Every Simpsons Christmas Special - Ranked
10. She Of Little Faith
She Of Little Faith is a pretty good episode that has a lasting influence on the Simpsons canon, but it’s just not Christmassy enough to compete with the other great specials.
Lisa, outraged by the increasing commercialisation of Springfield’s church, seeks out another religion. Quite fitting for a girl of her sensibilities, she finds Buddhism. This leads to Marge fretting over her soul and trying to tempt Lisa back to Christianity, using Christmas as the lure.
The show dedicates most of the time to Lisa’s storyline of personal discovery, which is definitely the right decision from a pacing perspective. However, this means there’s nothing Christmas related (or even that wintery) before Lovejoy suggests Christmas might be the key to getting Lisa back on board.
There’s a few nice Christmas set pieces, with Milhouse and Ralph posing as a wrapped up pony for Lisa probably being the best. It just seems unfortunately like Christmas was tied to this one a bit unnecessarily. As a whole episode, it’s better than those below it (and arguably a couple above). But when it comes to Christmas, it probably uses it least of all.