Thirty-four years ago this month, The Simpsons began with a Christmas special. Most TV shows would have bowed out gracefully by now, but The Simpsons goes on and on, perhaps to outlive us all.
There have been some great Simpsons Christmas stories over the past three decades, but also some really terrible holiday tales. For this list of all The Simpsons Christmas episodes, we tried to focus only on the episodes where Christmas is a focal point. That’s why episodes like Skinner’s Sense of Snow didn’t make the cut. Some of these episodes represent the very best that the show has to offer, while others bring out the worst aspects of the series’ long years of decline. But for the Christmas episodes that are great, it was all worth it.
16. Manger Things
20th Century Studios
Season 32, Episode 16
About the only thing clever in this episode is the title’s play on Stranger Things. This is actually the 700th episode of the series, which, in theory, would have been a good spot for a Christmas episode to bookend the show. This is a Christmas story, but it’s one with too many similarities to the stories that had already been done before.
When Homer embarrasses Marge at his power plant holiday party, she kicks him out of the house and he mooches off the Flanders family for a while. Everything is pretty uninspired at this point in the show’s life span, but this could have been fun to watch if it was even the slightest bit funny. Instead, it’s another example that The Simpsons just isn’t the show that it used to be, and it hasn’t been for a very long time.
15. Bobby, It’s Cold Outside
20th Century Studios TV
Season 31, Episode 10
This show really has to try hard to waste a guest appearance by Kelsey Grammer as Bart’s nemesis, Sideshow Bob. But this Christmas episode does exactly that by bringing Bob back to Springfield to play Santa Claus at a mall. Bob is also forced to prove that he isn’t the one stealing presents from Springfield’s residents, which leads everyone to the same person who is behind almost all of the town’s problems: Mr. Burns.
There’s some very uninspired storytelling in this episode. The only thing that it really has going for it is that it’s not the worst Simpsons Christmas episode.
14. Kill Gil, Volumes I & II
20th Century Studios TV
Season 18, Episode 9
Bizarrely, this episode of The Simpsons plays more like a Family Guy story, complete with Homer’s feud with the Grinch-like Grumple, which seems to echo Peter’s ongoing fight with the giant chicken on the rival show. This episode also makes the grave tactical error of centering a story around Springfield’s resident sad sack,
