While The Simpsons season 34 featured 2 Treehouse of Horror Halloween specials, this unusual rule break resulted in the season featuring no Christmas episode. The Simpsons has seemingly thrown away the show’s rule book in season 34. Each new episode is playing with ideas that even a series as anarchic as The Simpsons usually steered clear of until this point, to mixed results.
The most recent episode set in the future saw season 34 retcon Lisa and Milhouse’s reliable Simpsons future, and the show followed this with another surprise. Season 34 is set to not feature a Christmas special, even though The Simpsons aired numerous holiday episodes in recent seasons. However, as there were multiple Christmas specials in The Simpsons seasons 31 and 32, it is easy to see why season 34 changed this. Season 34 was also the first season of The Simpsons to feature two Treehouse of Horror Halloween episodes, meaning that the long-running cartoon comedy is more than covered when it comes to holiday specials.
How Season 34 Changed The Simpsons Holiday Special Rules
As the first season of The Simpsons with 2 Treehouse of Horror episodes, season 34 redefined the parameters of what the show could do with its annual specials. While The Simpsons season 34 still brought back Golden Age storylines, the decision to stage two Treehouse of Horror specials remained a creative risk that showed a commitment to original ideas. Not only that, but the fact that one of those two Treehouse of Horror episodes abandoned the standard three-segment format of earlier Halloween anthology episodes was further proof that The Simpsons season 34 was unafraid of trying new things.
Since the first ten episodes of season 34 included two holiday specials, it is fair for The Simpsons to take a break from Christmas episodes in 2022. However, season 34’s creative switch-up is not the only justification for missing a Christmas special. While The Simpsons self-parodying season 34 future episode did feature a brief appearance from Santa Claus, the season seemingly won’t feature a full-blown Christmas special because both season 31 and season 32 featured two Christmas episodes each. As such, The Simpsons has been in a surplus when it comes to holiday specials – which may also explain season 33’s missing Christmas outing.
Why The Simpsons Aired 3 Christmas Episodes In 1 Year
Between 2020 and 2021, The Simpsons managed to air three Christmas episodes in one calendar year. Bizarrely, two of these specials aired nowhere near Christmas. The Simpsons season 31, episode 22 “The Way of the Dog,” arrived in May 2020 (and continued the penchant for weird Simpsons celebrity guest stars with an appearance from Michael York). Meanwhile, The Simpsons season 32, episode 16, “Manger Things,” aired in March 2021 despite being a Yuletide offering. Only The Simpsons season 32, episode 10, “A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas” arrived with an appropriate air date in December 2020—and, in classic subversive fashion, The Simpsons Christmas episode was set in summer.
New episodes of The Simpsons air on Fox on Sundays.