Everybody loves a good Christmas special, especially me. Whether its the old-fashioned classics, like Rudolph or Charlie Brown, or maybe it’s newer movies that are particularly awesome, like Elf. Christmas has always been solid creative fodder for some really great entertainment. The combination of cheerfulness, the Christmas Spirit and some awesome characters and mythology makes for good storytelling.

All I want for Christmas...is this.

Nowadays, we don’t get a lot of those standalone Christmas specials, like Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or that one where Santa Claus teachers the Winter Warlock to walk again. Don’t pretend you don’t know the words.

Instead we get Christmas episodes of our favorite TV shows! Here are 6 TV Shows that have Great Christmas Episodes.

6. The Office

While the original British version of The Office ended on a great Christmas episode, I’m a bigger fan of the American version of the show. Because America is #1! Anyway, that out of the way, I’m mostly talking about the early seasons of The Office, when it was still hip and edgy. The best episodes were back when the show was a cultural milestone, and everybody was talking about Jim and Pam. The show’s still OK, but it doesn’t have the strength of the early seasons. The show, of course, is about an office of worker droning away for a mid-level paper company in Pennsylvania.

Back in the beginning, there were two story points that always succeeded: Jam and Pam’s will they/won’t they relationship and office manager Michael Scott’s uncomfortableness. Both were on full display in the episode ‘Christmas Party’ in Season 2. Michael turns into a petulant child when the office’s Secret Santa ends with him receiving a homemade oven mitt. So he quickly forces everyone to play ‘Yankee Swap’, or whatever you call it in your native land, where everyone switches gifts based on certain strange rules. Suddenly all the gifts everyone bought specifically for each other – including Jim’s sweet, lovely gift for Pam – are going to the wrong people. And Michael is an ass. The episode was heart-warming with a big party at the end, but it nailed the Office’s mastery of sweetness and cringe-inducing awkwardness. Which is Christmas in a nutshell.

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5. Chuck

First let me say that the TV show Chuck is dead to me. Once upon a time, specifically the first three seasons, Chuck was my favorite show on television. But then season four absolutely sucked, trading all the intelligence and charm for slapstick buffoonery and stupid leaps in plot. Season 2 is the best of them all, and it featured a fantastically tense Christmas episode. Chuck is a show about average guy Chuck Bartowski, who is working a dead-end job at the Buy Moore electronics store. Then through the happenstance of a TV show, Chuck gets a CIA super computer downloaded into his brain. Now Chuck knows all the government’s secrets, and the CIA needs his help because they don’t have a back-up. So Chuck teams up with two super spies to use his new computer brain to fight terrorism and bust bad guys!

The Christmas episode titled ‘Chuck vs. Santa Claus’ takes place almost entirely in the Buy Moore store, where Chuck still works to maintain his cover. A gunman on the run from the cops crashes his car into the Buy Moore, then takes Chuck and everybody in the store hostage. For the first half of the show, it’s a tense and yet touching stand-off as Chuck tries to sympathize with the gunman, while everyone else worries about their families as it nears Christmas.

Then the twist: the gunman and the lead cop outside both work for the series’ super-villains, and they orchestrated this entire hostage situation to try and ferret out Chuck and his CIA handlers. Chuck then must make the decision to sacrifice himself to the bad guys in order to save his family. It’s an action-packed episode that was one of the best early examples of Chuck’s real life intersecting quite dangerously with his new spy life. Plus the episode featured the same cop from Die Hard doing a crossover. That’s a hoot.

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4. Doctor Who

Christmas episodes are a tradition on Doctor Who, the British science fiction show that is slowly catching on in America. They are separate from the regular seasons and tend to feature a big stand-alone adventure. That means they’re usually outstanding, where the writers aren’t pigeon-holed into any ongoing story and can just cut loose with plot and insanity. There’s a new one coming up this holiday that I’m really looking forward to. For the uninitiated, Doctor Who is about an immortal time-traveller who happens to be a very charming fellow. His time machine can travel to any time and any planet, and he uses it on a mission of exploration and adventure. The appeal is that the witty and very intelligent Doctor uses his smarts and general good will to triumph over evil, rather than being some gun-toting action hero.

Past Christmas specials include the time he repelled the first ever alien invasion of Earth; the time he and a runaway bride teamed up to stop her fiance and his alien accomplices from taking over the Earth; and then there was the cashing of the Space Titanic! The best so far was ‘A Christmas Carol’, starring Matthew Smith as the Doctor. In order to save a spaceship full of people from crashing, the Doctor must convince a bitter, Scrooge-ish miser to come down from his throne and open the landing strip. But the miser could care less about anyone else, even if they’re about to die.

