Christmas Episode / Live-Action TV

♫ It's not Christmas without you! ♫

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• 21 Jump Street had "Christmas in Saigon" about the Vietnam War and Ioki's escape from it.
• 30 Rock has had a Christmas Episode in every season except the first one. The second one was creatively titled "Christmas Special". The others are "Ludachristmas", "Secret Santa", and "Christmas Attack Zone".
• Adam-12 has two of them. In "Log 122: Christmas - The Yellow Dump Truck," Reed and Malloy pull over a drunk driver yelling "MERRY CHRISTMAS" out the car window, try to resolve a domestic dispute caused by the husband's Christmas splurging, and search for a stolen car containing a poor family's presents, including the titular dump truck. In "Log 96: Pilgrimage," they have to bust a charity Santa who clobbers the drunk who robbed him, handle a fatal DUI accident, deal with a recently-widowed shoplifter, and finally help a Native American family from New Mexico (on the titular pilgrimage) locate their lost girl.
• The Addams Family had a Christmas Episode in "Christmas with the Addams Family", which had Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Grandmama, Lurch and Cousin Itt all pretend to be Santa out of concern that Pugsley and Wednesday's belief in Santa Claus is in danger.
• ALF also had two. The first, "Oh, Tannerbaum", was a wacky, zany romp for a new Christmas tree after Alf mistakenly chopped up the Tanners' first for firewood. It ends with Alf getting to see snow for the first time. Season Two's double-length, shot on film "ALF's Special Christmas" surprisingly was not happy at all. After destroying the Tanners' best-laid Christmas plans (par for the course for Alf), he ends up at a hospital, where he befriends Tiffany (an Delicate and Sickly eight-year-old whose terminal illness means she "won't live to see another Christmas"), delivers a child (and talks the mother into naming her newborn daughter after Tiffany), and stops the hospital Santa from committing suicide! To top it all off, Tiffany is based on (and named after) an actual child who died that year and the episode is dedicated to her.
• In the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Santa Claus and the Tenth Avenue Kid," a paroled burglar working as a Mall Santa steals an expensive toy airplane for a boy whose family can't afford it. In the opening and closing segments, Hitchcock bricks up his fireplace to stop Santa from tracking soot into his living room and giving him ugly ties.
• All Creatures Great and Small (1978) had three: two to bridge the gap during the hiatus and one to close out the series.
• All in the Family and Archie Bunker's Place: The long-running series created by Norman Lear was famous not for celebrating the spirit but its dramatic themes and that not all is always well when what for many is the happiest time of year comes around:
  • "Christmas Day At the Bunkers", the first holiday episode from 1971, has Archie in a grumpy mood. He just lost his Christmas bonus after a work order was botched, and he has to find a way to tell his family.
  • "Edith's Christmas Story," from 1973, has Edith having a breast cancer scare. It is all for naught in the end, but it provides for some frightening moments ... and an unusually loving move from Archie when he is relieved that his wife is well.
  • "The Draft Dodger," the most acclaimed of them all. From 1976, three years after the U.S. ended involvement in Vietnam, draft dodgers were still being sought by the government, and one of them, David, is a Christmas Day guest of Mike and Gloria at the Bunkers. They try to keep David's secret concealed from Archie, knowing his attitudes toward the war and honoring the call to defend the country right or wrong ... but Archie eventually finds out and things devolve quickly into a screaming match. In the end, Archie's friend, whose son died in Vietnam, helps defuse the situation.
  • "Edith's Crisis Of Faith," the 1977 episode where Edith witnesses an execution-style killing of her friend, a transsexual, shortly before Christmas ... and it has her more than wanting to not celebrate Christmas.
  • "The Bunkers Go West" and "California, Here We Are": A three-part story arc from 1978 where Archie and Edith learn that all is not well with Mike and Gloria's marriage.
  • "The Shabbat Dinner" – Although not celebrating Christmas – this episode centers on Stephanie, who is Jewish and celebrates Hanukkah – the episode aired in December 1979 and focuses on Stephanie having her first Shabbat dinner (an important milestone in the life of a Jewish person) around the time of Hanukkah. The episode is notable as Jean Stapleton's last appearance as Edith.
  • "Custody," which aired in January 1981, several weeks after Christmas, is still set around December 25, and has the now-widowed Archie – it is his first Christmas without Edith – learning that Stephanie's wealthy Grandmother Harris is suing for full custody.
  • "Father Christmas," the final episode where Archie tries to make peace with his brother, Fred (whose daughter, Billie, has been staying with Archie the past year-and-a-half) after a quarrel several years earlier over Fred's decision to marry woman barely older than Billie.
• All That had one in season two. The Backstage Sketch consisted of the cast members all telling Santa what they wanted for Christmas, all of the remaining sketches were holiday themed, and the musical guest was Run–D.M.C., who performed "Christmas in Hollis".
• Ally McBeal had several, including one where Santa sued for his job back.
• Ambulance (2016) shot Series 3 Episode 6 on the last Saturday before Christmas. Unfortunately, it's the infamous Belgrave Middleway episode. By the time the crews arrive, three people are dead. Then another two die on scene and another dies later in hospital. Even the call handlers are deeply affected by the horrific accident.
• A.N.T. Farm had an episode entitled "sANTa's Little Helpers" during which Principal Skidmore had a change of heart after being visited by three ghosts.
• Austin & Ally
  • Season 3: "Mix-Ups & Mistletoe"
  • Season 4: "Santas & Surprises"
• Austin City Limits has their 1978 broadcast featuring Tom Waits; for years, it has been a tradition to rebroadcast that episode yearly during the holiday season, and Waits sings a few bluesy Christmas tunes in the course of his performance.
• The Avengers (1960s) episode "Too Many Christmas Trees" has Steed and Emma at a Christmas party at the estate of a Dickens-obsessed publisher.
• Barney Miller:
  • Season 3's "Christmas Story", in which a mugger is targeting Santas and Yemana brings a blue Christmas tree into the squad room.
  • Season 5's "Toys", in which a toy maker believes his goods are being stolen by a rival toy maker, and Barney has to talk over holiday plays with his wife Liz, now that they're separated.
  • Season 8's "Homeless": Homeless men take shelter at the 12th Precinct after they're evicted from a hotel, and a Christmas card writer is arrested after he made a disturbance upon getting fired at work.
• ''The Bear" has Fishes which is without doubt, the most stress inducing episode of the series' run. Happy Christmas.
• Being Erica had one as the last episode of season 3. The main character, Jewish Erica Strange, tries to get into the Christmas spirit to cheer up Adam and learns it isn't all glamorous like on TV.
• Big Time Rush has the one-hour special "Big Time Christmas", which features the eponymous group attempting to rush to meet a deadline and record some holiday songs so they can get home for Christmas. It features special appearances from Miranda Cosgrove and Snoop Dogg (oh, and Fabio too).
• The Bill had so many it was difficult to count. All would generally involve Reg Hollis being sent on a menial shopping task by a higher up (so he could then turn up caked in snow) while female members of the relief try to get hardened cynics like Sgt Boyden to get into the true spirit of the season.
• Bizaardvark
  • Season 1: "Agh, Humbug"
  • Season 2: "A Killer Robot Christmas"
  • Season 3: "Holiday Video Sketchtacular"
• Blackadder had the parody Blackadder's Christmas Carol, in which the Victorian Ebeneezer Blackadder, "the kindest man in England" had a series of visions of the past and future that convinced him to turn evil.
• Black Mirror of all shows had one with "White Christmas." It's just as bleak as you'd expect from Black Mirror, with terrifying philosophical questions about morality, artificial intelligence, and technology in general. Merry Christmas!
• Bonanza: Two episodes from the show's 14-year run: "Gabrielle" (1961) and "A Christmas Story" (1966).
• Bones has had a few, including the murder of Santa and one where the entire team was trapped in the lab for the holiday.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Christmas episodes have been important plotwise. Season one's sees Boyle getting shot in the butt and Terry getting back into the field, while season two sees the end of the Giggle Pig plot, the Pontiac Bandit returning, and Rosa smiling.
