Season 7 Episode 12: Christmas

December 20, 1992

Published 12/20/92

The third Christmas episode the series made, and the bleakest. It is framed as Al telling the story to a bartender named Ray and a row of fellow mall Santas, which tells you how it ends before it begins. Cornered into buying gifts, Al has taken twelve part-time jobs in twelve days, and the worst of them by a wide margin was the Santa gig at the Lakeside Mall. The children are the problem. One boy asks for an end to pollution and then sprays mouthwash into Santa’s mouth. Marcy turns up to sit on his lap and conduct a conversation about his personal hygiene, and Al’s reply about what she can expect from Santa is one of the most direct insults he ever handed her. Then Marcy and Jefferson organize an enormous group of children into a choir to sing a song about him. Interleaved with all this are flashbacks to Christmases going back to 1974, with the children’s height marks on the door frame, each Bundy child asking for the thing that would define them, and a running measurement showing that Al has been getting shorter since 1971. When he finally does produce presents for everyone, they are items he has removed from the bar. It is a genuinely sour half hour of television and it is one of the best things season 7 did. Watch for the uncredited eleven-year-old in the choir: it is Meghan Markle, whose father shot the series.It is also the last of the show’s genuinely ambitious Christmas episodes, and the one that leans hardest on the idea that Al’s Christmas is simply a more concentrated version of his ordinary year.

Episode Facts

Original air date: December 20, 1992
Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 12
Overall episode number: 143
Written by: Ellen L. Fogle
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: December 11, 1992
Production note: The series’ third Christmas episode, after season 2’s “You Better Watch Out” and season 4’s “It’s a Bundyful Life.”
Production note: The International Children’s Choir receive a Special Appearance credit. One of the uncredited children is Meghan Markle, whose father Thomas Markle was the show’s director of photography.