25 best Christmas TV episodes to watch this holiday season

Christmas is the time for spreading holiday cheer, spending time with your loved ones, and most importantly, watching lots of very special Christmas episodes of your favorite TV shows.

While everybody loves the holiday season for the gifts, the food, the snow, and the time spent with your loved ones, there’s one thing that stands out above all the rest (yes, even above my family) and that’s some good ol’ Christmas content! Who doesn’t want to spend a snowy afternoon wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket watching their childhood favorites like How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Elf?

But even better than Christmas movies are the holiday episodes of all your favorite shows. Almost every show has done at least one Christmas episode in their time, whether it’s just one that takes place during the holiday season or a full-blown Christmas special. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is a common theme for these Christmas episodes, and they have led to millions of versions of “Carol of the Bells” and the Nutcracker soundtrack. But no matter how cheesy some of these episodes may get, we can’t help but love them and revisit them every year.

Some shows, like Friends and The Simpsons, have so many amazing Christmas episodes that it’s hard to choose just one. Christmas episodes have introduced us to wacky holiday traditions like The Holiday Armadillo, Festivus, Chrismukkah, and so much more. They make us laugh, they might even make us cry, but best of all, most of them make us realize how normal our families really are — because these TV families are waaaay crazier than ours!

So this holiday season, if you’re tired of watching the same Christmas movies playing on TV or if you’ve already burned through all the cheesy (but amazing) Netflix original Christmas films (and maybe watched The Christmas Prince for the fourth time), how about marathoning some iconic Christmas episodes of shows like Ugly Betty, Doctor Who, Community, 30 Rock, The X-Files, Gilmore Girls, and more of your favorites!

Put on some comfy pajamas, light a candle, and make yourself a nice glass of tea, because here are 25 of the best Christmas TV episodes to watch this holiday season!