The best Christmas TV episodes of all time

Christmas episodes have been a network TV tradition from the days of I Love Lucy in the '50s. It seems to be a dying art today with the advent of the binge model, though we’ll see later in this list that some shows are still holding the fort.

There’s something about a Christmas TV episode that works even better than a Christmas movie — the show has been in our lives for years and the characters are friends we hang out with so often that they’re practically family. It’s comfort food, and like comfort food, an episode of TV is easy to indulge in, as opposed to the 2 (or more) hour commitment that comes with a Christmas movie.

Curl up with your loved ones, queue up these episodes and join us on a holiday ride of raucous laughter and tears of joy, while we embark on a quest to find out the real meaning of Christmas.

Friends — The One with Christmas in Tulsa

Friends, the most conventional show on this list, predictably has a strong roster of Christmas episodes. I am personally partial to the Holiday Armadillo for the laughs, but Christmas in Tulsa has more of a Christmassy feeling. Chandler has to be in Tulsa for work, and he reminisces about earlier holidays with the gang. This allows the show to turn into a clip reel revisiting all of our favourite episodes — Phoebe and Rachel convincing Chandler to search for the gifts Monica got them, the three-way showdown between Santa, the Holiday Armadillo, and Superman (weird), and many others. The real Christmas miracle is the gang spending Christmas together when Chandler shows up at home after quitting his job.

Parks and Recreation — Citizen Knope

Mike Schur’s ode to civic duty — Parks and Recreation did three Christmas episodes over its seven-season run. But it was Citizen Knope that brought all of the themes of the show together and blended them perfectly with the Christmas spirit. The episode celebrates Leslie Knope who is really an embodiment of all the values of Christmas — thoughtful, caring, and just plain good. When Leslie is suspended for two weeks, she struggles to find ways to continue her work to make Pawnee a better place. She manages to get everyone in the office the best gifts, and then they all work together to give Leslie the perfect gift. Everyone gets something to do, and we even get appearances from Jason Mantzoukas as Dennis Feinstein and Ben Schwartz as Jean-Ralphio. Citizen Knope celebrates the work family, but it’s not the only one on this list.

Seinfeld — The Strike

Not everyone celebrates with their heart on their sleeve, so here’s something subversive for the rest of you. Seinfeld, the show about nothing, always eschewed the treacly sincerity of network comedies of the time. And so The Strike, which takes place at Christmas, doesn’t even feature the festival. Instead, the gang ends up celebrating Frank Costanza’s made-up festival — Festivus. The late great Jerry Stiller is predictably hilarious explaining the rules of Festivus to George’s boss, while the rest of the gang are caught up in shenanigans of their own. Though George’s mother, Estelle, doesn’t have much to do in this episode, it’s an appropriate way to bid farewell to the actress, Estelle Harris, who passed away earlier this year. Apart from an appearance by a pre-Walter White Bryan Cranston, watch out for an early cameo by Broadway legend and Pulitzer prize winner Tracy Letts.

Ted Lasso — Carol of the Bells… and Bonus (The Missing Christmas Mustache)

It’s safe to say Ted Lasso is filling the Parks and Recreation-shaped hole in viewers’ hearts, with its relentless optimism and work-family vibes. Carol of the Bells is a comparatively straightforward Lasso-meets-Christmas episode with Rebecca cheering up Ted on his first post-divorce holiday by enlisting him on a gifting mission. The real heart of the episode is the Higginses annual Christmas dinner where the entire team turns up for the first time ever. In true Christmas fashion, the episode ends with a sing-along and Hannah Waddingham gets to flex her West End credentials by singing Christmas (Baby please come home).

The second installment "The Missing Christmas Mustache" is a fun claymation short featuring voice performances from the main cast, as they help Ted find his missing mustache before getting on a Christmas video call with his son. It’s a quick 4-minute shot of Christmassy goodness.

Lost: The Constant

My personal favourite Christmas rewatch is The Constant — a mind-bending thrill ride that nevertheless manages to check all the Christmas boxes down to a tear-jerking climax in front of a Christmas tree. When Desmond becomes "unstuck in time" and starts bouncing between 1996 and 2004, he has to find his Constant, someone important that he deeply cares about in both times who can help him anchor his consciousness. As time runs out, he finally manages to make a phone call to the love of his life Penelope Widmore on Christmas eve, 2004.

The unsung hero of the episode is Mark Goldberg, whose masterful editing not only keeps the tension running high between the two timelines, but also works thematically in the final phone call — rapidly cross-cutting between the two sides of the phone call until the final declarations of "I love you" overlap perfectly and the two timelines sync up. It’s a testament to the multitudes that Lost contained that The Constant, an episode which centers on characters that weren’t introduced until season two, is consistently cited as the best episodes of the show, and features regularly on all-time greatest episode lists.

Honorable Mentions

There are so many TV episodes that could easily be substituted in the above list. On the comedy front, we have Community’s Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas, Arrested Development’s Afternoon Delight, and BoJack Horseman’s BoJack Horseman’s Christmas Special: Sabrina’s Christmas Wish. On the drama front, you could try The West Wing’s In Excelsis Deo and Noel, This is Us’s Last Christmas, and in a bit of a zag, Black Mirror’s White Christmas.

The Brits have a tradition of the Christmas Special, which are meant to be standalone installments of existing TV shows. Doctor Who has a slew of such episodes, the best of which is The Runaway Bride, which introduced us to Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble. Downton Abbey’s Christmas at Downton Abbey is another staple rewatch ending with Matthew’s proposal to Lady Mary. But really the most fun Christmas programming to come out of UK television is The Big Fat Quiz of the Year (full episodes on YouTube) where host Jimmy Carr quizzes a bunch of comedians about events of that year.