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We chart the progress of a TV series by its Christmas episodes.

The Simpsons Christmas Episodes
 

People forget that The Simpsons were, in a way, born on Christmas: their first episode was, in fact, a Christmas special which aired 19 years ago (the one little fact in all 17 days of this calendar that makes me feel old). Holiday episodes of The Simpsons are a rarer occurance than you might think: unlike their annual “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween Specials, they’ve only aired a mere nine Christmas episodes.

In many respects the Christmas episodes show the progression of The Simpsons franchise in miniature: brilliant, funny stories based in character that eventually give way to more elaborate exercises in absurdity.

The very first Simpsons episode, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” almost seems like a different show—and not just because of the cruder animation and Homer’s Walter Matthau voice. The series is slightly more refined than the shorts run during the Tracey Ullman Show but it’s got a lot of grit in it: the Simpson family are broke at Christmas thanks to a cancelled bonus and Bart necessitating a tattoo removal. Homer becomes a department store Santa…and earns $13. He’s given a hot tip at the dog track, but he puts it all on a dog seasonally named Santa’s Little Helper…which loses. But the Simpsons keep the dog, which was fired, and everyone is happy. It’s a neat example of what made The Simpsons great when it was working well: it defies all expectations. Even if you know where the destination is, it takes a completely circuitous route to get there.

By the time of the next Christmas episode six years later, in 1995, the series had it its creative peak. Accordingly, “Marge Be Not Proud” is probably the best Christmas episode. Bart attempts to shoplift to get a violent videogame he wants and finds him running afoul of a store security guard who thinks his life is just like NYPD Blue. Bart attempts to hide his crime and, naturally, fails in spectacular fashion as he attempts to sneak in to have a family photo taken in the very store he’s been banned from for attempted theft. The discovery of Bart’s crime results in possibly the most horrible consequences Bart can imagine: his mother, Marge, loses faith in him. Of course, Marge’s faith is restored by the end, but Bart’s way of getting there feels earned as Bart takes responsibility for his actions. And Bart gets a videogame—okay, it’s a putting challenge, but Bart attempts to accept it as the greatest Christmas present ever—which is both funny and sweet.

Both of these episodes are comedies based in character. But so was The Simpsons in its initial years. As time wore on, the show became less about the characters and more about the elastic absurdity of life in Springfield. We can see this in the next Christmas episode, 1999’s “Grift of the Magi”. Springfield Elementary has closed down due to lack of funds. Kid’s First Industries, a toy company, takes over the school and turns every class into a focus group light on educational contnet. Lisa finds herself being punished for doing educational tasks (making Venn Diagrams in fact) and stays late, only to discover that, in fact, the focus groups are to make the ultimate electronic toy: a Furby-esque creation known as Funzo.

Lisa is discredited in conspiracy film fashion, but as Lisa and Bart investigate they discover that Funzo is actually deadly: the toy is programmed to kill all other toys—it attempts to garrotte Bart’s Krusty pull-toy with Krusty’s own string. And so, Lisa, Bart and now Homer go on a mission to steal every Funzo from every home in Springfield and destroy them. They are nearly thwarted by former child star Gary Coleman, now working as a security guard at Kid’s First Industries, but they decide instead to hold a philosophical debate of the merits of Christmas through the night, which ends in Lisa saying: “Lets just agree that the commercialization of Christmas is, at best, a mixed blessing.”

There’s a clear shift in tone, away from stories based in character and more toward stories based in situation. It moves evermore toward the latter—though there are exceptions like 2001’s “She of Little Faith” where Lisa converts to Buddhism—depending more on outlandish situations, like 2003’s “Tis the 15th Season” where Homer, converted to the season of giving after seeing a holiday special, ends up competing with Flanders for the hearts of Springfield residents before deciding, for reasons only Homer can comprehend, to reenact How The Grinch Stole Christmas on the town.

But this shift in tone is true of The Simpsons TV series as a whole. The comedy is about the absurd life in Springfield rather than the comic struggles of a family. Perhaps we should just agree that the longevity of The Simpsons is, at best, a mixed blessing.