• The Brady Bunch:
  • "The Voice Of Christmas" – an episode from the show's first season centering on Carol falling ill right before Christmas (when she was expected to sing at Christmas Day services) – was the lone holiday-themed episode during the original run.
  • A Very Brady Christmas, from 1988, was a reunion made-for-TV film that (according to the storyline) reuinted the entire family (don't forget Alice) for the first time in several years. It was among the top 3 highest-rated TV movies for the year, and inspired The Bradys just over a year later.
• Two Christmas specials were made of The Brittas Empire in 1994 and 1996 respectively, although neither special specifically deals with a Christmas theme.
  • The 1994 special shows the leisure centre staff in various vocations on New Years Eve in the year 2019, as they recall New Year's Eve of 1989 when they were trapped in the centre with each other for days during a fierce blizzard.
  • The 1996 special features Brittas and the staff on a survival course in Wales where, amongst other things, they end up targeted by a serial-killing Santa Claus.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer did this once, with the Season Three episode "Amends". Aside from the first appearance of the First Evil (which later became the Big Bad of Season Seven), it also brought two couples back together - Willow/Oz and Buffy/Angel.
  • The week before, "The Wish" played out like another It's a Wonderful Life story, until it was derailed midway through with the wisher getting killed. As the victim was Cordelia, she got better at the end.
  • "The Body" showed the Scoobies celebrating Christmas for the last time in the show.
  • "Bring on the Night" took place around the Christmas season, with Buffy noting this could be the last one anyone has.
• Bunk'd Odd for a summer camp series, but...
  • Season 1: "Secret Santa"
  • Season 2: "How the Griff Stole Christmas"
  • Season 4: "Summer Winter Wonderland"
• Café Americain has "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly". When Holly is unable to return home for Christmas, Marcel invites her to spend the holiday with his family.
• Call the Midwife includes a Christmas episode every series. One featured the Nonnatus House staff travelling to South Africa to help out in a mission hospital.
• CASUAL+Y and its spin-off Holby City (set on the wards of the same hospital) sometimes celebrate Christmas with a Crossover in which a major disaster requires the entire hospital staff. CASUAL+Y occasional threw in wholly unexplained supernatural elements (a superstore Santa implied to be the real Santa in one case).
• Somehow, The Chase had one, with it taking place during ITV's Text Santa telethon. It was a Celebrity Edition with the Chasers dressed like traditional Panto villains (The giant from Jack and the Beanstalk, Captain Hook, etc).
• Chuck had three:
  • "Chuck Vs. the Crown Vic" wasn't Christmas centered, but did have a minor subplot of the Buy More crew getting ready to celebrate their annual Christmas... sorry, Holiday party.
  • "Chuck Vs. Santa Claus" had the Buy More getting held hostage by a criminal in what was an episode-long Shout-Out to Die Hard.
  • "Chuck Vs. the Santa Suit" concluded the first arc of the show's final season, where Chuck finally discovered who was trying to shut his business down the entire time: Daniel Shaw.
• The Closer had a Season 3 Christmas-themed episode, "Next of Kin", which aired in December well after the end of the regular season as a two-hour special.
  • In season 6, they had another two-parter; "Living Proof". Both the season 3 and the season 6 Christmas Episodes had somewhat humorous story lines when it came to the main cast, but were very much downers regarding the actual cases of the episodes.
  • In season 7, there was "You Have the Right to Remain Jolly", which was a single episode, aired as a part of the regular season, and was much lighter in tone than the previous Christmas Episodes.
• Community:
  • Season 1 had Shirley insisting Jeff not get into a fight with a bully when she's planning a Christmas party, but ends up in a full-on brawl with everyone else.
  • "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas", in which Abed hallucinates everyone being stop-motion animated. And they all go on a magical journey through Winter Wonderland.
  • Season 3 parodied Glee with the study group getting assimilated one by one into the Christmas pageant — they end the show watching the Inspector Spacetime Christmas special.
  • Season 4 had the group trying to talk the history professor into a better grade at Jeff's Christmas party, but things spiral out of control.
• Coop & Cami Ask the World
  • Season 1: "Would You Wrather Get a Moose Angry?"
  • Season 2: "Would You Wrather Lose Your Presents?"
• CSI: NY:
  • "Silent Night" (3.12), where a grandmother gives her baby granddaughter a Christmas-themed snow globe.
  • "Second Chances" (6.11) is book-ended with Mac & Stella delivering a giant live Christmas tree to a venue where a party for children of officers killed in the line of duty will take place, and the team showing up at that party dressed as elves to help Santa hand out presents to the kids.
  • "Shop Till You Drop" (7.10) has a department store manager found murdered in his Christmas window display.
  • "The Real McCoy" (9.10) finds a nightclub owner impaled by a Christmas tree stand on a lot close to his business.
• Danger Force has the two part "Down Goes Santa" which becomes a Saving Christmas plot after Chapa accidentally downed Santa and his sleigh allowing for Krampas, Santa's brother, to start to destroy the Christmas spirit.
• Designing Women had one which centered around Mary Jo's son being determined to catch Santa Claus in the act, so Suzanne hired a mall Santa to enter Mary Jo's house and gave him the key. Big surprise — he robbed Mary Jo blind!
• The Dick Van Dyke Show had a classic episode where the Alan Brady Show writers all performed on a holiday variety show.
• Diff'rent Strokes had two:
  • The first, a "Retrospective" from 1978, was Exactly What It Says on the Tin – a Clip Show of the family enjoying Christmas and laughing about their first weeks since Arnold and Willis pernamently joined the family.
  • The only other Christmas episode came in 1982, where Arnold was hired as "Santa's Helper" ... not knowing that this street corner Santa is a very clever burglar who robs the Drummonds shortly before Christmas. Mr. Drummond is not very happy and later learns that "Santa" has also been making off with the donations.
• Doctor Who:
  • There is but one classic series Christmas special: Episode 7 of "The Daleks' Master Plan", "The Feast of Steven", which was broadcast on Christmas Day 1965, had the First Doctor Break the Fourth Wall and wish everyone at home a happy Christmas at the end of a Breather Episode that had nothing to do with the rest of the serial. The logic back then was that no-one would watch telly on Christmas Day, but as Christmas happened to fall on a Saturday that year they might as well put out an episode as usual. Indeed, the show’s viewership numbers seem to confirm this, as the episode had the lowest viewership of the entire serial. (This mentality has changed — the new series' Christmas specials posted some of the show's highest ratings.) Unfortunately, however, this logic lead to the episode never being copied or offered for overseas sale; consequently, when the original videotape was wiped, the episode became Doctor Who's only Missing Episode that is almost certainly irretrievably lost.^note Theoretically a telerecording could have been made in the absence of specific instructions not to make one, hence "almost certainly", but the chances of this are slim to none. However, audio of the episode has survived, and the episode was the only in the serial to have telesnaps taken of it, so an animated reconstruction, as has happened with other lost episodes, could in theory still happen.
  • "The Unquiet Dead" is, in a way, the revival's very first Christmas episode: It came three episodes into Series 1, and featured Charles Dickens and a swarm of body-jacking alien "ghosts". Not quite Yet Another Christmas Carol, but plenty of references!
  • The first three Christmas episodes of the revival — "The Christmas Invasion", "The Runaway Bride" and "Voyage of the Damned" — follow directly on from their previous series' finales. Following this are the standalone "The Next Doctor" and "The End of Time" (which was split in two parts, airing on Christmas and New Year's Day). The first four are very Christmassy. "The End of Time" was the final story before a complete change in production team and lead actor; aside from the lack of Christmas elements besides the time period, it starts with premonitions of darkness and rapidly gets bleaker, eventually rolling down into Wham Episode territory. Taking a note from soap operas, these tend to have high body counts and bittersweet endings in general, to the point that London is evacuated on Christmas in "Voyage of the Damned" because everyone remembered what happened the last two Christmases!
  • When Steven Moffat took over as showrunner, the Christmas shows became extra-Christmassy for several years. "A Christmas Carol" and "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" are Lighter and Softer standalone stories where Everybody Lives (at least onscreen).
