spot on our list.
How I Met Your Mother is the next generation of Friends-style sitcoms. It follows a group of relatively young people going about their daily lives in a big city while falling in love and getting themselves into increasingly implausible humorous situations. The big theme of the show’s second season is the aftermath of Marshall and Lily’s breakup at the end of the first. By the season’s Christmas special, the two are back together, but then due to some sitcom magic, Lily learns what Ted really thought of her during her break with Marshall. This leads to her sabotaging the group’s holidays and leaving Ted in charge of arranging everything.
On top of being another example of why Lily is the worst and why she rightly deserves to be called a grinch (only Ted didn’t actually say grinch), this episode highlights how every single little thing tends to go wrong around the holidays. It’s hectic, it’s funny, and most of all, it’s very relatable.
As a cherry on top, the episode’s B-story is dedicated to Barney getting sick as a dog. This is another thing that for some reason is way too common around the holidays. Here, it’s made funnier by Barney’s bull-headed insistence that he is in fact not sick. And that he has a fool-proof system for avoiding sickness where whenever he starts feeling sick, he stops being sick and becomes awesome instead. True story.
Traditionally, Gilmore Girls is seen as more of a fall show, with dedicated fans lining up their rewatches with the leaves around them turning gold. Even so, the show has its fair share of winter-themed and even festive episodes. And the whimsical nature of the town of Stars Hollow and its many residents lends itself well to a holiday special. If you’ve never seen it, it can be a bit hard to describe what kind of show Gilmore Girls is, but it’s essentially a masterfully written romantic comedy/family drama set in a small Connecticut town that runs on sitcom rules.
Unlike most other entries on this list, The Bracebridge Dinner isn’t explicitly dedicated to any specific winter holiday. You do still get all the staples of a Christmas special – snow, decorations, big lavish dinners, and family gatherings. The episode’s premise is that Lorelai was organizing an elaborate high-society party that gets canceled at the last moment. And so as not to let all her work go to waste, she invites the town’s residents to partake in this feast. This leads to some clashes between the elegance of old money and the rugged middle-class charm, which is one of the biggest themes of the show, but this time it’s all decked out and festive, and everyone gets in on the fun, not just Lorelai and her extended family.
The Bracebridge Dinner also pushes a couple of big storylines forward, most notably Richard’s retirement and the Rory-Jess romance. So, if you’re one of those – admittedly quite numerous – people who for some reason can’t see the awfulness of Jess, this episode shows off his “sweet” side through an act of public vandalism. And if you’re not too familiar with the rest of the show, you can still enjoy this episode without worrying about any of that and just appreciate the festive sights, romantic sleigh rides, witty dialogue, and zany antics of Stars Hollow’s residents.
If you’re not too familiar with Seinfeld – the show about nothing – to immediately recognize this episode, you might be confused as to what it’s doing on this list. The Strike is far from a festive title. If you go check the episode’s description on IMDb, this is what you’ll get, “Jerry goes out with a woman who is beautiful one day and ugly the next. Kramer goes back to work at H&H Bagels. George makes up a charity. Elaine gives a fake number to a man.” Nothing about this suggests that this is not only one of the best Christmas specials of all time, but simply one of the most memorable and influential episodes of television, ever.
By now, even if you only have a passing familiarity with the show, you’ve probably realized which episode this is. Yes, it’s the one with Festivus. For those who don’t know, Festivus is a winter holiday invented by the show (technically, it was invented by Dan O’Keefe, one of the show’s writers whose father had them celebrating a prototype version of the holiday when Dan was a kid). It’s a secular holiday that exists to combat the overly-commercialized nature of Christmas. A Festivus for the rest of us, as they say. Instead of a Christmas tree, you get an unadorned aluminum pole (on account of tinsel being distracting and it having a high strength-to-weight ratio). And instead of caroling, you engage in the airing of grievances.
So far, it all sounds like your standard over-the-top sitcom fare. But the thing with Seinfeld is how it was able to turn some of its elements into these huge cultural phenomenons. Despite being a secondary plot point in just one of the late-season episodes of the show, Festivus resonated with a lot of people. To the point that it’s now an actually celebrated and recognized winter holiday. So when you’re wishing someone Happy Holidays these days, you’re also wishing them a happy Festivus. Even if you just Google Festivus, on top of the actual search results, you’ll see the famous Festivus pole going down the page.
And if the miracle that is the canonization of a new holiday through a sitcom episode isn’t enough to get you excited about it, The Strike is just simply hilarious, thanks in large to the uproarious performance we get from Jerry Stiller. He plays Frank Costanza and is the character who invents Festivus within Seinfeld’s lore after having to “rain blows” upon a fellow Christmas shopper to buy his son a doll.
Winter holidays may be the time for feasts and celebrations, but they’re also one of the busiest times of the year for all the medical professionals out there. As such, Scrubs, a sitcom set in and around a hospital, leans into this idea in its first Christmas special.
Most of the doctors are too preoccupied to be in any sort of festive mood. And it’s only Turk, still new to the whole medical business, who stubbornly refuses to be all grumpy and distracted. His holiday spirit is put to the test throughout the episode through a series of never-ending emergencies set to a very amusing rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas.
