I live for holiday television.

There’s nothing I enjoy more than binge watching all 10 of the “Friends” Thanksgiving episodes during a multiple hour tryptophan coma.

Those themed episodes do something for us. They help us anticipate the holiday a week in advance and rev us up for the entire holiday season.

This year, I was disappointed to find that the turkey day special episodes were missing from many of my favorite sitcoms. Has holiday fervor so fatigued members of the writers guild that our favorite television shows will go without holiday episodes?

With Christmas coming and the days remaining in Hanukkah dwindling, there’s good reason to fear for the absence of holiday episodes this season.

Holiday episodes might seem old fashioned or played out, but they’re important. So many important plot points are brought up during holiday episodes, from the fall to the spring. “The Bob Newhart Show” Thanksgiving episode is regarded as comedic gold. On the “30 Rock” “Ludachristmas,” episode, plot lines collided and Jack unearthed the truth about his mom. “Return of the King” on Entourage was ironic and important as the plot thickened and Ari did anything but atone on Yom Kippur. And “Chrismukkah” on the O.C. — need I say more?

Holiday episodes are lynchpins of the television season; climaxes reach their apexes and they make holidays universal.

Television is undeniably a reflection of our culture.

Therefore, it’s disappointing that television has a decreased inclusion of holidays. Maybe it’s because we live in a culture in which people don’t watch television live anymore and instead take to their Hulu accounts.

“New Girl” is one show that happens to do the holidays well, but its weekly average for viewership is only 3 million, according to Salon.

But with this logic, isn’t that an excuse to stop making good TV at all? No one wants that.

The most recent seasons of TV shows are undeniably struggling. The highest rated shows like “The Big Bang Theory,” which in fairness did have a Thanksgiving episode this season, and reality contests like “The Voice.”

Networks don’t look to their sitcoms anymore to compete with that, they instead stage hour-long holiday specials in an attempt to draw ratings.

But even that doesn’t fulfill the previous holiday TV traditions.

This year’s “Lady Gaga and the Muppets Holiday Spectacular,” which aired on Thanksgiving, was so out there that it alienated audiences, drawing in a measly 3 million viewers. Some people just don’t want to watch Lady Gaga be felt up by a muppet on Thanksgiving, I guess (that actually happened; I’m not hyperbolizing).

Networks have done this for years and years, and it barely ever works. This year, NBC’s big effort is to broadcast “The Sound of Music” live. The network advertised to us, “Remember when you used to watch TV with your family?”

This statement alienates the younger generation of viewers, the most valuable demographic of 18-34 year olds in fact. We did not gather around to watch “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on Saturdays like our parents and grandparents. Plus “The Sound of Music” is set to air this week on Thursday night against the formidable ratings vacuum “The Big Bang Theory.”

As television is forced to change by new technology, our beloved holiday episodes are being replaced as networks return to the old model of the one night only holiday special or grasp wildly for ratings and try to adapt.

In bitter frustration, I will retreat to my Netflix account this year and filter through my favorite TV shows in an effort to find their holiday episodes and get the seasonal cheer I can’t find on traditional TV. Bah Humbug.

Cassie-lee Grimaldi is a senior television, radio and film major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and reached on Twitter @cassiegrimaldi.

Published on December 2, 2013 at 1:51 am