’Tis the season.

The season for television shows to chug too much eggnog, forget their earthly cares for an hour or so, and jump the proverbial yuletide shark.

The result, whether it’s treacly sweet, outrageously theatric, or capable of bringing an audience to tears, comes like clockwork each December, when—for good or bad—television cuts away from its regularly scheduled programming to tap into the spirit of the season.

I’m talking stars. I’m talking spectacle. I’m talking, more than likely, somebody dressing up as Santa.

I’m talking, if it’s not clear, about the holiday special.

I grew up with an appreciation for the scripted counterpart of this, the holiday episode—from dinosaurs and cavemen singing along to Christmas carols on The Flintstones to the cast of Community transforming into Claymation toys to the annual Doctor Who drop that had high-school me in an absolute chokehold: Tears (me, at the exit of David Tennant)! Dickens! The better-than-it-should-be Murray Gold novelty song!

But I came of age too late to fully appreciate the shmaltzy old-school celebrity Christmas variety shows of yore (you know the ones, packed with musical numbers, guest stars, dancing, and zany surprises). Over the last few years, though, I’ve found myself actively seeking out the latest generation of these specials. Tuning in to NBC’s “Christmas at Graceland” this year, the first live musical televised holiday special at Presley’s old estate, helped clarify what it was that draws me, and so many others, to them. As Lana Del Rey performed her rendition of the classic 1955 song “Unchained Melody,” an Elvis favorite, I realized that I was witnessing something timeless, something so many of us really do hunger for, especially in these uncertain times.

The holiday special first came on the scene in 1950, another year badly in need of comfort. The world, still recovering from the impact of World War II, was bracing for more conflict; the Korean War had broken out just months earlier, the first major proxy war in the Cold War, and the fighting foreshadowed the long, bloody years ahead. The early holiday special served as a balm of sorts, inviting families to gather together for some seasonal cheer.

Technically 1950 wasn’t the first year Christmas came to television. In America, early offerings, like a 1946 televised “North Pole Toyland” from Wanamaker’s DuMont Studio, showed children playing in “toy world,” carolers singing, and even a Santa workshop (who played Santa in that show is anyone’s guess—1946 was, notably, the first year that male Santas outnumbered female Santas again since before World War II). In 1948, “Surprise From Santa” featured noted stage and screen actor Whitford Kane playing that famous “snowy-bearded gentleman” on television, and debuted a new song, “Sleighbells,” by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz. And of course, long before television came around, radio had already set a precedent—was the “ur-Christmas special” really the Royal Christmas message, first delivered in a radio broadcast by George V in 1932?

But 1950 was different. Like the snow falling outside, Christmas blanketed programming. It was, truly, “Christmas on the airwaves” as a New York Times’ television programming guide proclaimed, announcing that “most regularly scheduled programs will abandon their usual formats to bring … viewers programs of a seasonal nature.”

Among the listed specials to be aired on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day: “Herald of Goodwill,” which featured Christmas carols from different nations; “Nativity,” depicting images of Jesus’ birth by master painters; a televised church service; a candlelight mass from the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.; and the first-ever TV adaptation of the Christmas-themed musical Babes in Toyland (which is sadly lost to time).

The biggest splash was “One Hour in Wonderland,” Walt Disney (and his company)’s first real venture into television.

“Fair warning to all mothers and grandmothers preparing dinner for Christmas Day,” wrote L.A. Times critic Walter Ames. “Don’t set your dinner table between the hours of 4 and 5 PM. If you do, the food is liable to get cold.” The reason? That “spectacular” Disney Christmas special he’d seen a preview of, hosted by ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, his dummy Charlie McCarthy, and the actress Kathryn Beaumont. The special, sponsored by Coca-Cola, was set up like a Christmas party at the Disney studio. A magic mirror opened the portal into the fantasy of Disney, unlocking previews of Alice in Wonderland (which would hit theaters the following summer), giving airtime to a host of characters from Mickey Mouse to Donald Duck, and behind-the-scenes peeks at Walt Disney Productions.

