Today, we share the master list of my picks for the all-time greatest Christmas TV episodes of the 1960s.
This year’s theme is “Classic 1970s TV Christmas.” I am going to count down my 24 favorite episodes of 1970s TV shows from today through Christmas Eve. Just click on that day’s door to see the entry for that day (you can click on past days, too, of course). So Day 1 will be the 24th episode on my countdown, and the final day, the 24th, will have my #1 episode (and so on and so forth).
My criteria for the stories are A. only actual story episodes (so no Christmas variety specials, as they are way too hard to compare against each other), B. Only episodes of TV shows, no TV movies (I’ll allow stories from anthology series, though). This mean no The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, the de facto pilot for The Waltons C. Episodes about Christmas are ranked higher than episodes that just happen to be set at Christmas and really have nothing to do with the holiday (there’s a good Kolchak episode about a werewolf on a Christmas cruise that doesn’t make the list because, well, come on) and D. Christmas spirit counts extra, so a great episode that is dark as heck will be ranked not as high as a less great episode that is festive (but, still, if an episode is great, I’ll still rank it as, well, come on, we’re still looking for quality TV here). The episodes all originally aired in the 1970s.
24. Mork and Mindy “Mork’s First Christmas”
23. Laverne and Shirley “O Come All Ye Bums”
22. What’s Happening!! “Christmas”
21. WKRP In Cincinnati “Jennifer’s Home For Christmas”
20. Three’s Company “Three’s Christmas”
18. The Waltons “The Children’s Carol”
17. Gunsmoke “P.S. Murry Christmas”
16. Eight is Enough “Yes, Nicholas, There is a Santa Claus”
15. Taxi “A Full House for Christmas”
14. Happy Days “Guess Who’s Coming to Christmas”
13. The Bob Newhart Show “‘Twas the Pie Before Christmas”
11. All in the Family “Edith’s Crisis of Faith”
10. Barney Miller “Christmas Story”
9. The Odd Couple “Scrooge Gets an Oscar”
7. Bewitched “Sisters at Heart”
6. One Day at a Time – “Girl Talk”
5. The Mary Tyler Moore Show – “Christmas and the Hard-Luck Kid II”
4. The Jeffersons “984 W. 124th Street, Apt. 5C”
3. All in the Family “The Draft Dodger”
