Not Feeling The Holiday Spirit? These Millennial Era Animated Shows Have Got You

Starting in the 1960s, American kids grew up with the pantheon of heartwarming animated Christmas classics like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. But when those kids grew up and started making their own animated specials in the 1990s and 2000s, they often reflected GenX’s characteristic distrust of institutions and cynicism about overblown Boomer idealism. The result was a Golden Age of animated holiday entertainment with a sharper, more caustic wit, playing against the wholesome sentimentality of the season.

Originally done by and for wiseass 20-somethings, introverts and deep-cut fans, these X-mas animated treats prove anything can assume that fuzzy nostalgic glow if you give it enough time. For a bunch of aging GenXers and Millennials who grew up with these shows, teeing up a night of darkly humorous not-for-kids cartoons can be as comforting as a mug of eggnog.

Here are a few personal favorites from that era.

Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire (The Simpsons, Season 1, Episode 1. Original airdate: December 17, 1989). Where else to start with this kind of topic than The Simpsons? This holiday-themed debut wasn’t exactly the world’s first glimpse of Matt Groening’s immortal dysfunctional animated family – they’d been on The Tracey Ullman Show before – but the holiday special, slated to be the eighth episode of Season 1, actually ended up airing as Fox’s series kickoff. The show finds Homer desperate to scrape together enough money to pay for a fun family Christmas after his miserly boss, Mr. Burns, cancelled the holiday bonus and Marge had to empty the piggy bank to remove a tattoo that Bart had gotten at the mall. It’s amazing how much of the DNA that has carried The Simpsons through 35(!) years was present in that very first episode. It played to an initial audience of 13.4 million, got a couple of Emmy nominations, established the template for an enduring American cultural institution, and set the nascent Fox network on a path to success. Oh well, can’t win them all. Currently streaming on Disney+, with this episode now free on YouTube.

Mr. Hanky The Christmas Poo (South Park, Season 1, Episode 9, original airdate December 17, 1997). Like The Simpsons, South Park has been around for so long and has become so deeply embedded in certain parts of the culture that it’s hard to remember how genuinely transgressive, original, and hilarious the show was when it debuted in 1997 on Comedy Central. Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s bratty and profane take on middle America had been getting a lot of buzz, but this first Christmas episode, featuring a talking (and singing) turd named Mr Hankey, arguably put the show on the map, giving South Park its biggest ratings to date and cracking the top five basic cable broadcasts of the year. It was the first of South Park’s musical episodes, featuring sing-along ditties like “Kyle’s Mom’s a Bitch,” “A Lonely Jew on Christmas,” and of course Mr. Hanky’s own theme song. It was also the first early episode where Kenny survived to the credits. Currently streaming on many platforms including Max, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.

Xmas Story (Futurama Season 2 Episode 8, original air date December 19, 1999). Matt Groening’s second series Futurama was a little more sharp-elbowed and a lot more nerdy than the family-friendly Simpsons. By the time the Christmas episode aired on the eve of Y2K, the characters of Fry, Leela, Bender and the gang were well-established, and the show’s sci-fi comedy premise was more than capable of carrying across this darkly humorous tale of Santa Bot, a diabolical robot (voiced by John Goodman) who terrorizes future New York every X-mas by spraying crowds with a tommy gun from his mechanical flying sleigh. The character became a mainstay of the series, reprised in several holiday episodes over the years. Though Futurama hasn’t had the unbroken success of The Simpsons or South Park, it has remained a perennial favorite, with a 12^th season airing on Hulu this past year. This vintage episode streaming on Hulu, Disney+, fuboTV and other services.

A Very Venture Christmas (The Venture Bros, special following Season 1, original airdate: December 19, 2004). The first season of the The Venture Bros, originally a sendup of old Hanna-Barbera action shows like Jonny Quest, had just wrapped up on Adult Swim when they dropped a suitably retro-styled Christmas special. As usual, the hapless Doctor Venture and his family are threatened by the equally hapless Monarch and Doctor Girlfriend (as well as a Krampus summoned by an errant magical spell), with notes of “A Christmas Carol” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” thrown in for good measure. As the series became progressively more baroque and ambitious with its mythology over the next two decades, a scene from the Christmas party at the compound featuring an array of minor characters (most of whom would eventually get their own backstories) is a treat for hardcore fans. You’ll never think of the term “Baby Jesus is out of the manger” quite the same way again.

A Huey Freeman Christmas (The Boondocks, season 1, episode 7, original airdate: December 18, 2005). The animated adaptation of Aaron McGruder’s brutally funny skewering of racism and race relations in post-millennial America was firing on all cylinders in its inaugural season on Adult Swim. The holiday episode, structured as a dark mirror version of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” sees a well-meaning white teacher entrust the radically-minded Huey with complete creative control over the elementary school’s Christmas play, with predictable results. Meanwhile, Riley’s beef with Santa (“pay what you owe!”) turns violent, leading the mall to hire Uncle Ruckus as security. Beyond the social satire, great gags, character bits and superior animation, the meta-commentary in this episode about the fate of Black creators given a blank check to tell the truth, ended up being an epitaph for the series that saw the creator McGruder fired from the show before its disappointing fourth and final season. Streaming on Max, Hulu, YouTube, Amazon Prime and elsewhere.

Finally, one animated episode from the millennial era deserves mention despite having zero cynical content. That’s Comfort and Joy (Justice League episode 47, original airdate, December 13, 2003), a highlight from a series featuring the best version of DC’s characters and universe to reach the screen in any medium. Paul Dini, co-creator of Harley Quinn, penned this episode that sees Green Lantern follow Hawkgirl to the rowdy intergalactic bar where she goes to unwind, the Flash square off against the erudite apeman Ultra-Humanite while trying to track down a hard-to-find toy for kids at a Central City orphanage on Christmas Eve, and J’onn J’onzz the Martian Manhunter spending Christmas at home with Clark Kent and his parents in rural Kansas. Genuinely should not be missed. Streaming on Max, Netflix, Hulu and elsewhere.