When the family fails to help Lois with the Christmas shopping, she walks out on the family and the Griffins must try to save Christmas on their own.
Tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch: Peter takes out a DVD of Christmas with the Kranks. He then takes the disk out of the case... and burns them both.
- Blatant Lies: When Lois "returns home" after stealing all the presents and decorations, Peter keeps taking credit for doing basic chores around the house in her absence - except Lois was the one to do all of those chores when she broke in to the house to ruin Christmas.
- The Bus Came Back: After four seasons of absence, the Greased-Up Deaf Guy finally reappears.
- Christmas Episode: Season 19's Christmas episode, and a parody of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
- Cluster F-Bomb: The episode begins with Lois swearing each time she drags the bin of Christmas decorations each step down the stairs.
- The Faceless: The "3" that Quagmire is sleeping with has a coat over her head when she is onscreen, so the audience never knows what she actually looks like.
- The Fool: In a frustration, Peter just throws away the Christmas decorations, only to discover they've landed perfectly on the house.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Lois decides to leave the family to handle Christmas on their own. She discovers that without her Control Freak antics they are actually enjoying the holidays.
- How the Character Stole Christmas: Jealous of her family having a great Christmas without her, Lois resorts to stealing all of their presents, decorations, and even the Christmas tree.
- Jerkass Ball: Lois goes from talking badly to her family to stealing from them out of jealousy.
- Karma Houdini: Lois doesn't suffer any major consequences for trying to ruin her family's Christmas. While she does get hospitalized from an enlarged heart, her family never found out what she did (and somebody else got arrested for the break-in).
- Kick the Dog: Even after getting away with stealing Christmas from her family, Lois goes further by destroying their belongings while pretending fake family members are doing it.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: When Stewie asks why she's stealing Christmas, Lois asks why he's dressed like Cindy Lou Who. Stewie suggests they both just pretend they never saw each other and promptly leaves.
- Motive Decay: Fed up with her family failing to help her make Christmas a success, Lois left them alone in order to teach them a lesson. When she sees that they managed just fine without her, she changes her objective to stop Christmas out of jealousy.
- Political Overcorrectness: While recreating the nativity, Peter uses figurines that reflect the actual nationalities of Jesus Christ and suddenly becomes frustrated by the number of gender-neutral characters, misplaced technology, and Tig Notaro.Peter: I DON'T LIKE WHAT THE WORLD IS! I'm white! When's it gonna be our turn?!
- Profiling: At the end, a narrator informs us that the Quahog police arrested and deported a hitherto unknown Muslim neighbor of the Griffins for Lois' vandalism. As mentioned under Karma Houdini above, Lois lets this happen so she doesn't get caught in her deception.
- Shout-Out: There are numerous homages to How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, such as Lois's outfit, a Slasher Smile that she makes, the scenes of her stealing the family's decorations, and Lois's heart growing three sizes. In addition, Stewie appears dressed as Cindy Lou Who.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Quagmire makes up fake family members named Bloofus and Klunt. At the end, Lois also makes up fake family members that just so happen to have the same name.
- Take Our Word for It: The woman Quagmire sleeps with in this episode is apparently so ugly, that both Quagmire and Lois call her "a 3", and Quagmire wants less lighting when he’s having sex with her.
- Take That!: Peter burns a DVD of Christmas with the Kranks.
- Traveling at the Speed of Plot: Lois spends most of the robbery doing chores yet somehow manages to successfully pull off the heist before sunrise.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: As part of the Grinch homage, Stewie is dressed as Cindy Lou Who. Instead of making up a lie about repairing the Christmas tree, Lois instead asks why Stewie is in a pink dress with pigtails and bows. Stewie awkwardly retreats upstairs rather than answer.
