What does a vampire give his girlfriend for Christmas? Do homicide detectives eat figgy pudding on stakeouts? Why is there mistletoe in outer space?
Annual TV Christmas specials, a fixture for many television series, even serious dramas, have the answer to these vital questions. But why, oh why? Rarely are these holiday moments great television. Yet they’re not going away, so we must, for some reason, enjoy spending Christmas with the people we stream into our homes.
Admittedly, Christmas episodes shouldn’t work—and they often don’t. A Christmas episode can be a jarring digression from a program’s narrative arc. It’s awkward, trying to shoehorn a sci-fi storyline into a peace-on-Earth moment. Characters we love to hate aren’t folks we want to watch stuffing their kids’ stockings. When a show known for snappy dialogue gets bogged down in schlocky sentiment, it feels more mawkish than merry.
The most unlikely of programs—including violent and terrifying ones—force their characters into perky holiday situations. The Twilight Zone had a Christmas episode, for crying out loud (1960). Was that necessary? Do we really watch CSI, Cold Case,and NCIS to see the crime-fighting gang gathered around the Christmas goose? I like my police procedurals served without mashed potatoes, thank you very much. A truly cringey example is the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special. If you squint and call the films and their spin-offs a series, then we can call this TV movie an episode—a particularly horrid one—with Chewbacca’s family celebrating the holiday while Carrie Fisher, Diahann Carroll, and Bea Arthur provide singing and dancing. Really.
Apart from artistic objections, some viewers dislike holiday shows, period. Not all viewers enjoy the season’s stressors and unattainable expectations, which trigger depression for many of us. Not all viewers even celebrate Christmas, and viewers may reasonably wince at the exclusionary messages embedded in programming about a religious holiday—even one with freestanding cultural meanings and traditions.
“Even if the premise of a Christmas special is painfully contrived, its message is on point.”
Back when broadcast series typically ran for seasons of 20 or more episodes—and especially when episodes aired weekly—it made more sense to create TV Christmas specials, which could link episodes airing in late December to Christmas themes But now that we watch most programs in multi-episode binges whenever we want, regardless of the calendar, such seasonal appropriateness has vanished.
Yet despite the potential for being ungainly and unwelcome, TV Christmas specials endure. Even when they fumble, these departures from the show’s original point get made—and we watch them, even when they are downright goofy. American BBC viewers know that across the pond, Brits have also successfully enshrined Christmas episodes into a virtual institution, as much a part of the holiday as mincemeat pie. It’s an international phenomenon, this marking of Christmas with a television moment.
Still, even when the snow is obviously fake, filming was done in high summer, and characters stand around in what’s supposed to be 40-degrees-below-zero windchill wearing nary a hat or scarf, the attempts at delivering a message of wintery goodwill often land. Inelegantly sometimes, but still. Whatever else a show is about—even gore and grim realities—once a year, tendrils of the human desire for connection push through. Some moral enters the story to echo the values we all try to honor when we’re at our best.
Into the darkest time of the year arrive twinkly lights, glittery decorations, and the kindness of strangers. Digital people we’ve come to know stop their usual crime-fighting, werewolf-slaying, and sit-comming to trim a tree and do a good deed or two. Even when the premise of a Christmas special is painfully contrived, its message is on point. This holiday can connect us, if we let it, with what we all share: the desire to make a difference, the longing to connect with one another, and the universal love of cookies.
This article also appears in the December 2024 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 89, No. 12, pages 36-37). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Apple TV+
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