  • Drama, chills, and continuity return with "The Snowmen", which introduces the Great Intelligence/Impossible Girl story arc that drives the second half of Series 7.
  • "The Time of the Doctor" is a Grand Finale for the Eleventh Doctor with Wham Episode elements.
  • "Last Christmas", the Twelfth Doctor's first Christmas show, is the coda to the Series 8 story arc and originally was set to have companion Clara die at the end, returning to the dismal tradition of British Christmas specials. However, actress Jenna Coleman decided to stay on for another series, so Clara survives — with the story's guest supporting hero Santa Claus (guest star Nick Frost) helping to save the day! This saw the specials reach "peak Christmas"; from here on out, holiday trappings are significantly downplayed even as the stories involve Christmas in some way.
  • "The Husbands of River Song" is once again a coda to Series 9 to follow its heartbreaking three-part finale, but it's also a Breather Episode for Twelve: a much Lighter and Softer comedy that shifts into tender romance and throws River and the Doctor a bone.
  • With no new full series airing in 2016, Series 10 was preceded by another Breather Episode, "The Return of Doctor Mysterio", in which the Doctor teams up with a comic book-style superhero in New York City.
  • "Twice Upon a Time" is the conclusion of the Twelfth Doctor's Grand Finale, which began in the Series 10 Season Finale "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls". Notably, those episodes would have served as Twelve's final bow and the 2017 special was intended to be the Thirteenth Doctor's debut; however, incoming showrunner Chris Chibnall instead chose to begin from the start of Series 11. When Steven Moffat learned that the BBC would no longer greenlight Who Christmas specials if a year were skipped, he revised the Season Finale to extend its plot into one more adventure for the Twelfth Doctor and the First Doctor to keep the tradition alive. However, Chibnall so far has used New Year's Day rather than Christmas for special shows for the Thirteenth Doctor (the Series 11 epilogue "Resolution" and Series 12 premiere "Spyfall" Part One).
  • "The Church on Ruby Road" is the first Christmas episode since "Twice Upon a Time" and the debut of Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor, where he teams up with new companion Ruby Sunday to save a newborn from baby-hungry goblins.
• Dragnet had a couple, the most well-known probably being the story of the boy who 'stole' the statue of the child Jesus from the nativity scene at church to give him the first ride in the red wagon he finally got. The story was done three times: on the radio, in the 50s version of the series, and in the '60s remake.
• Dr. Pimple Popper: With the office decked out in holiday decor, the Christmas specials offer the usual pimple popping action but with a large helping of holiday spirit and a holiday party to finish off the day.
  • In "The 12 Pops of Christmas" (S1 E101), Dr. Lee and her crew tackle 12 pops in a single day. The episode ends with everyone decoerating a tree full of ornaments that resemble various dermatological conditions.
  • In "Season's Squeezings" (S5 E101), Dr. Lee and the team build a snowman with sparkly, decorative cysts and sing Christmas carols between appointments. The episode ends with a surprise visit from Santa, who was her final patient for the day.
  • In "A Pimple Carol" (S6 E101), a stressed out Dr. Lee is visited by the "spirits" of Christmas past (her dad Dr. Soon Lee), present (medical assistants Kristi and Val), and future (Dr. Song, her husband, and her newborn twins) who remind her what Christmas is all about.
• During the course of its series' run, The Dukes of Hazzard was on the air for six consecutive Decembers. However, "The Great Santa Clause Chase" was the series' only holiday-themed show. (David Hofstede, in the unofficial companion book for the series)
• Family Affair: The show had no "official" Christmas episode that aired shortly before December 25, but there was a holiday-themed episode that aired during the show's third season: "Christmas Came A Little Early." In this episode – which originally aired in November 1968, a month before Christmas – the Davis family hold an early Christmas for a terminally ill classmate of Buffy's, who is not expected to survive into late December. The tragic youth, by the way, was played by a pre-The Brady Bunch Eve Plumb. ^note Despite originally airing in November, the episode – when the show was popular in syndication, and later when the series was reaired on rerun networks – was/is often pulled from its original production order and aired on Christmas day (or the last Friday before December 25) due to its holiday theme.
• Family Ties:
  • In "Christmas Story," the Keatons miss their Christmas ski trip because of a snowstorm. Instead, they spend Christmas Eve at home, looking at a photo album and opening early presents while Steven and Elyse reminisce about the circumstances of each child's birth.
  • "A Keaton Christmas Carol" is as the title suggests Yet Another Christmas Carol in which Alex relearns the spirit of Christmas by seeing his past as a Christmas-loving child and his future as a rich miser who leaves his family in poverty. Upon waking he goes to buy presents at 7-Eleven.
  • In "Miracle in Columbus," Alex works as a Mall Santa, tries to help a little girl whose father won't be home for Christmas, and meets the real Santa Claus. In a subplot, Steven and Elyse try to find a Christmas tree that isn't crappy.
• Fellow Travelers: Episode 4 takes place shortly before and during Christmas.
• Fixer Upper: Instead of renovating a house for a couple, Chip and Joanna Gaines fix up a house from the 1800's previously passed up by another couple and turn it into a bed and breakfast.
• The Flash (2014) episode "Running to Stand Still", where villains the Weather Wizard, Captain Cold and the Trickster team up to take down The Flash on Christmas Eve. Their plan involves the Trickster dressed up as Santa Claus, and giving out explosives disguised as presents to 100 random children across Central City. The episodes "The Man in the Yellow Suit" and "The Present" are boarderline examples, taking place at Christmas, but the holiday quickly takes a back seat to the main threat.
• Frasier had several notable Christmas episodes. The first season episode "Miracle on Third or Fourth Street" dealt with Doctor Crane's hilariously depressing first Christmas totally alone, only to end on a sweet, uplifting note about the common good of humanity. The fifth season episode "Perspectives on Christmas" is considered one of the series' best, and in season 7, Daphne's romantic feelings for Niles secretly bloomed in the Christmas episode, having found out about Niles's long-standing feelings for her in the previous episode.
• Friends:
  • The series didn't really have special Christmas episodes, just ones that due to continuity took place around Christmas time and therefore mentioned it (but sometimes New Year's Eve instead.) Their "big deal" episodes apart from season finales tended to be Thanksgiving Episodes.
  • Three out of the six main characters were Jewish. One Christmas episode they had was Ross trying to teach Ben about Hannukah amidst the flood of Christmas hype.
• Game On (2015): In "The Christmas Tree", Toby and Seth accidentally destroy the family Christmas tree.
• The Getting Together episode "Blue Christmas" doubles as a Vacation Episode, as the characters rent a mountain cabin so Jenny can have a white Christmas.
• The series Ghosts (UK) has "The Ghost Of Christmas", which revolves around Mike playing host to his family over Christmas at the Button House. Meanwhile, Julian is forced to face his feelings over the fact that he abandoned his family every Christmas and becomes regretful of his actions.
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir has "The Ghost of Christmas Past". For Christmas, the captain gives the Muirs, Martha, and Claymore a dream of when he was alive 100 years ago (they all play parts), loosely based on Scrooge.
• Glee has a Christmas episode in every season except the first. Special mention goes to Season 5's episode, which is a non-canonical episode presented as being a "lost" episode from the previous season.
• Good Times: The Maude spinoff saw the Evans family celebrate the episode several times:
  • "Sometimes There's No Bottom in the Bottle," from 1974. The kids' cousin, Naomi, is visiting for the holidays and trying to conceal a drinking problem.
  • "Penny's Christmas," from 1977 (the year Janet Jackson joined the cast). Her character, Penny, celebrates her first real Christmas, this one with Wilnona, but it may be her last after she is arrested for shoplifting.
  • "Christmas In a Cab," from 1978, sees Keith's boss at the taxi company refusing to give him the holiday off, so the Evans family brings their Christmas party to the office so that Keith – and other taxi drivers having to work on December 24-25 – can celebrate. The party turns into a Talent Show episode.
• An early Green Acres episode has Oliver anxious for an old-fashioned Christmas in his new country home - he finds that 'traditional' in Hooterville means aluminum Christmas trees.