Just a small percentage of U.S. households even owned a television in 1950 (a 13-inch set cost the equivalent of around $2,000 today). But for those who did tune in, maybe using a screen magnifier to make the tiny black-and-white picture appear a little larger, they were enraptured. The television special garnered an estimated 90% of viewers—and as Richard T. Stanley joked in The Eisenhower Years: A Social History of the 1950s, “possibly helped sell a gazillion Cokes.” The reviews were raves: “After seeing it, I know why television was born,” Hedda Hopper announced in her gossip column that week.

“One Hour in Wonderland” was such a hit that it became an annual tradition, rebranded as “The Walt Disney Christmas Show” the following year with a record television budget of $250,000.

Though the Disney special may have made the most visible impact in 1950, less remembered (perhaps because it aired on NBC a few weeks late) is arguably an even more seminal program that aired that season: the inaugural “Bob Hope Christmas Show.”

“We want you to just get back into the holiday spirit, and imagine you’re back around Christmas time,” joked Hope at the start of the special to set the scene. Guests included film actor Robert Cummings, opera singer Lily Pons, and tap dancer Betty Bruce. There were laughs—like one skit of four department store Santas commuting home on the subway—and there were poignant moments, notably the ending, when Hope brought Eleanor Roosevelt out on stage.

She started by thanking Hope for his recent tour to visit military bases in Korea, Japan, and Alaska.

“When you travel you get a chance to meet and talk to all kinds of people,” Hope commented. He paused a moment before adding, “These days you find many people are confused and more than a little afraid of the future.”

“That’s understandable in times as troubled as ours,” Roosevelt agreed.

It was the first of 44 Christmas shows Hope would film over his lifetime. Other celebrity hosts, from Bing Crosby to Dean Martin and more, followed his playbook to bring a dose of holiday spirit to the season. But by the turn of the century, when Hope’s final special aired in 1994 (the same year that fellow holiday stalwart Perry Como wrapped his last Christmas special), the future of the seasonal variety special seemed up in the air.

Rather than turn into a corny relic from TV’s past, a new wave of specials in the 2000s showed there was something more substantial to the formula. At first, celebrities returned with a bit of a satirical wink: Stephen Colbert for Comedy Central in 2008 or Bill Murray for Netflix in 2015. But in recent years, hosts have cast irony aside in favor of embracing what the holiday special first set out to do. From Lady Gaga and the Muppets to Kacey Musgraves to Mariah Carey (unofficial patron saint of Zócalo Public Square), celebrities are once again finding success by leaning into the shtick of it all.

Like in the earliest days of the holiday special, fewer may be watching now, in this age of streaming. But for those like me who are still tuning in, I suspect, whether or not they celebrate the season, they are watching in search of some age-old winter cheer to help warm up these long winter nights.

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It spiraled from there, an easy escape from what was becoming an increasingly rough year.

Ever since the sitcom emerged in the late 1940s, the format has offered a bulwark against reality.

The first sitcom, short for “situation comedy,” featured real-life married couple Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns. The domestic comedy, characterized by its screwball sensibilities, drew from the couple’s own experiences as newlyweds. (As Stearns later explained, “If Mary Kay got stuck in an elevator, it would give me an inspiration for us getting stuck in an elevator.”) By the time Mary Kay and Johnny wrapped in 1950, the early sitcom ecosystem was flourishing as adaptations of American radio comedy programs began making the leap from the airwaves to television, with shows like I Love Lucy and The Goldbergs establishing the familiar lexicon of the genre we know today.

From the beginning, there was a reassuring sameness to the narrative structure. Turn on an episode, and you knew what to expect; should you have to step out for a moment, you could trust that when you returned, you’d find the same familiar faces interacting together on screen, like no time at all had passed.

