With the exception of its abbreviated first season and Season 4, which was affected by the 2007-2008 Writers Guild strike, The Office dedicated one episode every year to showing the world how the employees of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch celebrate the holidays—well, at least one of the holidays; for most of his tenure at Dunder Mifflin, regional manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell) remained stubbornly under the impression that everyone in the office should and would celebrate Christmas, and in exactly the same ways as he did. “They just became kind of legend episodes,” Angela Kinsey told Yahoo! Entertainment in December 2022. “We were like, ‘Oh my God, there’s another one. It’s Christmas time.’ We loved dressing up. The set always looked great. We knew there was gonna be some ridiculous drama. Everyone just really loved those episodes.” Of course, it also wouldn’t be The Office if everything went according to plan. From impromptu Yankee Swaps to dueling holiday parties, no Christmas episode of The Office was complete without its share of surprises and awkwardness. Yet amid the pranks, grudges, blackmail and general tomfoolery, The Office’s Christmas episodes also served up holiday-sized portions of friendship, goodwill and of course, laughter. In the Christmas spirit of giving (and in the spirit of Michael Scott), we’re celebrating The Office for Christmas by ranking every The Office Christmas episode from worst to best.
The Office Christmas Episodes
The Office “Christmas Party” (Season 2, Episode 10)
In The Office’s first-ever Christmas episode, the employees of Dunder Mifflin Scranton draw names for their annual Secret Santa gift swap and pick out personalized gifts for their assigned recipients. But Michael throws a wrench in the works when he blows the designated $20 budget, splurging on a $400 video iPod for Ryan (B.J. Novak). In Michael’s eyes, the amount you spend on a Christmas gift shows someone how much you care about them, so he’s insulted when Phyllis (Phyllis Smith) presents him with a homemade oven mitt (never mind the hours Phyllis likely spent on it were probably worth far more than $20). NBC Miffed, Michael decides on the spot to switch the gift exchange to a “Yankee Swap,” where people can steal each other’s gifts, rendering all the thought the employees had put into their Secret Santa gifts suddenly moot. Ultimately, more people wind up with gifts they’re happy with than not, but abruptly switching the recipient tags on all of the carefully selected gifts was definitely not an Old Saint Nick-approved move. Kinsey and Brian Baumgartner revealed in a December 2022 interview that “Christmas Party” is actually the episode that saved the show from cancellation in its early days. “We were almost canceled two, three, four, 10, 12 times at the beginning,” Baumgartner, who played Kevin Malone, told Yahoo! Entertainment. “We had declined rapidly and then came back and [that episode] really served as a significant event for us. And from there we really took off.” “I think it’s really hilarious, and the other thing is while some of the secondary characters had storylines before that, it was an episode that was truly an ensemble,” he added. “Everybody had something, or some moment, some storyline around the Secret Santa swap.” “We were struggling week to week,” Kinsey recalled. “After that episode aired, we were the number one streaming show on iTunes and all of a sudden we were like, ‘Hold up. We found our audience.’ It turned a corner from there and we were set.”
The Office “A Benihana Christmas” (Season 3, Episodes 10-11)
Right before Dunder Mifflin Scranton’s Christmas party in Season 3, Michael gets dumped by his girlfriend Carol (Carell’s real-life wife, Nancy Walls), leaving him with two all-inclusive tickets to Sandals Jamaica and no one to go with. Heartbroken, Michael’s initial instinct is to cancel Christmas for everyone (and New Year’s for Stanley), but Andy (Ed Helms) manages to talk him into an alternate plan to ditch the office for a bit for lunch at the local Benihana restaurant. There, Michael and Andy flirt with their waitresses, and actually convince two of them to be their dates to the office Christmas party. NBC The problem is that Michael can’t actually tell the two Asian women apart, and keeps confusing Andy’s date for his own “girlfriend.” In the end, though, Michael admits that his entire new relationship—which only lasted a few hours from beginning to end—was just a rebound from Carol, who still has his heart, even if she won’t accept his tickets to Jamaica.
The Office “Moroccan Christmas” (Season 5, Episode 11)
“Moroccan Christmas” sees Phyllis finally helming the Party Planning Committee, thanks to learning a secret that she uses to blackmail longtime committee chair Angela into handing over her cherished duties. Phyllis decides to shake things up with a Moroccan-themed party that clashes with Angela’s much more traditional American Christian preferences. NBC As Phyllis savors every opportunity to mess with Angela’s perception of what a proper Christmas party should be, Dwight reveals he’s bought up every “Princess Unicorn” doll in the area, which his research has revealed to him will be the most popular Christmas gift that year. Sure enough, a number of desperate dads come out of the woodwork to buy the horned Barbie-like dolls from Dwight at a steep $200 a pop—or $400 if you’re Toby (Paul Lieberstein), who has to go through two layers of markups for his daughter’s prize. With Phyllis ultimately revealing Angela’s secret after Angela tries to call her on what she thought was a bluff, and Michael using the episode to try to get Meredith (Kate Flannery) into rehab, it’s safe to say that Dwight is the only one to come out of this party feeling truly festive, thanks to his Princess Unicorn monopoly.
