10 Best How I Met Your Mother Holiday Episodes

Now that How Lily Stole Christmas has left viewers appropriately p*ssed off at Alyson Hannigan’s occasionally insufferable, usually deeply relatable love interest, it’s time for a story where our sympathies inevitably lie with the sometimes artist/ sometime kinder garden teacher. In the show’s earliest Thanksgiving instalment we’re introduced to Marshall’s oversized family, a set of giants wherein the gangly Jason Segel is somehow the runt and childhood rivalries have followed the boys into their adult lives.

Lily is landed in the middle of this annual tradition and soon runs afoul of Marshall’s transparently bitchy mom, resulting in some of the show’s funniest scenes as the exasperated Lily attempts to impress her ruthless mother-in-law-to-be whilst being jostled about by the family of seven foot something bounders. It’s a sweet instalment in the end, but this one does also manages to slip in some spiky punchlines at the expense of anyone playing happy families come holiday time.