An office Christmas party is a time-honored tradition of the working-class.
It usually involves gift-giving, deli platters, cheap booze, and someone embarrassing themselves in front of coworkers during a drunken stupor.
Christmas parties on The Office are especially-strange affairs filled with cringe-worthy jokes and injury-causing snowball fights and at least one Dunder Mifflin employee being set on fire, but they all have one thing in common – they’re hilarious, stand-out moments that deserve to be celebrated.
We’ve ranked the best Christmas-themed episodes of the show from worst to best (or naughty to nice if you really want to milk the seasonal angle), but each entry brings a bit of holiday cheer, should you wish to enjoy them all.
Warning: these aren’t your grandmother’s Christmas parties.
7: Season 8, Episode 10 “Christmas Wishes”
This is the weakest of the Christmas episodes for a variety of reasons, mainly because, for the first time, we see the office celebrate the holiday without Michael Scott. Steve Carrell had been absent all season, and the show struggled to find a way to move forward without his zany, inappropriate antics. Ed Helms tried to fill the role, but Andy Bernard never felt like a leading man on the show, and it’s evident in “Christmas Wishes” as he dons Michael’s old Santa suit and promises to fulfill everyone’s Christmas wish.
With Pam (Jenna Fischer) also M.I.A., the show decided to use her replacement to justify Andy’s decision to threaten Jim (John Krasinski) and Dwight (Rainn Wilson), should they continue their childish pranks. Of course, this caused the pair to bait each other even more but the whole vibe of Christmas Wishes just felt off. Jim and Dwight’s constant back and forth is a highlight of the show, so having Andy try to punish them for it didn’t elevate the character in any way, and with some of the core cast missing, we were forced to slog through more relationship drama between Andy and Erin (Ellie Kemper). Even a bartending Robert California (James Spader) couldn’t save this fiasco.
6: Season 3, Episode 10 “A Benihana Christmas”
Michael Scott’s love life was a running gag on the show, but his romantic mishaps overshadowed everyone’s Christmas cheer in “A Benihana Christmas.” After superimposing his face on his girlfriend’s ex-husband in a photo of the family’s ski trip, then sending the photoshopped image as his annual Christmas card, his breakup with Carol felt unsurprising. His bemoaning of the end of the affair and his chance to have a romantic getaway to Sandals Jamaica was also expected. The guys try to cheer Michael up by getting him sloshed on eggnog and sake at a local Benihanas, which proves to be the best part of the episode as Jim convinces Dwight the waitress has narcolepsy before Dwight treats everyone at the table to a breakdown of how to butcher a goose.
Back at the office, Karen (Rashida Jones) and Pam team up to overthrow Angela (Angela Kinsey), who’s become the tyrannical dictator of the party planning committee. It’s a shame the series didn’t explore the possibility of a friendship between the two rivals past this episode because the ladies worked well together. What ultimately brings this episode down is Michael’s behavior once he brings a couple of Asian waitresses to the festivities. Look, a lot of Michael Scott-isms come across as cringeworthy now that we’re years removed from the show, but it’s hard to see what was ever funny about exploiting harmful stereotypes of Asian women.
5: Season 9, Episode 9 “Dwight Christmas”
The show’s final season played up the friendship between Dwight and Jim, one that had been building with years of pranks and fights and problematic love lives. The two guys liked to play enemies, but “Dwight Christmas” proved there was a real love and respect between the pair. With Jim set to leave work early for his new job in Philadelphia and Angela dropping the ball for the office’s annual shindig, Dwight gets the opportunity to share in an authentic, Pennsylvania Dutch celebration of the holiday. That means drinking Gluhwein with the ladle used to scoop Dwight out of his mother’s birth canal. That means enjoying hog maw and wrestling over pig rib. That means Dwight dressed as Saint Nicolas’ rural, German companion Belsnickel, a dirty, bearded folklore character outfitted in fur and a homemade broom paddle that instills fear and the threat of discipline into young children.
Dwight’s, we’ll call it “unique,” upbringing was a comedy goldmine for the show but it produced some real gems this episode, and it gave us a chance to see how integral Jim’s personality was to the overall office dynamics.
