This season bucked a trend where a new Modern Family Christmas episode premiered every odd-numbered year.
A bona fide holiday-heavy episode marked the midway points of the first, third, fifth and seventh seasons. The eighth season had “Snow Ball” closing out 2016, but was more of a normal episode featuring a winter dance.
The ABC sitcom will return for at least a 10th season in 2018-19. How much, if any, follows that is subject to speculation. If executive producer Steve Levitan’s hints hold up, 10 will be the finale.
Either way, it would not be a stretch to envision one more Christmas episode. The powers that be would not leave its audience hanging three years in a row, would they? Plus, if Season 10 is the swan song, one more holiday special secures one for every two seasons.
For now, the show is on an unprecedented drought in this department. To assuage the resultant thirst, let us reopen the 10 best Modern Family Christmas storylines to date.
As with all top-shelf holiday media, the best of this vault packs sparkle and sentiment. It keeps one boot firmly wedged in the boundaries of humor while deftly toeing the heart. The latter is not a requirement, but it helps.
10. Torn Tree Part 2 – “The Old Man & the Tree”
A prior Modern Family Christmas tree was ripped apart before it could get home. Mitch was the presiding adult on that ill-fated search.
It is thus a tad repetitive when Jay and Manny’s debacle has the same basic ending two seasons later. Nonetheless, this version sustains substantial humor, particularly as the chopping struggle punches Jay’s cast-iron pride.
As a plus, he now knows the exact pain his son and granddaughter had endured.
9. Torn Tree Part 1 – “Express Christmas”
The idea was fresher on its first usage, therefore it ekes out a higher ranking.
Not unlike Jay and Manny, Mitch and Alex are ostensibly among the show’s least likely tag teams to botch this errand. As such, it is that much funnier when they flub.
Alex precipitates the mishap by misinterpreting and overthinking the tree salesman’s suggestion. Afterward, her pride and Mitch’s lead to their selection’s sliding off the roof of the car. For good measure, unbeknownst to them, Luke and Gloria unwittingly finish the wreckage amidst their own assignment.
8. Cam’s Conscience – “The Old Man & the Tree”
Lily’s heartwarming gesture at the end of this storyline speaks to Mitch and Cam’s parenting. Their desires to improve the holidays for the down-on-their-luck has been apparent since the first season.
In this fifth-season episode, Cam displays more of this to a comical fault. When mistaken for toy-drive beneficiaries, he must face a conundrum as the oblivious Lily acquires the No. 1 present on her wish list. He will not spill his guts, but will also not let Lily’s face appear in photos documenting the drive. When Lily’s technically true statement, “I don’t have a Mommy,” deepens the misdirected sympathy, he hilariously stands pat.
The escalating humor reaches a fine peak when Mitch spills the gifts intended for Pepper’s party. By then, Cam can only pass them off as donations and spin rationales when the recipients unwrap them.
7. Shopping Maul – “The Old Man & the Tree”
Haley and Alex are growing up and growing apart. They are poised to punctuate that notion when Haley relocates to the basement on Christmas Eve.
But then they go to work for their final day as supporting players for a mall Santa. When the jaded man behind the beard vanishes, the sisters are soon swamped by displeased children. And as Alex laments her colleague’s betrayal, Haley imparts what might as well be big-sisterly relationship advice.
Apparently, the two realize they are not quite ready to immerse in adulthood full-time. Back in the safety of their house, they revive their own custom Claire had fondly recalled that morning.
6. Santa Sacked – “Undeck the Halls”
To his credit, at least Alex and Haley’s mall Santa ends his tenure of his own accord. That is not the case when Mitch and Cam take Lily to the North Pole for the first time.
As IGN’s Robert Canning opined, “the most fun came with Cameron and Mitchell” in the first Modern Family Christmas episode. He was right. The Dunphy plot featuring a threat to scrap the festivities over a perceived indiscretion was rather trite for an innovative sitcom. Gloria, Cam and Manny’s story had stronger merits, but for reasons beyond sheer comedy.
