Every Simpsons Christmas Special - Ranked

The Simpsons Christmas special is a hugely important part of the season. It often comes with the mid-season break, and therefore is crucial to tiding over the die-hards until January. It’s not as consistent as the Treehouse Of Horror episodes, but there've still been 15 over the last 30 years.

As is predictable with The Simpsons, some (mainly the older ones) have been brilliant, and some have felt lazy, hackneyed, or have just fallen flat. Even the weaker ones though do their best to capture the Christmas spirit, and you can bet that the cream of the crop will be hitting our screens as they rerun the seasonal favourites through December.

While the quality of each individual episode has been taken into account obviously, also in the mix are how much they link to Christmas themselves. For example, Season 20’s The Burns And The Bees aired close to Christmas and had a Christmas couch gag, but the celebration has nothing to do with the plot. For that reason, it’s been discounted completely. Despite that, there’re still 15 festive treats for fans to enjoy.

Gil Gunderson is a one scene character. He can’t carry an episode. While they’ve managed to create fantastic stories with Krusty, Moe, and Apu, some characters just weren’t made to lead the story. The likes of Cletus, Luigi, or Cookie Kwan would never get arcs built around them, but for some reason, Gil gets his own episode here.

It starts off strong enough as we see Gil as his usual, downtrodden self, and the Simpsons (Marge especially) taking pity on him. You can see why such a charitable storyline became a fitting Christmas episode. It has two glaring errors though.

One, it’s not even a Christmas episode all the way through. Gil stays with the family for the whole year, meaning the Christmas theme is dropped for various calendar gags. Secondly, there’s Gil himself.

For all he’s a loveable loser in most of his appearances, he’s absolutely insufferable here. Usually, he’s a sweet man down on his luck. He shows a wonderful side of himself as he allows Lisa to have a Christmas present ahead of Costington’s daughter. However, for the rest of the episode he routinely takes advantage of the family, acting like a jerk for no reason. Bah humbug.