So the Doctor uses his time machine to go back and visit the miser when he was a boy, creating new memories in an attempt to turn the older miser into a better person. The Doctor makes it a habit to visit the youthful miser every Christmas, having adventures. There’s even a bit of romance involved for the young man. It’s a very touching episode, as the audience knows that there will be a great tragedy on the horizon no matter what the Doctor does. In the end though, it all works out and Christmas is saved!

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3. South Park

Ah, the classic Christmas characters: Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman, Mr. Hanky the talking Christmas poo. South Park has staked its claim on Christmas for years now with the introduction of Mr. Hanky so many years ago. He popped up again and again, Christmas episode after Christmas episode. South Park also has a lot of fun with Kyle, their Jewish character. The song ‘I’m Just a Jew on Christmas’ is a classic. The show about four foul-mouthed elementary school students has a lot more heart and intelligence than some people might realize. Like the time the boys teamed up with Jesus to save Santa Claus from terrorists in Iraq. Good times.

But by far, the best South Park Christmas episode is ‘Woodland Critter Christmas’. This episode came out of nowhere to deliver an uproariously good time. It’s one of those concepts where you don’t know how the creators came up with it, but you know you don’t want to live without it. Not only is the episode told in delightfully narrated rhyme, but the twist halfway through that the seemingly cheerful and friendly Woodland Critters are actually murderous, blood-thirsty monsters trying to bring forth the anti-christ (while remaining cheerful and friendly) is beyond brilliant. Just watch that clip I posted. Or better yet…

You can watch the full episode right here.

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2. American Dad!

Do not write this show off as just Family Guy-lite. Every insane idea that wouldn’t work in Family Guy for various reasons, creator Seth MacFarlane used in American Dad! The great thing about the show is that its grounded in reality, and its humor comes from its characters, instead of from cut-away gags and pop culture references. It stars very-conservative CIA agent Stan Smith and his family, including nerdy son Steve and very-liberal daughter Hayley. For its Christmas episodes, American Dad! goes balls-to-the-wall insane! But unlike The Simpsons‘ Treehouse of Horror, all the American Dad! insanity is entirely within continuity and is happening to the real characters!

Like the time Stan died, went to Heaven, crashed Jesus’ birthday party (it is Christmas, after all) and then held a gun to God’s head – all to teach Stan about the importance of family and Christmas. Then there was the episode where the family must fight off Santa Claus and his blood-thirsty army of elves and reindeer by making a last stand in a log cabin, armed with guns, guns and more guns!

But the best Christmas episode of American Dad! was the one that featured the Rapture. The entire world just gets straight up Raptured, except for Stan, who sinned, and his wife, who he caused to sin. Fast forward several years, and the remaining people on Earth live in a post-Apocalyptic  wasteland. Stan is a one-eyed, gun-toting mercenary, and he must team up with Jesus Christ to save his wife and the world from the Anti-Christ. It’s as awesome as it sounds. Then it ends with Stan dying and going to Heaven, where he gets to live out his paradise – and his version of paradise is exactly what his life was like before the Rapture. So every episode of American Dad! afterwards actually takes place in Stan’s version of Heaven!

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1. Community

I hereby join forces with the rest of the Internet in championing the show Community, and fighting tooth and nail to keep it on the air. There is no show more creative or more willing to think outside the box than Community. For a show about a group of people going to community college – including Chevy Chase – Community has some really far-out episodes. Like the epic movie parodies set during college-wide paintball matches, or the clip show featuring clips from episodes that didn’t actually exist. Or Manitude! Pop, pop! Community is solid entertainment, and when it comes to Christmas, they turn the dial up to 11 so hard that it redefines the cliche!

In its three seasons, Community has done two Christmas episodes, and they are both equally brilliant with totally separate ideas. The song I posted above is from the newest episode, which premiered only last week. It’s part of an extended parody of the show Glee, which I don’t watch, so I didn’t get all the jokes. But mostly it’s just a Christmas musical episode.  I’m sure you’re saying that’s been done before, but has it ever been done as a horror movie? The urge to sing and join the Glee Club is a virus that spreads from character to character, infecting them with the desire to sing their hearts out and go to regionals! So not only are the songs amazing – like Chevy Chase up there, or Abed and Troy’s Christmas rap – but the story behind the songs is delightful.

You can watch the episode here.

Then there was the claymation episode.

An homage to the classic cartoons of old, Community‘s first Christmas special was done entirely in ‘claymation’ – though as the character Abed points out, that’s not exactly clay. But we all get the idea. And of course, the show has a lot of fun with the animation. Almost all of the characters are turned into Christmas versions of themselves, and they go on a magical journey. This isn’t just a cheerful Christmas story, it’s a dark exploration of one character’s loneliness. With a happy ending about the strength of friendship. It’s got a song about the meaning of Christmas, a fight on top of a speeding Christmas train and even a Christmas pterodactyl!

Why more people aren’t watching this show, the world may never know.

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So those are some of my favorite Christmas episodes. What are yours? Tell me in the comments below.