In this subplot, unlike their nieces and nephew, Mitch and Cam really have done something worth regretting. When their critique of Santa’s physique and demeanor gets the actor fired, they scramble to make amends. Their success exceeds their own perceptions, and they dodge a consequential confession whose prospect we repeatedly laughed at.
5. Naughty List – “White Christmas”
This episode’s Haley-Andy storyline evokes memories of when they met two seasons prior in “Other People’s Children.” Back then, Andy scoffed at Haley’s insinuation that his girlfriend’s work in a male-dominated field makes infidelity more likely.
Alas, that is precisely what Beth confesses during her visit to the title family’s Christmas cabin. In so doing, she preempts Andy’s own admission to his trysts with Haley. Not a bad way to recycle six-year-old elements from the way the Mitch/Cam/Santa storyline culminated.
By this point in the saga, the two supporting characters have naturally terminated their engagement. And while Haley’s relationship with Andy does not last, audiences were at least tantalized after this episode’s premiere. It was a nice gift to chew on over the holiday hiatus.
4. Uphill Phil – “The Old Man & the Tree”
This subplot to the 2013 episode calls back to the 2012 Dunphy household Christmas we never saw. Phil is cramming to keep his promise to walk his elliptical machine the equivalent length of the West Coast. If he cannot meet that by the one-year mark, the machine will go to the garage.
Like father, like son. Luke’s ulterior motive for encouraging Phil is to belatedly discard the trash bags he had forgotten over several cumulative weeks.
Phil’s endeavor — a prototypical bite-off-more-than-he-can-chew one at that — also intertwines with another subplot. He is in an incline trance when he graciously grants Mitch and Cam’s request for a shopping favor. But naturally, one out-of-order escalator and a wrong-way walk onto another complicates matters.
3. Right on Target – “Express Christmas”
Is there a term for the shopping-center equivalent of street smarts? Whatever you call it, Haley has it. That is doubtlessly why Phil pairs her with Claire as the gift-shopping division for his hasty holiday plan.
Claire reaffirms this notion with her pep talk to Haley upon entering Target. When that quick speech is through, Haley demonstrates her sixth sense as they navigate the aisles.
The quest to complete the list becomes a nailbiter, as one item for Lily is the remaining holdout. With the last of those items nearly taken, Haley comes through with her knack for disguising herself as an employee.
She had pulled off a similar masquerade the previous season with more luck than savvy, posing as a restaurant waitress. This time, she pilfers the present from an easily smitten customer and brings it to checkout with nary a sweat.
As with all top-shelf holiday media, the best of this vault packs sparkle and sentiment. It keeps one boot firmly wedged in the boundaries of humor while deftly toeing the heart. The latter is not a requirement, but it helps.
2. Alex’s Soul Search – “White Christmas”
What better time than Christmas to give a character like Alex Dunphy a little reprieve from middle child syndrome?
The live-action Lisa Simpson has an “Aha” moment when an unexpected cabin occupant emerges. She comes to liken Professor Fig Wilson to her own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Unfortunately, the way she springs to heed the perceived warning does not yield instantaneous gratification. Everyone is too accustomed to hearing sarcasm in her compliments.
But when various tension spigots burst around her, Alex seizes her moment. Together with her potential future self, she catalyzes a full-family reparation.
Well, it is not quite a full-family reparation. Her happy ending includes a touch of humor, as she usurps Mitch and Cam’s would-be caroling redemption.
1. Holly Jay-ly Christmas – “Undeck the Halls”
Jay’s brief intersection with Mitch and Cam’s situation yields another amusing glimpse at his discomfort with the unusual. He implicitly refrains from inquiring about the man in the suspenders who offers “to try the swing.” Without context, he will only wonder what his son’s “alternative lifestyle” has come to.
Regardless, he is merely there to pass along the traditional Christmas Eve pajamas. That, and every other element of the Pritchett American holiday ritual must go on unadulterated. For him, going by his book on his turf is like keeping the designated hitter out of National League ballparks.
But at the 11th hour, he warms up to Colombian customs via his new wife and stepson. One evergreen tactic in Christmas stories is the grouchy/grinchy/miserly figure who goes from sour to sweet over time. The first Modern Family Christmas special would have been remiss not to take Jay through this process.
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