Netflix Has Destroyed A Holiday Tradition

For decades, the American television seasons ran from September through May, giving fans the usual Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and even Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day episodes. Friends and the animated Bob’s Burgers made the annual Thanksgiving episode into a yearly must-watch; The Simpsons elevated Halloween to the point that it’s essentially a spin-off series; and Brooklyn Nine-Nine redefined the Holiday episode by turning them into heists.

As the years have gone on, the Holiday episode has started to fade, and it’s all thanks to Netflix popularizing anytime streaming, but also shortened seasons. With no episode airing around a Holiday, and anywhere from six to 12 episodes compared to the old model of 22-24, writers can’t waste time on a fun Holiday episode, and as a result, viewers have lost one of the best parts of the Holidays.

The Beginning Of The End

Streaming didn’t truly take off as the dominant way to consume media until 2014, when the major streaming services at the time began producing original shows. Orange is the New Black started airing on July 11, 2013, with every episode available to binge all at once, including both a Thanksgiving episode and a climactic Christmas episode. While they were both great episodes, watching them in July struck some viewers as being odd, but it mainly stuck out to studio executives.

Over the last decade, as more shows head to streaming, Holiday episodes have been disappearing, and even old-school network shows have had to adjust. Shifting Gears, Tim Allen’s latest sitcom about a gearhead dad trying to relate to his adult daughter (Kat Dennings), is as old-school as you can get in 2025. With a shortened slate of episodes and frequent breaks between episodes, the show aired a Valentine’s Day episode in Season 1, a Halloween episode, and a Christmas episode (upcoming on December 10) in Season 2. If even Tim Allen is suffering from infrequent network air dates, there’s no hope for any other show in the age of streaming.

Creators And Fans Are Keeping The Tradition Alive

Which is why Mike Schur, creator of the award-winning The Good Place, made certain to include a Thanksgiving episode during Season 2 of his latest series, also starring Ted Danson, A Man on the Inside. Ironically, his new series is a Netflix original, which he’s admitted in interviews that he took into consideration when writing the episode “Thanksgiving Break.” It’s not only a celebration of pre-2014 television traditions, but a moving episode that takes full advantage of the Holiday to dive deep into grief, trauma, and family dynamics.

Fans of Bob’s Burgers are already lamenting another year without a Thanksgiving episode. For 10 years in a row, they were the highlight of each season, for the audience at least, not for Bob (H. Jon Benjamin), whose grand plans fall apart in spectacular fashion each year, but it’s not a coincidence that the last three seasons have skipped the tradition. Disney hasn’t even put up a playlist on Hulu of all the episodes, like they have for years. In the age of on-demand streaming, the Holidays are less important than ever before.

While it’s an overall streaming issue, much of the blame lies at Netflix’s feet, which, by succeeding beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, has rewritten the Hollywood playbook. Shorter seasons, on-demand, and with no room for second chances, given how quickly they are to cancel a show, means writers today aren’t able to take creative chances, unless they happen to have the track record of Mike Schur. When up against the streaming behemoth, even Santa Claus has to admit defeat.