Most importantly in sitcoms, there’s an implicit understanding: nothing will ever go that wrong. That’s because the sitcom is an episodic fantasy of life. Sure, the real world peeks and prods at the edges of the sitcom universe, but you know that here a resolution will always be forthcoming in 30 minutes or less.

It’s what makes the sitcom such an ideal comfort watch. Or at least that’s what it’s been for me the past few months, after some unexpected health issues led me to spend a good chunk of it in bed.

It was when I found myself rewatching the same episode of Frasier for the third time in as many months that I started to realize just how swept up in sitcoms I had become.

The season four episode is classic Frasier, with a stream of jokes, including a set up where Frasier’s brother, Niles Crane, takes out a magazine advertisement in hopes of expanding his private psychiatry practice. The script was intended to read: Jung specialist servicing individuals, couples… groups… Satisfaction guaranteed… Tell me where it hurts.

Niles is played by David Hyde Pierce, whose comic instincts verge on poetic, and the punchline comes when he learns that the magazine got the copy wrong. Flustered, he storms into the room to tell Frasier what happened. Rather than Jung specialist, they’d printed “hung specialist.”

Without missing a beat, Frasier asks, drolly, “Any calls?”

A white-faced Niles responds, “It’s a telethon.”

I could probably watch his delivery 100 times, and it would still make me smile.

Maybe, I told myself, this is me coping. Research does suggest that repeated exposure to positive distractions and familiar fiction can have beneficial health effects.

But it also felt a little too easy to get lost in this rosy glow of syndication—a gleam you can now live in perpetuity, thanks to streaming.

It made me think about the late French sociologist Jean Baudrillard. Toward the end of the 20th century, he argued that society was losing the distinction between the cultural products we consume and the real-life things that they are based on. He didn’t point to the sitcom, but surely, it’s an example of this—a simulacrum of American life. We’re watching a writers’ room’s idea of a make-believe U.S., drawing comfort from a false nostalgia of a world that was never really there in the first place.

The sitcom’s departure from reality is only becoming more pronounced with time. The genre has traditionally centered on the lives of “middle class” characters, but while the signifiers of class on television have always been aspirational, as the financial gulf widens between these characters and their real-life counterparts off screen, it has made sitcoms feel increasingly fantastical. For a point of comparison, at the start of the ’70s—the decade that brought us The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Jeffersons, Laverne & Shirley, and the list goes on—61% of American adults were considered middle class, according to Pew Research Center data; by 2015, amid rising inequality, only half of the population fit the definition.

This could be one of the reasons why, today, there’s such a demand out there for classic sitcoms. We can’t live these lives in the real world, so we can at least live them second-hand on screen.

The escape into sitcoms increased in the pandemic, with Nielson reporting an audible uptick in viewership during COVID’s height, noting that “when audiences needed a break from reality, they traveled back in time to tried-and-true picks like Friends, Family Matters, The Golden Girls, and Two and a Half Men.”

In an unprecedented moment that wiped away so many of the things that sitcoms promise—connection, community, stability—is it any surprise that more people sought the comfort of these fables of what life could look like?

It’s certainly what’s drawn me to them now.

I’ve come to think of this year as my year of sitcoms, to crib off the title of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the Ottessa Moshfeghi novel that’s neither restful nor relaxing.

Like Moshfeghi’s heavily medicated narrator who tries to escape her life through sleep, I know on some level, I’m hiding away in the well-worn grooves of these characters’ healthy, happy fictions.

But the pull of the sitcom is seductive. Watching them can feel like living in a day dream. You’re staring across the screen at lives that, on the surface, seem like they could resemble your own, except here, everything is shaped around human connection, and the worst thing that can happen to you is that you’ll learn a life lesson. 

I know life is not a sitcom. But the more of them I watch, the more I wish we could take inspiration from the worlds they’ve imagined and bring the best of them into our own. Because all I know is that I’m not ready to wake up yet.

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