• Grimm had two, both with Wesen versions of folkloric monsters that "only come out at Christmas":
  • Season 3: "Season of the Krampus", which as the title suggests, features The Krampus.
  • Season 4: "The Grimm Who Stole Christmas" has the Mediterranean Kallikantzaros.
• Hank Zipzer: In "Hank Zipzer's Christmas Catastrophe", Hank is in the run up to Christmas as he prepares for a new baby brother. But Hank’s life never runs smoothly and soon Miss Adolf is turning Mr Rock’s Rudolph the Rock’n’Roll Reindeer into a one-woman Christmas Carol – two school inspectors are getting injured in a bizarre sleighing accident and Mr Joy is trying to cancel Christmas altogether. In his attempt to drag triumph from the glittering jaws of doom, Hank will ice skate into disaster, nearly crash a Christmas tree into a crowd, get himself and his best friends arrested, get his favourite teacher sacked and lose the love of his life. Was also the Series Finale.
• Happy Days had its most acclaimed holiday episode, "Guess Who's Coming to Christmas," in 1974, whenthe Cunninghams invite Fonzie over for Christmas after they learn he has no family to celebrate with. The episode was repeated several years afterward, after which it was replaced by:
  • "Christmas Time," aired in 1978 where Fonzie refuses to accept a gift sent to him by whom he suspects is his estranged father.
  • "White Christmas," the 1980 episode that was the first without Richie. The tale is about a Christmas Eve blizzard that strikes Milwaukee and strands the gang in two different locations – Howard and Joanie at Cunningham's Hardware; Fonzie, Roger, Potsie, Chachi and Jenny at Arnold's – while Marion waits nervously at home. They all make it home – late, but they make it – to celebrate the holiday, and they even get a phone call from Richie.
  • "All I Want For Christmas," says Heather (the daughter of Fonzie's girlfriend, Ashley) in the 1982 Christmas episode, is for her mother and grandparents (Ashley's parents, from whom she's been estranged) to reconcile.
• The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries had one with the Nancy Drew episode "Will The Real Santa Claus Please Stand Up". Nancy tries to save an old man accused of theft. Said gentleman claims to be Santa Claus and is assumed to not be playing with a full deck, until the very end...
• The Haunting Hour:
  • A Creature was Stirring: A kid whose family is fighting is given a present that is actually a dangerous monster.
  • Goodwill Toward Men: A nice girl and her pompous rich family wake up in an alternate reality where they are homeless. This was the also the series finale.
• Haven had the episode "Silent Night". The twist is that it is really July, but reality has been altered so that everybody in town except Audrey Parker thinks it is Christmas, and nobody but Audrey notices that the townspeople are disappearing one by one. She runs herself ragged trying to snap everybody out of it and get back the missing people, but everybody thinks she's just being a Scrooge. When Audrey saves the day and restores the town to normal, she decides to celebrate Christmas in July, as her adventure taught her the importance of her friends and to appreciate how lucky they are to be there.
• Henry Danger had "Christmas Danger". Surprisingly it is only a Christmas episode by name. It's actually a Prison Episode. But hey, it features a single Christmas song and takes place on Christmas!
• Here Come the Brides has "A Christmas Place," in which a woman gives birth to a son on Christmas Day. Two young girls think the baby will be killed on Easter, like Jesus, so they kidnap the baby, planning to smuggle him to San Francisco, where no one will know he's a Christmas baby.
• As a radio show, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) almost did a Christmas special in which Marvin would have been both figuratively and literally the star (of Bethlehem), and by participating in a nativity scene would be cured of his depression. This concept was What Could Have Been; the episode broadcast instead on 24 December 1978 was the pilot for the second series.
• Hold The Sunset: "If I Were a Wise Man" focuses on Edith and Phil's last Christmas before they head off for their retirement. Whilst Roger has a subplot involving him getting the Christmas Tree into the house, Phil ends up seemingly interacting with the spirit of his dead wife and Edith's dreaded sister comes to stay.
• Home Improvement had one every season with most of them featuring Tim trying to win the annual neighborhood lighting contest with outlandish displays and constantly losing to his elderly neighbor.
• Homicide: Life on the Street had the third season episode "All Through the House" (the title, of course, comes from the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas"), where, among other things, Bolander and Munch investigate the death of a man who played Santa Claus, Munch gets stuck with the son of the man they first believe was the murder victim (it turns out to be someone else, and the father and son are happily reunited at the end), Felton tries to find out where his ex-wife and children are so he can give his children Christmas presents, and Bayliss tries to get a little Christmas spirit going in the unit, even going so far as asking Giardello if he wants to play hearts (only for Giardello to beat the pants off of him).
• Horrible Histories had "Horrible Christmas", featuring (among other things) the WWI Christmas Day truce, weird Victorian holiday cards, and the decidedly uninspiring truth behind various favourite carols. Very frustratingly for many fans, it's the one episode that apparently can't be found on YouTube.
• House: Christmas Episodes are well-known for being downers but Merry Little Christmas takes the fricking cake. Wilson has just betrayed House to Tritter and gets hated by everyone for it, he and Cuddy try and force House to take the deal (rehab instead of jail) by making him detox and as for House himself? Well, he detoxes nastily, cuts his arm to avoid the pain in his leg, steals a dead patient's drugs, leaves an answer message for his parents in what can be argued as a suicide note, overdoses on his pills by drinking a ton of alcohol, gets left by Wilson in a pool of his own vomit and when he's broken enough to come crawling back to Tritter, Tritter removes the deal anyway. Good times.
• How I Met Your Mother has 3 Christmas episodes.
  • "False Positive" in season 6 (although the main plot point is Marshall and Lily trying to get pregnant, not Christmas).
  • "Symphony of Illumination" in season 7 (the A-plot isn't Christmas-centered, but the B-plot involved Marshall trying to set up an elaborate light display).
• iCarly: The imaginatively named "iChristmas". Complete with It's a Wonderful Life-based plot and Shout-Out to Peanuts.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's one-hour Christmas special features a very rare upbeat ending for the gang. Although they didn't achieve their goals, they are brought closer together, and the episode ends on a note of friendship.
• JAG had five of these, once per season following the fourth (save the show's sixth season) and with the common sight of Harm visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial his father was shot down on Christmas Eve 1969. One episode did air on Christmas Day 1997 (Season 3), but it had nothing to do with Christmas.
• Jake and the Fatman: In "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", it's Christmastime, but McCabe isn't feeling so jolly as an ambitious assistant DA helps Jake find a murderous Santa Claus.
• The Jeffersons: Several during the series' run:
  • "The Christmas Wedding," where Lionel and his longtime fiance, Jenny, are married on Christmas Eve, 1976.
  • "984 W. 124th Street, Apt. 5C": From 1977, Louise is suspicious when George is sending gifts to a mysterious person in Harlem and won't explain why. The outcome is surprising and heartwarming: It's an impoverished family that George had been helping out.
  • "George Finds a Father": From 1978, George learns a devastating secret about one of his old Army buddies who is visiting on Christmas.
  • "All I Want for Christmas" is a loving home to take him in, an orphaned boy tells Santa when George dresses as the jolly ol' elf to surprise the kids when the holidays rolled around in 1980.
  • "Father Christmas": George and Tom reminisce about past Christmases with their families, in particular focusing on their fathers.
• Johnny and the Sprites had "A Very Spritely Holiday", though Johnny mentions Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and says that he likes celebrating all holidays. He decorates a Christmas tree, however, and Gwen is mentioned as Santa's helper.
• Johnny Staccato had "The Unwise Men", an episode where a department store Santa (Johnny's friend) is being pressured into participating in a jewel heist. Johnny even breaks the fourth wall at the end to wish the viewer a merry Christmas.
• Jonathan Creek had three Christmas episodes; the first was a typical howdunnit, but the next two both introduced Creek's new companions.
• Just Shoot Me! had a memorable Christmas Special, "How the Finch Stole Christmas", which featured Finch starring in a How the Grinch Stole Christmas! parody, complete with Dr. Seuss-style narration. Meanwhile, Elliot starred in a subplot based on A Charlie Brown Christmas and Nina starred in a Santa's Existence Clause inspired subplot.
