christmas episodes

Our No. 1 choice for the best Christmas episode ever may not be a surprise -- any episode that involves the creation of a new, Christmas spin-off holiday has to rate a top spot! -- but countdown is designed to bring some ho-ho-ho holiday cheer to your celebration this season.

So, jump down off the aluminum pole, postpone that Airing of Grievances and recall these classic Christmas TV installments.

• TBS is showing A Christmas Story all day and night.
• Lifetime has Christmas episodes of shows all day, including Frasier, The Nanny, and The Golden Girls.
• HGTV has holiday shows on all day and night.
• TV Land has Christmas episodes all day, including All in the Family, Good Times, and Three's Company.
• FOX Movie Channel is showing Miracle on 34th Street all day.
• At 7am, NBC's Today, ABC's Good Morning America, and CBS' The Early Show have Christmas music and segments.
• ABC Family starts their marathon of Christmas movies and TV shows at 7.
• At 8, A&E has a Crossing Jordan marathon.
• Bravo has the Radio City Christmas Spectacular at 8.
• Comedy Central has a Mad TV marathon starting at 8.
• Sci-Fi has a Stargate SG-1 marathon at 8.
• Hallmark has a Christmas episode of The Waltons at 8.
• At noon, USA has Elf (also at 2, 7, and 9pm).
• At 9, NBC has Christmas Mass.
• At 10, ABC has the Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade.
• At 11, CBS has a new Price Is Right.
• At 2, ESPN2 has a World Series of Poker marathon.
• At 4, TNT has a Cold Case marathon.
• At 6, FX has Home Alone.
• Also check your local listings for Christmas episodes of many shows, including Friends, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Still Standing, Everybody Loves Raymond, According To Jim, and That 70s Show.

Check your local TV listings for more.

TVShowsonDVD has a cool list of all of the TV shows currently available on DVD that contain holiday episodes.

Now, at first glance it just looks like their regular list of TV shows that are available on television in general, but if you look closer you'll see that they actually tell you what season set has the holiday episodes. For example, say you want to see what Johnny Depp and the other cops on 21 Jump Street did for Christmas. That would be the season 2 DVD set. Or maybe you wanted to see what seasons of M*A*S*H had a Christmas episode, and that would be the season 1, 5, 7, 9, and 10 sets. There are even some sets that are nothing but Christmas episodes, like the America's Funniest Home Videos: Home For The Holidays set or the Christmas episodes DVD from Ozzie & Harriet.

The list is worth it just to see that Xena: Warrior Princess had a Christmas episode, in season 2. Wow.

... three Subtle Subtitles.

Welcome to Subtle Subtitles. For those of you who are uninitiated to the purpose of this feature, we're asking you to come up with your funniest quote or description for what's going on in the screen grab we choose for the week. Winners are announced in the following Friday's contest.

Last week's winners:

3rd place to Chris W: "Ya know.... It's really hard to kill you when you won't stop laughing."
2nd place to Bus: "As the zombies moved in for the kill thinking only of their desire to feast on human flesh, Randy remembered his training. Zombies can't see you if you're happy. But, as they devoured his flesh, Randy remembered that rule only applied to Martha Stewart."
1st place to Toby OB: "In a desperate bid to raise money for the beleaguered network, NBC hired undocumented workers to get enough 'Tickle Me Randy' life-size party dolls ready in time for Christmas."

This week, some scenes from Christmas episodes of How I Met Your Mother, Everybody Hates Chris and, of course, Letterman. Choose one or do all three! Two more after the jump.

From How I Met Your Mother: