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Sitcoms love Christmas episodes. The Simpsons has done many of them, though not to the same degree they have celebrated Halloween. Frasier did one most seasons. Friends, The Office, and on and on. One of the best Mary Tyler Moore Show episodes was about Christmas. One popular sitcom that didn’t go down the Christmas well a ton was Seinfeld. On the one hand, they could have mined it more. On the other hand, would that have felt right for Seinfeld?
Think about it. The fact Seinfeld tackled Christmas in a handful of stories is atypical in and of itself. This was not a sentimental show. It was also not interested in gimmicks. Seinfeld refused to get involved in some of the crossover events NBC ran on Thursday nights. They didn’t really touch on any other holiday at all. The closest they got to a holiday episode are the Festivus episode and the Puerto Rican Day episode, and the latter is just about how much the Puerto Rican Day parade messes up traffic in New York City.
It would be weird, in hindsight, to be rewatching Seinfeld and seeing a bunch of Christmas episodes. The only other long-running, successful sitcom we can think of that also eschewed Christmas more than you might think is Newhart, and that also makes sense. Bob Newhart was fairly unsentimental as well. He didn’t have a kid on either The Bob Newhart Show or Newhart with intent, because he didn’t want to do “dumb dad” storylines. Newhart may have been set at an inn in Vermont, which is a fine setting for Christmas festivities. And yet, the most Christmas-y episode the show did was when where the inn is decked out in Christmas stuff during the summer to take the inn’s (and the Loudon’s) Christmas photo.
We aren’t knocking all those Christmas episodes. Many of them are great. On the other hand, it’s nice that not every show feels obligated to go into that space just to do it.