• K-9 and Company, a Failed Pilot Episode for a Doctor Who spin-off that wasn't picked up, takes place in the days leading up to Christmas 1981. In the final scene, K-9 sings "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Wizard had episode 16, "Christmas no Kiseki" (The Christmas Miracle), which aired on December 23 and featured a Surprise Santa Encounter and a one-use "Merry Christmas" Wizard Ring.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid had episode 12 aired on Christmas Day, which had Ex-Aid and Brave fighting to a remix of Jingle Bells from Poppy. Jarringly, it's also the episode to have a Kamen Rider Killed Off for Real.
  • The short-lived and unsuccessful localization Masked Rider had "Ferbus' First Christmas", where Count Drego tried to ruin Christmas for Dex and his adoptive human family by sending a gift containing three Maggots ready to attack.
• Kickin' It had "Oh, Christmas Nuts", which was the final episode of Season 2 and took its name from Milton's Catchphrase.
• Kirby Buckets did a It's a Wonderful Plot in Season 2's "It's a Kirbyful Life".
• Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge has "Knowing Me, Knowing Yule" as its final episode. Highlights include Alan attempting to discreetly plug Rover cars under the nose of a BBC executive, an attempt at pulling the world's largest Christmas cracker, and Alan punching the BBC executive in the face with a partridge, well and truly killing any hopes he had of getting a second series (and this after accidentally shooting a guest on live television in the previous episode).
• Kojak had "How Cruel the Frost, How Bright the Stars" in season 3.
• Lab Rats did "'Twas The Mission Before Christmas" in Season 2 and "Merry Glitchmas" in Season 3.
• The Irish talk show The Late Late Show (not to be confused with the U.S. late-night talk show of the same name) always broadcasts a special episode near the beginning of December dubbed The Late Late Toy Show. It showcases new toys for the holiday season, and tends to feature major guests, audience giveaways of featured items, and other unexpected moments. One of the most anticipated aspects is what kind of Christmas sweater the host will wear that year. The Toy Show is a cultural institution; it's often the most-watched television program of the year in Ireland, while tickets to the taping are very valuable and hard to come across.
• Speaking of Late Show, David Letterman made it a tradition for Darlene Love to appear on the last new episode of his late-night talk shows before Christmas (beginning on Late Night and shifting to Late Show after his move to CBS) to perform "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" in an increasingly extravagant production.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit took 13 or 14 seasons, but finally produced a Christmas episode entitled "Presumed Guilty", in which the squad unites to get Fin's Wrongly Accused brother-in-law out of jail in time to spend Christmas with his family. Of course, being SVU, they had to arrest Santa Claus and a Pedophile Priest along the way, but hey...
• LazyTown featured a Christmas episode in its first season. Robbie Rotten even dressed up as Santa as part of his plot to get rid of Sportacus that week. He pulls a Grinch on the kids by stealing their presents, but then gives them back when he realizes they have a present for him, and has dinner with the rest of the characters.
• Leverage: "The Ho Ho Ho Job" sees the team called in to save the reputation of a mall Santa who was framed for drinking on the job as part of a larger scheme.
• Liv and Maddie
  • Season 1: "Fa-la-la-a-Rooney"
  • Season 3: "Joy To-A-Rooney"
  • Season 4: "Cali Christmas-A-Rooney"
• Little House on the Prairie: Several during the show's 10-year run:
  • "Christmas At Plum Creek," the first-season episode where the family does odd jobs and shops in secret to surprise each other in this, their first Christmas in Walnut Grove.
  • "Blizzard," aired in 1976 and following the drama of children becoming stranded in a sudden blizzard while walking home from school on Christmas Eve. A search party is formed to find the children before tragedy strikes.
  • "A Christmas They Never Forgot," aired in 1981 and gathering all of the Ingalls daughters and adopted children for just the second (and final) time in the original series' history. Here, the Ingalls and Hester Sue are stranded at the former's homstead when a blizzard strikes on Christmas Eve. They pass the time sharing favorite Christmas memories.
  • "Bless All the Dear Children," the final installment, taped in 1983 but not aired until December 1984. Several storylines play out, the central one focusing on a distraught mother kidnapping Laura and Almonzo's 2-year-old daughter, Rose. (Other stories focus on bratty Nancy Olesen teaming with Jason Carter to find a Christmas tree and English settler Sherwood Montague trying to get into the spirit of Christmas.)
  • Additionally, the original pilot movie – filmed in the fall of 1973 and aired in early 1974 – had a Christmas segment where Santa Claus (or was that Mr. Edwards) brings the girls peppermint sticks as gifts and celebrates the day with the family. It is here where Caroline, originally repulsed by Edwards' uncoth ways, begins warming up to him.
• Llan-ar-goll-en has the episode "Trwyn Coch", which is about the mystery of one of Santa's reindeer's nose going missing.
• The Love Boat:
  • Season 1's "Lonely at the Top/Silent Night/Divorce Me, Please" has Captain Stubing dressing up as Santa Claus for a group of orphan boys.
  • In Season 4's "That's My Dad/The Captain's Bird/Captive Audience," Stubing buys a parrot for Vicky, and Gopher and Isaac try to teach it to say something other than "Captain Stubing is a jerk." Meanwhile, a singer played by Jack Jones sings "Winter Wonderland."
• MacGyver: "The Madonna". The plot revolves around a church's statue that was stolen before Christmas Eve, as well as the Challengers Club facing dire financial straits just as it was organizing a Christmas party.
• Magnum, P.I. had two, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls and Big Ones Too" and "Operation: Silent Night".
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E. had Solo and Kuryakin trying to keep an Eastern European Premier from being assassinated in "The Jingle Bells Affair".
• Married... with Children:
  • The show did the "It's a Bundyful Life" thing, with Sam Kinison as Al's guardian angel.
  • Additionally, there is "You Better Watch Out" (with a parachuting Mall Santa falling to his death in the Bundys' backyard), "Christmas" (Al working multiple jobs to buy gifts), "The Worst Noel", and "God Help Ye Merry Bundymen".
• M*A*S*H had more Christmas Episodes than there were Christmases during the Korean War.
  • Season 1's "Dear Dad" had Hawkeye writing his father and telling him about life at the 4077th during Christmas time. Best remembered for Hawkeye having to fly into a battle zone dressed as Santa Claus.
  • Season 8's "Dear Sis" had Father Mulcahy writing a letter to his sister around Christmastime.
  • Season 9's "Death Takes a Holiday" dealt with the gang trying to keep a badly wounded soldier from dying on Christmas.
  • Season 10's "'Twas the Day After Christmas" was technically a Boxing Day episode, with officers and enlisted personnel switching jobs for the day.
• Maude had three such episodes, each airing in the final three seasons (unlike most of Norman Lear's shows, which had at least one such episode no later than the second season):
  • "The Christmas Party," from 1975 (the show's fourth season) saw Walter host his annual Christmas party but is worried that Maude's feminist friend will use the party as a political platform rather than just celebrating the season.
  • "Walter's Christmas Gift," aired in 1976. Unemployed for the holidays, Walter and Maude decide to give each other homemade gifts, but their friend Arthur might have a better present: A stake in his business.
  • ""Maude's Christmas Surprise," a Doorstop Baby episode from 1977.
• McCloud had "'Twas the Fight Before Christmas..."
• McGee and Me! has the episode "Twas The Fight Before Christmas", which is all about Nick's delinquent friend Derrick wanting to change his ways after seeing the church Nativity play. Nick soon learns there is more to Derrick than just his juvenile antics. It turns out he's just being abused by his father.
• Men Behaving Badly had the 1997 Christmas Episode "Jingle Balls". It's Christmas time, a time of love, food and fun... except at Gary's home as it is a time of hate, burnt turkeys, unwanted presents and deep fat fried phones! Gary is determined to do the cooking, but this inevitably leads to disaster. Tony buys Deborah a mountain of presents, but his immaturity hits a new high with the Christmas season, leading Deborah to decide to split up with him.