It also doesn’t help that all of his friends and colleagues do what they can to dampen his spirits. But ultimately, thanks to a patient whose tribulations mirror the story of Mary and Jesus, the hospital comes together and experiences a miracle that reminds them what Christmas is all about.
Originally envisioned as The Office but in a small-town government setting, by its fourth season Parks and Recreation has very much become its own thing. The show’s protagonist Leslie Knope is an endless beacon of positivity and unbridled enthusiasm. These qualities are stretched to their absolute limit in Citizen Knope.
Suspended from work, and with her political campaign on the rocks, Leslie is buffeted from all sides and experiences the blues often associated with the season. She tries to ward them off by keeping herself busy and inventing new spices, but that doesn’t really work. In the end, her co-workers coming together to give her the ultimate Christmas gift reminds her that even when things aren’t going her way, she still has people who care about her, and that’s what’s important.
In the episode’s B-plot, Ben looks for a new job, but each one of his potential employers seems crazier than the last. One of his prospects is an accounting job for an accounting company, which lays the groundwork for plenty of hilarious episodes later on in the show. And the department’s attempts to come up with the perfect gift for Leslie are only overshadowed by the very personal and amusing presents she bestows upon them.
Family, modern or otherwise, is an important part of the winter holidays. And so, Modern Family is perfectly positioned to offer us some great Christmas specials. Which it does straight out of the gate in its very first season with Undeck the Halls.
The extended Pritchett-Dunphy family is separated into three distinct family units for this episode, each dealing with a relatable holiday crisis of their own. Phil and Claire struggle with figuring out which one of them should be the strict parent for the holidays and just how far to push it. Jay and Gloria deal with their clashing cultural traditions and expectations for the season. While Mitchell and Cameron have to find the right balance of petty and gracious to deal with annoying neighbors and other assorted nemeses of the season.
Outside of the actual storylines, Undeck the Halls has all the staples of modern holiday celebrations – ugly sweaters, shifting traditions, janky video calls, and mall Santas just phoning it in. Carried by such great actors like Ed O’Neill, who’s pretty much sitcom royalty, and Julie Bowen, the episode is an absolute joy to watch even for someone entirely unfamiliar with the rest of the show.
If you’re not someone who’s already a long-time fan of Cheers, it can be hard to get into the show today. It’s made in that older more restrained style of sitcom that predates the ’90s sitcom revolution spearheaded by the likes of Seinfeld and Friends. Despite that, even if you’re not down with the rest of the show, Christmas Cheers is a special that just about anyone can enjoy.
At that point in its run, Cheers’ ensemble cast includes such recognizable names like Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, and Kelsey Grammer. Especially for Woody Harrelson, who will then go on to become an Oscar-nominated A-list actor, it’s really fun to see him as this young country bumpkin without a serious bone in his body.
Cheers is a show that’s almost entirely set within a bar. Because of this setup, Christmas Cheers is a great special that gives us an insight into the lives of the kind of people who spend their holidays at their neighborhood drinking hole. You get Frasier being the designated grinch, Cliff turning a charitable gesture into a small-time scheme, and Norm packing the bar with assorted Santa impersonators. The episode is fast-paced and tightly packed with jokes, making it a fantastic way to spend 20-something minutes.
Since Miracle on the Third or Fourth Street is an episode in the first season of Frasier, before we go any further, we have to point out that we’re talking about the show’s original run here. Not the 2023 reboot.
We’ve already had a chance to see the character of Frasier as he was portrayed on Cheers. But now we’ll be taking a closer look at his solo venture in Frasier. We fully believe that this spin-off completely overshadows the show that spawned it and can easily stand as one of the finest sitcoms of all time.
In his own show, Frasier is a radio show host in Seattle, living far away from his ex-wife and son. Around the holidays, this distance stings more than usual, resulting in Frasier feeling quite down and dejected. Especially when his big plans to spend Christmas with his kid fall through at the last moment.
This development puts Frasier into a downward spiral where he argues with his father about how classy or tacky Christmas decorations really should be, and later on, he even stops shaving or wearing his customary suits, which gives him a wild disheveled look. This leads to him losing his wallet and being mistaken for a homeless person, with other less fortunate people pitching in to pay his diner bill. This random act of kindness reminds Frasier of his own good fortunes and restores at least a bit of his holiday spirit.
Most of the other shows on our list are sitcoms. Because let’s face it. Some light, at times mindless, fun is exactly what most of us need around the holidays. They’re easy to watch, and usually, they’re optimized for just watching a single episode without getting bogged down by various extended storylines.
Psych on the other hand is a procedural murder mystery. Of the kind where the police are singularly incompetent and would never solve a case if not for the brilliant consultant helping them out. This consultant here is one Shawn Spencer, a hyper-observant guy who pretends to be a psychic to explain his almost supernatural observational skills. On top of being a fake psychic detective, Shawn is also a laid-back slacker with a fondness for everything ’80s.
As a show, Psych is famous for its parodies, references, and themed episodes. This, of course, includes Christmas specials. In fact, it’s quite hard to pick the best Psych Christmas special. So, after some consideration, we’ve decided to go with the show’s first episode of this kind which takes place during its second season.
