The Office: Christmas Episodes Guide

Christmas is where The Office truly showed up — seven episodes, two of them hour-long two-parters, spanning Jim's teapot confession to Dwight's fearsome Belsnickel. All seven stream in the U.S. on Peacock, with individual episodes available to buy or rent. Ratings are IMDb user scores, since Rotten Tomatoes doesn't score the show's episodes individually.

Episode Synopsis

S2E10 – "Christmas Party" (aired December 6, 2005)

The one that started the Christmas tradition, and it's a rough one for Michael. The office holds a Secret Santa exchange, but Michael panics after realizing his gift (an iPod) is way more expensive than what he's likely to receive, so he strong-arms everyone into switching to a Yankee Swap instead. That backfires badly when he ends up with a homemade oven mitt from Phyllis and swaps it away right in front of her. He spends the rest of the party trying to buy back everyone's goodwill with alcohol. On a much sweeter note, this is also the episode where Jim gives Pam a teapot filled with small mementos and an unspoken confession of feelings, which quietly sets up the rest of the season.

S3E10-11 – "A Benihana Christmas" (aired December 14, 2006)

A rare hour-long double episode, and one of the show's most beloved. Michael gets dumped by his girlfriend Carol after a disastrously ill-advised Christmas card, so Andy and Jim take him out to Benihana to cheer him up, where Michael and Andy end up inviting two waitresses back to the office party (mostly so Michael can tell them apart by drawing on their hands with marker). Meanwhile, the Party Planning Committee implodes, so Pam and Karen throw a rival party of their own to spite Angela. Jim, still adjusting to being just friends with Pam while dating Karen, has a quietly bittersweet arc through the episode. It ends with Michael making a phone call that sets up his relationship with Jan, though the audience doesn't know that yet.

S5E11 – "Moroccan Christmas" (aired December 11, 2008)

Phyllis, now head of the Party Planning Committee, throws a Moroccan-themed party after blackmailing Angela into doing most of the actual work. The party goes off well right up until Meredith gets drunk and lights her own hair on fire, which sends Michael into full intervention mode, first for her drinking and then, when that doesn't stick, an attempt to get her into rehab. On a lighter note, Dwight buys up the season's hottest toy, a half-girl half-unicorn doll, and starts reselling them from his desk to increasingly desperate parents. The episode closes with Phyllis dropping a bombshell about Angela and Dwight's affair to most of the office, setting up fallout for the next episode.

S6E13 – "Secret Santa" (aired December 10, 2009)

Michael is furious when Jim lets Phyllis play Santa at the office party instead of him, and spends much of the episode sulking about it in increasingly petty ways. Andy's Secret Santa gift to Erin, an attempt at "The Twelve Days of Christmas," spirals out of control once live animals start getting involved. There's also a quieter, ominous thread running underneath the jokes: word starts spreading that Dunder Mifflin is being sold, which puts people like David Wallace on the chopping block and sets up the Sabre era of the show. It ends on a genuinely sweet note, with twelve drummers surprising Erin in the parking lot to finish out Andy's gift.

S7E11-12 – "Classy Christmas" (aired December 9, 2010)

Widely considered the best Christmas episode of the series. Michael learns his ex Holly is coming back to fill in for Toby, who's away on jury duty for the Scranton Strangler case, and immediately cancels the office's planned party in favor of a fancier one designed to impress her. Meanwhile Dwight and Jim's ongoing rivalry boils over into a full-blown snowball fight in the parking lot, with Dwight going well past the point of it being funny and just outright tormenting Jim. Darryl also gets a nice subplot trying to give his daughter a great Christmas despite a tight budget. This episode marks the beginning of Michael and Holly's rekindled relationship, which eventually leads to his departure from the show.

S8E10 – "Christmas Wishes" (aired December 8, 2011)

Andy's first Christmas as branch manager, and he decides to grant everyone's Christmas wishes, which goes about as well as any Michael-style scheme usually did. He invites his girlfriend Jessica to the party, which sends Erin into a jealous spiral, including at one point wishing her dead out loud. Jim and Dwight are threatened with losing their bonuses if they keep pranking each other, so naturally they both try to sabotage themselves to frame the other guy. It's generally considered one of the weaker Christmas entries, landing in the post-Michael stretch of the show where the ensemble was still finding its footing.

S9E9 – "Dwight Christmas" (aired December 6, 2012)

The final Christmas episode of the series. After the Party Planning Committee drops the ball entirely, Dwight steps in and throws a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas, complete with himself dressed as the folkloric, vaguely terrifying Belsnickel, who judges everyone as naughty or nice. Jim is getting ready to start his new job in Philadelphia, and Darryl is anxious about being left behind and forgotten in the move. There's also a nice small subplot of Pete introducing Erin to Die Hard as his favorite Christmas movie. Despite airing in the show's weaker final season, this one gets a lot of credit for genuinely warm Dwight-and-Jim material and Darryl's memorable face-first fall into the snack table.