Originally published in print December 2020.
The Christmas programming season is a time for reflection, to look back over the year gone by. To sit down with a pen and the RTĖ guide, make a plan and stick to it. To hold your family close as Michael Bay assaults your retinas as punishment for being too cosy to change the channel once Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has started. And those things are important, but we shouldn’t forget the reason for the season; Christmas specials. In this recipe I’ll teach you how to make your own to start the season off the right way.
- Pain
No need to sugar-coat it (we’ll get to the sweetness later), a truly exceptional Christmas special should mess you up. Though I deserve to be attacked in the street for my fondness for the early seasons of Supernatural, it must be said that ‘A Very Supernatural Christmas’ holds up. The monster of the week is particularly entertaining, but what really makes the episode is Dean and Sam trying to decide if they should have one last Christmas before Dean’s quickly approaching death, or let it pass. So, grind up some childhood flashbacks for a nice crumbly base.
- Pizazz
Community has a couple of Christmas episodes, presumably because it’s trying to appeal to me specifically, but ‘Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas’ is my personal favourite. Stop-motion animation, Abed getting tazed on the roof of a car, and most importantly, songs. Musical episodes are also written to appeal to me specifically, so combining the two is like performing a binding ritual between me and your show. You don’t want to overpower your dish, but a sprinkle will do you wonders. If you’re not a fan of musicals, this recipe also works with wacky costumes, a glimpse into the darkest timeline, or a wholesome Christmas brawl.
- The Power of Friendship
‘Tis the season to really root around in character relationships. ‘The Man in the Fallout Shelter’ in Bones season one does just that. Everyone is quarantined together in the lab for fear of an infection they might have caught from the body that’s just been brought in, and it’s Christmas Eve! Everyone puts so much thought into the office Secret Santa (where the gifts are things they can find in their office), and everyone bonding over how they celebrated Christmas, unsure if they’d be able to do that this year, makes me tear up over a decade after it aired. As a Catholic, this show could be too Catholic for its own good, but they hit the mark with this one. Let your mixture warm slowly for about 11 or 12 episodes, then turn up the heat on it for 20 to 40 minutes.
- To Serve:
Now after all that you should be left with – a hot, sprinkly base. Well, that’s not ideal. Maybe a Christmas special is more than the sum of its parts. Maybe the perfect Christmas special, is one that doesn’t have a recipe. Maybe the perfect Christmas special was the one in our hearts all along.
