10 Best How I Met Your Mother Holiday Episodes
From Blitzgiving to Slapsgiving, from the Christmas Lily Stole to the Slutty Pumpkin...
Everyone loved How I Met Your Mother (that controversial ending notwithstanding, that is), and the show can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Friends and New Girl as one of the finest achievements in hang-out sitcom history. Anchored by a superb ensemble cast including Alyson Hannigan, Jason Segel, a then-largely unknown Cobie Smulders, and a career-best Neil Patrick Harris as the irascible womanizer Barney, the show effortlessly captured both the cultural moment of the mid to late noughties and the sheer fun of a feckless twentysomething existence before the twin pressures of careers and family life came calling,
Sure, some of the later seasons don’t quite hit the heights of the show’s early years, but there’s still a warm-hearted atmosphere and a few funny lines in each instalment of the show, as epitomised by their frequent and always hilarious holiday episodes.
Now, for the purposes of this list we haven’t been able to include every holiday outing the show had (apologies to Katie Holmes’ appearance as The Slutty Pumpkin), but we’ve nonetheless endeavoured to list the best of the show’s special occasions with ten of the best How I Met Your Mother holiday episodes.
10. The Drunk Train
Okay, so this one is a solid instalment, but it’s stuck at number ten due to the mean streak running throughout the episode’s central conceit.
Following a painfully single Ted and Barney through one sad Valentine’s
as the duo hop on the eponymous Drunk Train in search of equally desperate singles with whom to spend Valentine’s night, the episode sees the pair instead inevitably
end up tearfully admitting they can’t stand singledom and, in Barney’s case,
have fallen for the last girl they expected to steal their heart (of course,
Barney and Quinn will end in more tears, but that’s a story for another day).
Add in a touching scene between Ted and Robin at the episode’s close and you’ve the show’s most solid Valentine’s Day outing—even if it easier to re-watch when the viewer is not as single as the pair of said protagonists.