Shawn’s best friend Gus, otherwise known as Ghee Buttersnaps, Magic Head, and many other amusing nicknames, can hardly be considered the show’s straight man. But at least more often than not, he’s Shawn’s voice of reason. And when, around Christmastime, Gus’s dad is accused of killing his neighbor, Shawn and Gus set out to clear his name. As they do, we get more than our fair share of holidays at the Guster household. The episode is funny, festive, and is a great mystery too, making it an overall exciting watch. And when you’re done with it, feel free to explore the other Psych specials, they’re all worth it.
Much like How I Met Your Mother, Happy Endings is a sitcom that attempted to modernize the Friends formula for the 21st century. Unlike How I Met Your Mother, Happy Endings is criminally underrated and deserves way more recognition than it gets. The show follows a group of six young people of varying backgrounds and personalities as they live their messy confusing lives in a big modern city. Happy Endings sets itself apart by leaning into the absurd, with its characters being just that little bit extra.
This particular episode explores the often-overlooked aspect of the winter holidays – how they tend to overshadow everything else that may happen around their time. In particular, the episode shows what happens to someone who just happens to share a birthday with Jesus, and how this childhood full of combo gifts and insufficient attention can lead to all sorts of bitterness and resentment.
This being a sitcom, the premise results in accidental pepper-spraying of your entire friend group, futile attempts to ward off the ever-present encroachment of Christmas, and crazy contraptions to sneak eggnog into otherwise eggnog-free zones. And believe it or not, city-wide rampages are also on the table here. So, if you’ve never seen it, do yourself a favor and watch No-Ho-Ho, and then follow it with the rest of Happy Endings. The show deserves it.
You wouldn’t necessarily guess it, but for a sci-fi show about time-traveling space aliens, Doctor Who is famous for its Christmas specials. These episodes tend to get the highest ratings, are usually very elaborate, and oftentimes lead to major developments for the show despite mostly existing as standalone adventures.
It’s actually very hard to pick the one Doctor Who special you absolutely have to watch during this holiday season. After some careful deliberations, we’ve decided to recommend Voyage of the Damned for this honor. The episode is listed as the holiday special for the 4th season of the 2005 revival of the long-running show. In it, the widely beloved David Tennant incarnation of the Doctor finds himself stuck on board a starliner replica of the Titanic around the time of holiday celebrations. Much like its namesake, the space Titanic is destined to fail. Only instead of an iceberg, it’s poised to crash into the Earth, eradicating all life on the planet.
The Doctor then has to team up with a space waitress portrayed by Kylie Minogue to save the day. As this is Doctor Who we’re talking about, you can expect crazy aliens, murderous robots, a lot of frantic running around, narrow escapes, cunning plans, personal sacrifice, and some heartfelt moments to glue it all together. Among the Doctor Who Christmas specials, this is the one that was watched by the most people during its premiere, so you know you’re in for a grand old time should you decide to watch it.
If you’re looking for some less-than-wholesome Christmas shenanigans, the crew of Paddy’s Pub has you covered. The series has only produced one Christmas episode in its 16 seasons, and it was made when the show was probably in its prime. Although it first aired on TV at the end of season 6, it was recorded earlier and released on Blu-ray the year before. It’s a double episode with a 43-minute runtime.
At the heart of the episode is a twisted take on A Christmas Carol, with Dennis and Dee attempting to convince Frank of the error of his ways – or at least to give them the expensive gifts they’ve always wanted. Meanwhile Mac and Charlie discover their childhood Christmases were not quite as perfect as they had previously believed.
The episode has everything you could ask for in a Christmas special. There’s an office Christmas party, a trip to a mall, a claymation sequence, Christmas caroling, a giant snow machine, and plenty of Santas. The episode’s initial Blu-ray release allowed the show to get away with some vulgarity that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to until the show moved to FXX, such as F-bombs and even a little nudity, so the gang’s terribleness is truly on full display here.
Does everything else on this list seem a little too jolly and bright? Are you looking for something a little more bleak and grim? Look no further: Black Mirror has a particularly dark dystopian nightmare to help you celebrate the holidays.
This episode is practically a feature-length film at 1 hour and 14 minutes long, and it weaves together three different tales as two men celebrate Christmas together inside a remote, snowy bunker.
Every Black Mirror episode revolves around the downside of some piece of futuristic technology, and this one has a couple of the most terrifying scenarios in the series. In this vision of the future, your mind can be copied to a device called a “cookie,” and then stored inside a virtual space where your digital clone can be manipulated, tortured, and effectively enslaved. There are also ocular implants called “Z-Eyes” which can transmit the character’s vision and hearing for others to observe, and which can also be used to “block” other people, rendering them as a muffled gray silhouette in the real world.
The Christmas setting for the episode helps to highlight the isolating nature of the technology. If you tend to get sick of hearing Christmas music everywhere you go, you’ll particularly sympathize with the episode’s ending.
Having armed you with this watching list, we’d like to wish you Happy Holidays, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, or even Festivus. What are your favorite Christmas specials? Feel free to let us know in the comments.
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