Christmas-themed TV episodes are a tradition, but they don’t always fit a show’s usual tone. While most Christmas episodes are heartwarming and cheerful, some shows have turned that idea on its head, creating surprisingly dark and unsettling holiday specials – think a mother causing chaos or a Santa-suited patient escaping from a mental institution.
Shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Curb Your Enthusiasm have already moved away from the typical heartwarming lessons and feel-good moments of most sitcoms, so they’re likely to really lean into that trend when addressing overly sweet storylines. Similarly, horror shows such as Black Mirror and Tales from the Crypt often become even more disturbing during their Christmas episodes.
And All Through The House
Tales From The Crypt
Unlike cheerful holiday specials like A Charlie Brown Christmas, the horror anthology series Tales from the Crypt needed a much more sinister approach to a Christmas episode. “And All Through the House” – only the second episode ever made – was directed by Robert Zemeckis (known for Back to the Future) and written by Fred Dekker, who also penned Night of the Creeps.
This episode feels like a Christmas take on the movie Halloween, featuring a psychiatric patient who escapes while dressed as Santa. The story combines this with a woman cleverly and surprisingly killing her husband.
Mary, Joseph, & Larry
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Larry David’s show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, is set in Los Angeles, which means its Christmas episode doesn’t feel very Christmas-like – it’s actually sunny! The episode playfully mocks how much Americans focus on Christmas traditions by showing the Jewish main character’s family decorating his house for Christmas with a tree, cookies, and singing carols late into the night.
Larry accidentally insults Cheryl’s parents and attempts to apologize with a live Nativity scene performed by a church group right in his driveway. However, things quickly go wrong, and by the time Cheryl and her parents return, Larry has managed to provoke Joseph, one of the performers, into a physical altercation and, bizarrely, produced a pubic hair. It’s a classic Larry David Christmas, to say the least.
How The Ghosts Stole Christmas
The X-Files
While The X-Files had many complex, season-long plots, I always preferred the self-contained episodes featuring a single, unusual creature. A great example is “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas,” where Mulder and Scully investigate a haunted house during the holidays. It’s a genuinely creepy ghost story, but it ends with a surprisingly sweet and romantic explanation: two heartbroken spirits are trapped inside.
It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
Six Feet Under
Even during the holidays, the TV show Six Feet Under didn’t shy away from its focus on death. In its Christmas episode, titled “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” a mall Santa dies in a motorcycle crash, and his funeral is held on Christmas Day, proving this exceptional series remained deeply concerned with mortality.
Xmas Story
Futurama
Whenever Futurama addressed a modern custom, it always came up with a hilariously strange future version of it. For instance, the show’s Christmas episode features the Planet Express crew being frightened by a menacing robot Santa Claus.
After people stopped celebrating Christmas, a robot company built a mechanical Santa Claus to decide who deserved presents and who didn’t. Now, Christmas Eve has become incredibly dangerous—it’s like a night where anything goes. If you’re caught outside after dark, a killer robotic Santa will hunt you down.
The Night Of The Meek
The Twilight Zone
Long before the movie Bad Santa came out, The Twilight Zone featured a similar character: a down-on-his-luck mall Santa. The episode, “The Night of the Meek,” stars Art Carney as a disheartened department store Santa who unexpectedly gets a chance to become the real Santa Claus. While it’s a heartwarming Christmas story, it still has that signature unsettling feeling you get from The Twilight Zone.
A Very Sunny Christmas
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
In “A Very Sunny Christmas,” the gang attempts to celebrate the holidays, but their chaotic and selfish behavior ruins any chance of a cheerful season. Frank ignores everyone and buys lavish gifts for himself, while Charlie attacks a mall Santa, believing he had a relationship with his mother.
Christmas specials aren’t normally this chaotic. Even when the gang attempts something positive, like singing carols, it quickly devolves into a neighborhood-wide argument. You can always count on It’s Always Sunny to give you a Christmas episode that’s far from heartwarming.
Fishes
The Bear
Halfway through its excellent second season, The Bear showed us a Christmas dinner from years earlier at the Berzatto family home. We were introduced to the intense family mother, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, and got a glimpse of what life was like before Mikey’s death.
Wow, after watching that episode, everything just clicked. It’s so obvious why this family is such a mess – they learned to communicate by yelling because that’s all they ever saw growing up. Honestly, “Fishes” is one of the most stressful, anxiety-ridden half-hours I’ve ever experienced on TV. It’s way more realistic than those sugary-sweet holiday specials; it actually feels like a real, chaotic family Christmas, and that’s a little unsettling, but also brilliant.
White Christmas
Black Mirror
The Christmas episode of Black Mirror is often considered one of its most unsettling. It features three separate stories that eventually connect in a shockingly clever and disturbing twist – a hallmark of creator Charlie Brooker’s writing.
The show “White Christmas” presents a disturbing idea: being completely cut off from the world in real life. It depicts a man whose mind is stuck in a digital nightmare, where each minute feels like 1,000 years, and he’s forced to endlessly listen to the Christmas song “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day.” It’s rare for a Christmas TV episode to be so frightening.
Woodland Critter Christmas
South Park
The most unsettling Christmas episode of any TV show, by a wide margin, is the South Park episode called “Woodland Critter Christmas.” It begins like a sweet holiday story with charming talking animals and a rhyming narration similar to How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Stan makes friends with these animals and tries to protect them from a dangerous predator.
By the time things have gotten completely chaotic – with bizarre and disturbing events happening – you’ve lost sight of the fact that it’s supposed to be the holiday season. It turns out this is a Christmas story with a dark and twisted plot, imagined by Eric Cartman.
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2025-12-13 15:02