• Midnight Caller:
  • "Someone to Love" is an unusual example. The episode aired on November 14, 1989, but most of it is a flashback to the previous December.
  • "Do You Believe in Miracles?" from later in the season is a more traditional example. The episode aired on December 19, it's more lighthearted than most other Midnight Caller episodes, and the plot revolves around a statue of Baby Jesus.
• Mock the Week's Christmas episodes are a mix of this and a Clip Show, consisting of highlights from the previous series, deleted scenes and specially-shot material that is actually about Christmas.
• The Monkees has "The Christmas Show", with the Monkees babysitting an unhappy, cynical boy and trying to teach him the Christmas spirit.
• Perhaps the most famous UK Christmas Episodes were those of the Morecambe and Wise Show by The BBC from the 1970s, which broke many viewership records, including the 1977 edition, which was watched by 28 million people - over of half the UK population. (However, it wasn't the most watched show of the night it was on, as Mike Yarwood's airing before it got a touch more viewers.)
• Mork & Mindy had a Christmas episode in the first season, appropriately titled "Mork's First Christmas". Notably, there was no report to Orson at the end, and the ending credits ran over footage of Mork sneaking downstairs on Christmas Eve to wait for Santa.
• Mr. Bean had the ever liked episode Merry Christmas Mr. Bean. Among other things we see Mr. Bean black out a very well-known store's exterior, steal the town square Christmas tree, conduct a brass band, and try and cook the world's biggest turkey for dinner with his girlfriend-without much success. But that's not as big a disappointment as her present.
• Mystery Hunters: The fourth season had a Christmas special where the hunters see if reindeer can fly and whether Santa's workshop can be found.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 has had three: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (season 3), Santa Claus (1959) (season 5), and The Christmas That Almost Wasn't (season 11). The former had the invention exchange include the Easy Bake Foundry, Mr. Mashed Potato Head, and Patrick Swayze's Road House Board Game, presaging the classic song "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas" later in the episode. Both movies were revisited by the Spiritual Successor RiffTrax years later (see Web Original below) with all-new jokes, and friendly rival Cinematic Titanic also did a fresh take on Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. The third and latest featured the Re Gifter as Jonah's invention exchange.
• The Nanny: While Fran Fine is Jewish, the show did some Christmas episodes.
  • Season 1's "Christmas Episode" had Fran getting introduced to the Sheffield family's Christmas traditions, where she's surprised that Maxwell is celebrating Christmas early due to scheduling a business trip on Christmas weekend.
  • Season 3's "Oy To The World" was an animated episode parodying the animated Christmas specials of the 1960s, e.g. How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
• NCIS and its various spinoff series tend to have a Christmas episode on the last new episode air date before Christmas. They also sometimes (But not always) have Halloween and Thanksgiving themed episodes near those holidays.
• Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn has the episode "Santa's Little Harpers". After being punished for snooping at their Christmas presents, the four kids must now work together to work up the money for the game console they want. Hilarity Ensues. Meanwhile Tom and Ann switch the roles of Santa Claus & Mrs. Claus to see who has the harder job.
• Nightingales: In "Silent Night", a pregnant woman named Mary knocks on the office block door on Christmas Eve, but assures the boys that she is not an allegory. She's lying.
• The Noddy Shop had a one-hour special, "Anything Can Happen At Christmas". In it, Warloworth meets Santa's wife Annabelle and learns he's been put on the naughty list, and he must find a way to reverse this.
• Odd Squad had an episode titled "Reindeer Games", where Olive and Otto try to catch Santa's shrunken, missing reindeer, while Oscar aids Ms. O in getting on the nice list, all before Christmas morning.
• The Office (UK) ended with a special two-part Christmas episode. The show's follow-up Extras also finished with a feature-length Christmas episode.
• The Office (US) had one every season except the 6 episode 1st and the writer strike shortened 4th.
• One Foot in the Grave: For three years (1995-1997), the show became a series of nothing but Christmas Episodes. A concluding series was broadcast in 2000.
• Only Fools and Horses: There was a period when the show consisted entirely of Christmas Episodes, in this case between 1991 and 1996 (with a three-parter intended to be the finale). The series later had three more Christmas Episodes from 2001 to 2003.
• Our Miss Brooks:
  • "The Magic Christmas Tree" sees Miss Brooks prepared to spend Christmas Eve alone with Mrs. Davis' pet cat Minerva.
  • "Christmas Show" features the frantic exchanging of Christmas gifts... before Christmas.
  • "Department Store Contest" sees Miss Brooks' childhood letter to Santa Claus inadvertently entered into the titular contest.
  • "Christmas Gift Returns" sees more trouble from the exchanging of Christmas gifts.
  • "Music Box Revue" sees Miss Brooks buy a magic music box that she'll only hear play if she's in the proper Christmas spirit.
  • "A Dry Scalp is Better Than None" and "The Telegram" see Miss Brooks and company throw Christmas in July parties for Mrs. Davis' sister Angela and Uncle Corky respectively.
• Pair of Kings: The Season 2 episode "Pair of Santas" involved Boomer and Brady bringing Christmas traditions to the island of Kinkow. A year later, they did a Winter-themed episode.
• Parks and Recreation has three Christmas episodes:
  • "Christmas Scandal": The Parks Department's plans to up a Winter Wonderland Lot 48 get derailed when Leslie is forced to deal with a scandal.
  • "Citizen Knope": The department surprise Leslie with a candy model of the department offices. They also volunteer to help her run her campaign for City Council.
  • "Ron and Diane": While Diane supports Ron as he accepts an award for his work in carpentry, Jerry holds a Christmas party that is attended by Ben, Chris, and Ann, while April, Andy, and Tom wonder why they weren't invited.
• The Partridge Family has "Don't Bring Your Guns to Town, Santa", in which the bus breaks down in a Ghost Town on Christmas Eve. While Keith and Reuben try to fix the bus, the others listen to the town's one inhabitant tell a story about a Christmas during the town's heyday, with most of the characters played by the show's cast members.
• Perfect Strangers had at least two. First, the pair are trying to make it to Larry's parents' house. Another had Mr. Gorpley invited to a party by Balki to the other guests' displeasure. Both times, Balki reminds people of the true spirit of the holiday.
• Police, Camera, Action! had the November 1997 episode "Don't Look Back In Anger" which was intended as this, but budget concerns and executive demands made it into a straight-up Clip Show Recap Episode. In the end, there was no Christmas episode.
• The Power Rangers franchise has had irregular Christmas episodes that tend to be An Ass-Kicking Christmas episodes:
  • The first was the Direct to Video Christmas Special ''Alpha's Magical Christmas", which has Alpha 5 invite a bunch of kids from around the world to celebrate Christmas in the Command Center. Thankfully, it's non-canon.
  • The first episode was the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers episode "I'm Dreaming of a White Ranger" in season 3, which has the Rangers travel to the North Pole to liberate Santa's workshop from Zedd and Rita.
  • The next was Power Rangers Zeo episode "A Season to Remember", which has King Mondo trying to ruin the holidays by using their ethnic differences. It's also notable for revealing Tommy and Kat would get married in the future.
  • After a long hiatus doing these things, Power Rangers Samurai gave us "Christmas Together, Friends Forever", which has the Rangers celebrating Christmas at the Shiba House, and "Stuck on Christmas", which has the Rangers stuck in their Megazord due to a monster fight. Both are Clip Show episodes.
  • Power Rangers Megaforce gives us "The Robo Knight Before Christmas", which has the titular Sixth Ranger accidentally being sent to Africa. It's another Clip Show
  • Power Rangers Dino Charge has "Race to Rescue Christmas", which has the Dino Charge team trying to recover Santa's computer with the naught and nice list on it, and "Here Comes Heximas", which has the team having to deal with Santa's stolen coal, which has some nasty surprises for them.
  • Power Rangers Ninja Steel has "Past, Presents, and Future", which has a monster trying to get revenge on the team at their weakest, and "The Poisy Show", which also serves as a Fully Absorbed Finale of sorts for Dino Charge
  • Power Rangers Beast Morphers has "Scrozzle's Revenge", which the titular lackey traps the Rangers in Christmas ornaments, forcing the Beast Bots to save the day.