The Office “Secret Santa” (Season 6, Episode 13)
After years of campaigning for the job, Phyllis is finally awarded her coveted role of playing Santa for the office Christmas party in “Secret Santa.” (Man, Phyllis really likes being in charge of things at Christmas.) Put out, Michael also dresses up as Santa, trying to persuade his coworkers to sit on his lap, but it quickly becomes evident that most of them prefer Phyllis’ version to his. NBC Incensed, Michael calls the corporate office to complain about Phyllis, during which he is shocked to learn that Dunder Mifflin has been bought by another company. Thinking that means that everyone is about to lose their jobs (it doesn’t), Michael promptly reveals the confidential information to the entire office, only to soon realize that he was wrong and they’re all keeping their jobs, prompting a group sigh of relief. After the unemployment scare, Michael is able to admit to Phyllis that she makes a pretty good Santa after all. As a matter of fact, anyone who’s watched more than a couple of The Office Christmas episodes might even go as far as to say that Phyllis could be the best Santa that The Office has ever had.
The Office “Classy Christmas” (Season 7, Episodes 11-12)
The ongoing prank war between Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) and Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) is old news by the time we get to Season 7, but they take it to a whole new level in “Classy Christmas.” NBC While Michael endeavors to throw an upscale Christmas party in order to impress his ex-girlfriend Holly (Amy Ryan), who has returned to the office to take over temporarily for Toby while he serves jury duty, Jim excitedly points out to his coworkers that it’s snowing. After Dwight makes fun of Jim’s excitement, Jim retaliates by going outside to make a snowball, then bringing it into the office and throwing it into Dwight’s face. This quickly escalates to an outdoor snowball fight, where Dwight soundly defeats Jim thanks to seizing the element of surprise. But Dwight isn’t content to just win; he sets out to destroy Jim’s psyche by surprising him with snowball attacks throughout the day. At the end of the day, Jim and Pam (Jenna Fischer) finally leave work, only to discover the parking lot filled with identical snowmen. Dwight watches from the roof as a terrorized Jim blindly attacks one snowy menace after another, sure that Dwight must be hiding inside one of them. It’s a dark ending, but it shows Dwight is not messing around when it comes to winning the prank war.
The Office “Christmas Wishes” (Season 8, Episode 10)
Prank wars and social pettiness stemming from awkward breakups are two ongoing themes of The Office’s Christmas episodes, but “Christmas Wishes” turns both tropes on their heads. NBC When new regional manager Andy gets a complaint from one of the salespeople that Jim and Dwight’s constant pranking is creating a difficult work environment for her, he lets the pair know that the first one to pull a prank will lose his Christmas bonus to the other. But of course, rather than simply putting a stop to the pranks, Jim and Dwight each take it upon themselves to goad the other into pranking by pulling pranks on themselves rather than targeting each other, continually escalating the non-pranking until Dwight places a porcupine in his own desk drawer and Jim defaces a photo of his own child. Meanwhile, Andy’s ex-girlfriend Erin (Ellie Kemper) works a little too hard to be nice to Andy’s new girlfriend, Jessica, in an attempt to prove to everyone (including herself) that she’s totally over Andy. Eventually, Erin admits that she’s jealous, and Andy tells Jim that neither bonus is actually in jeopardy as long as the pranks don’t interfere with their job performances—a fact that Jim neglects to tell Dwight, causing Dwight to continue to prank himself through the rest of the episode.
The Office “Dwight Christmas” (Season 9, Episode 9)
When the Party Planning Committee forgets to plan the annual Christmas party, it’s Dwight’s time to shine, throwing his co-workers a traditional Schrute Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas. The party includes a hog maw (that would be the stuffed stomach of a pig), the traditional breaking of a pig rib, a German poetry reading, and the arrival of Belsnickel, a crotchety Santa-like character from German folklore. But Belsnickel becomes angry during a game of “Impish or Admirable,” when Jim announces that he has to leave the party early in order to make it to Philadelphia in time for his new job, which starts the next day. NBC As a result, after giving Jim a good flogging with a switch, Dwight decides to cancel the rest of the party, storming out in his Belsnickel getup and telling Pam, “You quit on Christmas, Christmas quits on you.” But when Jim returns, opting to finish the party with his friends and travel to Philadelphia early in the morning, Dwight delightedly digs the pig rib out of the trash so he and Jim can break it together. Perhaps bringing everyone back together for Christmas was Belsnickel’s impish plan all along. Next, need a little more Christmas in your life? Here are the 100+ best Christmas movies to watch this holiday season.
