I totally agree. The topic was brought to TRS in 2011 because of this very issue - confusion between a "Christmas Episode" that is either in or out of the series's normal continuity, and some confusion between it and "Christmas Special".
However, the topic died for lack of action and TRS is currently closed to new topics until we get the current workload under the new limit. I think Tropes Are Flexible and the best action for now is to loosen the the concept from "must be separated from the regular season" to "usually separated from the regular season" (since Christmas is the biggest commercial holiday of the year anyway). This brings it closer to conformance with other Holiday Episode tropes, which usually are part of an ongoing season instead of a special production.
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
Why not just merge it all into Holiday Episode?
Check out my forum game: Rate the above YMMV.
Nvm, we already have that.
Check out my forum game: Rate the above YMMV.
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Christmas Special vs.
, started by shimaspawn on Jun 20th 2011 at 7:24:40 PM
Not all Christmas episodes (i.e., episodes that take place around christmas and/or have Christmas as a major theme in the episode) fit the mold of the description. The description says it is supposed to be "divorced from the parent show", a "one-off" and "not part of an ongoing season". This severely limits the trope to the few examples of shows with "special" christmas episodes. Simply having an episode that takes place on christmas is much, much more common and fits the "episodes" index much better. It should be noted that this page has been completely derailed due to this exact idiotic description — many of the examples are simply episodes that take place on Christmas. And splitting the page would be a stupid move, seeing as there are very, very few Christmas episodes that fit the current description. Face it folks — when tropers are so disgusted with a trope's description that they, en masse, decide to ignore it, that means there's something wrong with the trope, not the tropers.
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