• Episode 10 of Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin ends with the Liars and Karen, their boyfriends, and their mothers and Faran's father having a Christmas party at Imogen's house and sharing personal updates with each other.
• Punky Brewster had two.
  • "Yes, Punky, There is a Santa Claus" had Henry dressed as Santa, and Punky (who doesn't know it's him) asks for her mother for Christmas.
  • In first-run syndication, "Christmas Thief" had Punky goaded into shoplifting a scarf.
• The first season of Radio Enfer had one, which included a gift exchange between the main characters that turned into a disaster, and a play based on The Nutcracker.
• Raven's Home: Season 3's "Bah Humbugged" revolves around the Baxter-Carter-Grayson family trying to combine their opposing Christmas traditions.
• Although Red Dwarf never had a genuine television episode set around Christmas, a mobisode was released in the late 2000s which has a Christmas theme. It revolves around the crew meeting Santa and his reindeer and playing charades with them.
• Rentaghost gave us "Rentasanta", the episode that introduced Dobbin the Pantomime Horse.
• Roswell's Christmas episode had Max saving a ward of young cancer patients because he was being haunted by the ghost of a man he didn't save. He ends up at Mass with - well, everyone.
• The Royle Family has a Christmas Episode after its second season which saw Denise giving birth prematurely. The series finished with its next Christmas Episode, though it did come back for a one-off (non-seasonal) special episode six years later and a seasonal one in 2008.
• Rutland Weekend Television had a Christmas show where guest star George Harrison was determined to play a pirate, although there was no pirate sketch in the schedule.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch had one each season, apart from the sixth:
  • Season 1: Salem gets kidnapped by a mean little boy and Sabrina has to come up with a plan to rescue him.
  • Season 2: Sabrina ends up injuring Santa Claus (a distant relation actually) and has to replace him for the night.
  • Season 3: Sabrina accidentally erases Christmas from the world and has 24 hours to fix things.
  • Season 4: Sabrina must help Mr Kraft rediscover the spirit of Christmas.
  • Season 5: Sabrina spends Christmas with Morgan and her family while Hilda and Zelda have Roxie over.
  • Season 7: Sabrina, Morgan and Roxie go to Florida and run into Roxie's mother out of prison.
• Sanford and Son: The lone Christmas episode in the entire series' history aired in 1975, a A Christmas Carol adaptation to the Sanford junkyard when "Ebenezer Sanford" is grumpy and miserly on Christmas. The three ghosts who visit him are all variants of his son, Lamont. Watch for Redd Foxx to sing "The Christmas Song (Chesnuts Roasting On an Open Fire)" in the tag scene.
• Schillerstrasse has one where Christmas is celebrated two days in advance because everyone's going to celebrate it with their families.
• Schitt's Creek aired a Christmas Special in 2018 where Johnny wants to celebrate Christmas and is initially thwarted by his family's usual selfishness.
• Schlag den Raab has had one at the end of the season since 2007, and often one of the games is Kerzen Anzünden.
• In Scrubs, Turk, who becomes suddenly very religious, vows to show the more cynical doctors the true meaning of Christmas... which, for doctors, turns out to be working all of Christmas Eve on call, treating victims of alcohol-fuelled violence, car crashes and suicides. Then, just when all hope is lost, a Christmas Miracle! A star falls from the sky, allowing Turk to find the pregnant teenager who ran away earlier just before she goes into labour and everyone gathers round in the snow as Turk delivers a candy-cane sweet Golden Moment.
• SCTV had three Christmas episodes: "SCTV Staff Christmas Party", "Christmas", and "It's a Wonderful Film". Johnny LaRue (John Candy) and his ongoing quest for a crane shot figure into the first two episodes. The third example naturally includes a running spoof of It's a Wonderful Life.
• Seinfeld had several, the most famous being "The Strike", in which the Costanzas celebrate the holiday of Festivus.
• Shake it Up
  • Season 2: "Jingle It Up"
  • Season 3: "Merry Merry It Up"
• Shoestring: The very last episode, "The Dangerous Game", is set during the Christmas season and involves the search for a batch of miswired toys that explode when they're turned on.
• Slings & Arrows: "Fallow Time" is mostly centered around Christmas (a downtime for the theatre festival, which performs in the summer). Oddly, it originally aired in July.
• Smallville:
  • "Lexmas": The title probably already tipped you off. It is centered on Lex's "perfect" dream in which he is married with Lana, with a young boy and expecting a girl, and Clark is with Chloe. He gives up the senator race but wins the Humanitarian award of the year, and is on excellent terms with everyone except Lionel, but who cares? At least, not until the dreaded Dream Apocalypse...
  • "Gemini" also takes place around Christmas, but the festival tones are much less prevalent. Other than the bit with the secret Santa putting a bomb in Chloe's handbag...
• Sonny with a Chance: "A So Random Holiday Special" in Season 2
• Space: Above and Beyond has "The River of Stars", which was inspired by the real-life Christmas Day truce in World War I.
• Starsky & Hutch has "Little Girl Lost". Starsky gets into the spirit, singing carols and buying Christmas decorations for his car, while Hutch dislikes the whole idea and spends the episode railing against the "phony wave of euphoric sentimentalism orchestrated by the clanging of cash registers."
• St. Elsewhere actually killed off Santa Claus in its Christmas episode. Just to bring it home, the episode's called "Santa Claus is Dead".
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip had "The Christmas Show", which doubles as a meta example because it deals with Matt Albie's efforts to put together a Christmas Episode of the eponymous Show Within a Show.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: "Christmas at the Tipton" centered around the hotel getting snowed in on Christmas.
• Supergirl: In "Reign", the titular villain nearly beats Kara to death on Christmas Eve, and just might do the same to her own daughter on Christmas morning.
• Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad had one. Kilokhan manages to brain fry the team using Christmas lights, Malcom and Jennifer help save the day, Kilokhan is defeated, and everyone promptly has their memories of the experience erased by the end.
• Supernatural: "A Very Supernatural Christmas" has Evil Santa, sacrifices to gods (and what says Christmas more than watching someone's fingernail be torn off?) and a surprisingly effective ending. Sniff. And a tree decorated with air fresheners and fishing flies.
• Super Sentai:
  • Power Rangers' parent franchise does Christmas episodes far more frequently due to the difference in airing dates. They usually tend towards An Ass-Kicking Christmas and are always at the 40-something episode mark. They can also be generally divided into two categories — the ones where a major story arc occurs and the characters get the opportunity to celebrate at the end; and the ones where the Rangers have a wacky standalone adventure often occurring right after a major story arc.
  • Gosei Sentai Dairanger was the first series to explicitly reference Christmas, which happens to be the birthday of Kou. It falls into the former category however, as it brings the story of his Missing Mom to a close. Ninja Sentai Kakuranger followed up with the first of the standalone Christmas Episodes, in which a centipede Youkai tries to ruin Christmas.
• Sydney to the Max has the Season 2 opener "How the Syd Stole Christmas".
• That '70s Show had 8 Christmas episodes, one for every season. Which is a little weird considering the show was supposed to take place over a 4-year time span.
• That Girl had at least two Christmas episodes:
  • "Christmas and the Hard-Luck Kid", where Ann Marie brings Donald on a flashback to her time as a boarding school teacher with a little boy who can't go home for Christmas.
  • "'Twas the Night Before Christmas, You're Under Arrest", where Ann buys theatre tickets from a scalper as a present to the Baumans' and unsuspectingly gives that scalper too much information. When Donald tells her that scalpers try to use this info to break into apartments, she panics and talks her beau into hiding their presents, only to be accused of being burglars themselves.
• The Thundermans had Season 2's "Winter Thunderland", which is Yet Another Christmas Carol in which Max learns the consequences of not giving Nora a gift for Christmas.
• T.J. Hooker: "Slay Ride". Kojak also had an episode called "Slay Ride" it wasn't a Christmas Episode.