4: Season 7, Episodes 11 & 12 “Classy Christmas”
Honestly, we would’ve ranked this one lower than Dwight’s Belsnickel, but “Classy Christmas” had one shining moment: The snowball fight. After Jim pegs Dwight in the face with the season’s first dusting, the two agree to have an all-out war. Normally, Dwight’s is woefully outmatched when it comes to pranks with Jim but this Christmas, the beet farmer comes out on top. Not only does Dwight manage to bloody Jim’s nose by locking him out of the building, hiding within a snowman, and pelleting him with round after round of icy ammunition, he also wages psychological warfare on his co-worker, impersonating Pam, delivering anonymous gifts, and watching from the roof of the office as a terrified Jim mindlessly beats a legion of snowmen with his man purse.
Other things happen in the two episodes that warrant mention. Holly Flax (Amy Ryan) returns. Michael and Holly hash out their failed romance in the most awkward of ways. Pam gifts Jim with a comic book that imagines him as a superhero named “Bear Man,” but nothing felt as satisfying as watching Dwight finally defeat his nemesis with the greatest snowball of all … fear.
3: Season 2, Episode 10 “Christmas Party”
Everyone knows the office gift-giving tradition of Secret Santa is not to be messed with. Bad things happen when we disrupt the seasonal status-quo. Michael discovers that when he shakes things up by forcing the employees to play a game of Yankee Swap (or White Elephant, or Nasty Christmas, whatever you prefer) instead of just giving gifts they’d spent time buying or crafting for specific people in the office. That means Jim’s thoughtful gift to Pam — a teapot filled with homages to inside jokes between the pair — ends up going to Dwight for him to repurpose as a Neti Pot. It also means that everyone resorts to fighting over Michael’s gift to Ryan (B.J. Novak), a brand new iPod.
“Christmas Party” marked the show’s first holiday-themed episode, which is why it ranks so high on this list even though it just left us feeling terrible for poor Phyllis (Phyllis Smith), who really gets sh*t on by Michael after knitting him an oven mitt that he obnoxiously pans. On the upside, this episode also had Dwight, dressed as an elf, quoting Titanic, specifically, the true hero of that movie, Billy Zane.
2: Season 6, Episode 13 “Secret Santa”
A lot of people tend to forget about season six’s Christmas episode, “Secret Santa” which is a damn shame because it’s one of the show’s best. Andy gets his crush Erin for the gift-giving game and decides to inundate her with gifts based on the classic carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Unfortunately for Erin, most of those days are birds which means she’s left with French hens ripping her hair out to make nests and a gaggle of geese stuffed into her compact car. The episode also features Phyllis finally realizing her dream of playing Santa Clause — she has the right figure and temperament after all — only for her time in the spotlight to be overshadowed by a jealous Michael, who can’t accept the idea of a “tranny Claus.”
The cast of the show has mentioned the behind-the-scenes antics of shooting this episode — Ed Helms admitted to having to duck out of shots when Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) tries to sit on Michael’s lap, and you can see Mindy Kaling valiantly trying to keep it together in that same scene — but another reason this episode ranks so high is it contains one of the best throwaway jokes of the entire series. We won’t spoil it here, but it has something to do with serial killers and Santa Claus.
1: Season 5, Episode 11 “Moroccan Christmas”
Is anyone really surprised that “Moroccan Christmas” ranks as the best Christmas episode on The Office? If you are, go watch the damn thing again because you clearly missed out on the fun. The episode starts strong, with one of Jim’s better pranks on Dwight — he covers the guy’s entire desk in gift wrapping — and gets better from there. After Phyllis witnesses Dwight and Angela having sex behind Andy’s back, she threatens to expose the affair to the entire office if she isn’t allowed to plan this year’s holiday festivities. (If blackmailing your despotic employee with a life-ruining secret isn’t the true meaning of Christmas, we don’t know what is.)
The result is a spicy, Moroccan-themed party that quickly spirals out of hand. A liquored-up Meredith (Kate Flannery) sets herself on fire, Michael holds an ill-timed intervention — dentist appointments for soft teeth and his insistence on celebrating Groundhog Day privately mean there’s no other time for everyone to collectively accuse Meredith of being an alcoholic — and Phyllis spills the beans about Dwight and Angela’s rendezvous. But the real highlight of the episode is Dwight’s scheme to make an extra buck off lazy parents by price gouging the year’s hottest toy, a princess unicorn doll. Fa-la-la-la-la La-la Ka-Ching.