• Top of the Pops: An hour-long episode of this long-running pop music show was broadcast on BBC One on Christmas Day, featuring highlights from the British singles charts from the past year. The set was given a festive makeover, and presenters and artists often appeared wearing Santa hats and other festive accessories. Usually, but not always, that year's Christmas Number 1 was played towards the end. Though Top of the Pops ended as a weekly series in 2006, the Christmas Episode remained part of BBC One's festive schedule into the 2020s. (Classic Christmas Episodes are shown on BBC Four.)
• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • "The Night of the Meek" is set on Christmas Eve, and involves alcoholic, despairing department store Santa Henry Corwin wishing he could help the poverty-stricken residents of his neighborhood, then finding a mysterious bag which produces gifts on request. He spends the night giving gifts to children and adults alike, and when the bag is empty, he wishes he could do the same thing every year. At which point a reindeer-drawn sleigh appears, and an elf sitting in the sleigh tells "Santa" that they need to get a start on next year's Christmas...
  • In "The Changing of the Guard", Professor Ellis Fowler, who has taught at the Rock Spring School for Boys for 51 years, is forced to retire at Christmas and plans to commit suicide as he believes that his life has been a failure.
• The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • In "But Can She Type?", an underappreciated secretary named Karen Billings is transported to an Alternate Universe in which being a secretary is considered highly glamorous shortly before Christmas.
  • In "The Star", the survey ship Magellan discovers the records of a long dead civilization on Christmas Day. Father Matthew Costigan points out that, because of relativity, the ship is the only place in the universe where it is Christmas.
• The Ultra Series has done a few:
  • Return of Ultraman's two-parter "Ultraman Dies at Twilight" and "When the Ultra Star Shines" doesn't feature much in the way of Christmas celebration, but is considered by plenty of fans to be a Christmas Episode — one that firmly falls into the tragic category as it kills off two major characters and sees Ultraman Jack face his two most dangerous foes, the sadistic alien Nackle and the brutish kaiju Black King.
  • In Ultraman Ace, the incredibly powerful Father of Ultra has recovered from nearly killing himself against the alien Hipporito. He is reintroduced by taking the guise of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. After he helps Ace fight off Yapool's Monster of the Week, Snowgiran (whilst still in his Santa Disguise, which he has now turned into a giant), He returns to normal, and is even shown piloting a sleigh.
  • In Ultraman Taro, an owl-like alien with a crystal ball named Miracle comes to Earth with the intention of wishing everyone a Merry Christmas! However, he is being pursued by another alien named Terrorist, who kills him in front of Taro. Out of revenge, the Ultra avenges the good-intentioned avian by killing Terrorist with Miracle's crystal ball. The resulting explosion also leads into a shower of snow.
  • Ultraman Max has an episode entitled "Elly's Christmas", about Yunijin, a mysterious kaiju that only appears on Earth for a few seconds on Christmas Eve every 12 years and the man who is trying to find it. However, anywhere Yunijin is present will begin to warp out of space-time. There is less fighting than most Ultraman episodes, but many fans find it quite charming.
• Veronica Mars has "An Echolls Family Christmas" in season one, though the fact that it was Christmas was more of a background event.
• The Vicar of Dibley, being set in a church, naturally had a few. These were originally major parts of the show's continuity, as Alice gave birth to her baby as part of the nativity scene. Once the show ended, the actors would get together again every year to do a special Christmas Episode for charity.
• Victorious has "A Christmas Tori", where the group has to give Secret Santa gifts, and Tori attempts to help Andre after he gets a bad grade on his Christmas song.
• Warehouse 13, similar to its spiritual parent Eureka, ran 2 special Christmas episodes to cap off seasons 2 and 3. They ran months after the seasons ended, took place outside continuity, and oddly aired at the beginning of December.
• The Weird Al Show: Lampshaded in the title of an episode named "The Obligatory Holiday Episode", though the episode was about the characters celebrating all holidays at once, not just Christmas.
• Welcome Back, Kotter: The Sweathogs celebrated Christmas with Gabe and Julie Kotter in "The Sweathogs' Christmas Special," a Clip Show from 1977.
• Whodunnit? (UK): "A Piece of Cake" is a Christmas-themed episode that was originally screened between seasons 2 and 3. It involves a murder at a family gathering on Christmas Eve, 1928.
• Whose Line Is It Anyway?:
  • The American version had a Christmas Episode, complete with massive Lampshade Hanging from Drew about how they didn't even bother decorating, and just stuck Christmas-y things into the games.
  • The British version had an extra long Christmas special in series 2 with six performers instead of four (Josie Lawrence, Paul Merton, Tony Slattery, Sandi Toksvig, Greg Proops, and Mike Mc Shane).
• On Wonderfalls, the "twice-a-year church attendance" trope is referenced and spoofed when Jaye's former classmate, who has converted to Judaism in order to marry her husband, demonstrates some ignorance of the basic tenets of the religion and then cheerfully informs Jaye, "I'm more of a Christmas and Easter Jew." Later on, when Jaye befriends a Catholic nun (well, former nun), her family reveal themselves as actual Christmas and Easter Protestants when they try to drag her to church, to her bewilderment.

Jaye: Is it Christmas? Because if it is, it snuck up on me and nobody is getting any presents!

• The Panel Show Would I Lie to You? introduced one starting with its seventh series. Most (but not all) of the stories will be Christmas-related, and there will usually be at least one fairly big-name guest star on the panel (Ray Winstone, Ricky Tomlinson and Tom Courtenay have all shown up). The special is filmed with the rest of the series, which goes out earlier in the year; this means sometimes it will be recorded as early as March, and some knowing jokes will be made about this.
• Xena: Warrior Princess: Given its somewhat elastic definitions of history, this show has what may be the only live-action Christmas episode in which the word "Christmas" is never mentioned (for obvious reasons) — "A Solstice Carol".
• The X-Files:
  • The first season episode "Beyond the Sea" begins with Scully's parents visiting her during the festive season.
  • The two-parter "Christmas Carol"/"Emily", in which Scully discovers that her stolen ova has been used to create a child while away at her brother's house for Christmas.
  • Only this show would set a Christmas episode ("How the Ghosts Stole Christmas") in a Haunted House and only Mulder would think staking out said haunted house is a good way to spend Christmas Eve. However, many might identify with Scully's take on shopping just before Christmas: "If I'd heard 'Silent Night' one more time, I was going to start taking hostages." It's important to note that said house was haunted due to a lover's murder/suicide pact and that said ghosts get our two favourite FBI agents to re-enact said pact. All to the soundtrack of Frank Sinatra's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas".
• Yes, Minister had precisely one Christmas Special, an hour-long episode after the end of the third series entitled "Party Games". Interestingly, it manages to be a Wham Episode and yet not rely on any kind of continuity whatsoever. Sir Arnold retires, leaving Sir Humphrey to become Cabinet Secretary. Shortly afterward, the the Prime Minister retires as well his rival, the Home Secretary, having provided him the perfect excuse to kick him Upstairs. Through machinations and an utterly hilarious speech about sausages, Jim Hacker becomes Prime Minister, with Sir Humphrey as his chief Civil Service liaison. And Bernard? Well, the Prime Minister needs a Principal Private Secretary, too. In short, the episode manages to change everything and absolutely nothing about the show (which was rechristened Yes, Prime Minister for its remaining two series).
• Yo Gabba Gabba! has two of these:
  • The first one is titled "Christmas" in which we learn about the importance of giving as the Gabba gang celebrates Christmas.
  • The second one, called "A Very Awesome Yo Gabba Gabba Christmas Special!", is about the Gabba gang ringing in the holidays with special guests and a visit from Santa himself.
• Zeke and Luther had "Bro-Ho-Ho", which was the Season 2 finale and marked the departure of Ryan Newman's Ginger from the show.

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• The Star Wars Holiday Special has its detractors, and George Lucas has disowned it, but it's universally regarded as the best Life Day Special featuring Wookiee porn, a musical number by Bea Arthur, and a crossdressing Harvey Korman, and no one can ever take that away.

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