abed's uncontrollable christmas

absurdity, love, and christmas in one of my favourite community episodes

the final shot of the episode

I’ve always loved Christmas a ridiculous amount. I have so many memories I love of Christmas mornings and meals and that bit at the end of the day where if you’re a kid you’re going hyper and running around with all your new toys, and if you’re an adult you’re sat there, tipsy and exhausted and chill, just watching whatever shit movie happens to be on BBC1 (or ITV, if anyone can be bothered to change the channel). And I love the rituals: my mum, even still, gets all her kids stockings, and until the last few years we used to come wake my parents up and go through them in their bed; we’ll always have bucks fizz (or just orange juice, but from fancy glasses) in the mornings; we’d all gather in the living room and me and my little brother would ferry gifts to their intended recipients. I know I’m lucky to have all this, of course — the economic means, the family I get on with, etc. — and I know it’s horrendously commercialised. It’s not as if Christmas can’t let me down — like the time my grandmother, who I’d recently come out to, said ‘you’ll always be our boy’, or when I got chicken pox and we couldn’t go anywhere — or that I don’t find the endless socialising somewhat exhausting. And there are traditions — like my mum getting extremely stressed over cooking an extremely elaborate dinner — which I like a little less. But I still, genuinely and deeply and with all my heart, love Christmas, in a way which is far less ironic than I normally aim for with such things. I find the things I love deepest are those whose flaws I recognise, but don’t really change anything for me. 

So that’s why ‘Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas’ is one of my favourite episodes of Community, and potentially the best piece of Christmas media I know. Like me, Community frequently gets trapped by irony and pessimism; ‘Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas’ shows Community, like me, to be a massive softie when it comes to Christmas. But it does this even as it recognises that Christmas is absurd, and doesn’t really have any meaning, or matter in and of itself. It finds the whole idea slightly ridiculous: all these weird cultural touchstones which have essentially no connection to what the day’s supposed to represent, and all these people who aren’t Christian celebrating the birth of someone they don’t think was the son of God, which probably didn’t even happen in December. Most of the cast-members spend much of the episode pointing this stuff out again and again, and in many senses they’re entirely correct to do so. But what this episode gets about Christmas is that all of that might be true, and it might make no fucking sense to celebrate it for many of those who nevertheless do, but it’s wonderful in spite — maybe because — of that. 

the community cast on the christmassy planet abed

Much of the action of the episode involves Abed searching for the ‘meaning of Christmas’, before eventually discovering a wrapped box containing a Lost boxset — which is to say, disappointment. And then it’s revealed that the reason he’s been looking for Christmas’s meaning — and why he’s transformed the world into claymation — is that his normal Christmas routine has been disrupted, and he won’t be able to do the thing that Christmas has always meant for him. As an aside, this is one of those episodes where I adore how Community presents Abed’s autism. I learned the other day that showrunner Dan Harmon learnt that he was autistic himself when he was researching to write the character, and both the level of research and lived experience really show: Abed finding a break in ritual so distressing is extremely autistic (and relatable), and I find it so wonderful that the show at no point attempts to mock the fact that he views the world differently to those around his. It’s just a part of who he is, and why he’s so beloved by his friends and the audience, and the episode’s villain, Professor Duncan, is in part a villain because he can’t see that. That Abed imagines the world to be in claymation is only a problem because of the distress which causes it. 

The way the show responds to that distress is by having his friends gather around him and offer him their love and comfort. In doing so, they recognise that what’s wonderful about Christmas is that it can be so many things to different people, and that at its core it’s just an excuse to gather with the people you love. Despite Jeff and Britta’s irony-poisoning meaning they’re resistant to the idea of singing about Christmas with the rest of the group, they eventually relent, and the song the study group sings is kind of wonderful. Each of them identify different things which Christmas might be for: singing, being nice, music and cookies and liquor and video games, and being with the people you love — as well, of course, as religion, but even here Annie notes that it’s also the time of year to celebrate Hanukkah. The end of the episode has the group, still in claymation and sitting between a tree and a menorah (which Shirley, who’s an evangelical Christian, picks up for Annie in a detail I love), watching the Christmas cartoons Abed used to watch with his mother. The final (pre-credits) shot shows their reflection in the TV screen, together and once again human. 

the community gang, celebrating together

Christmas can let you down, and it can be depressing and exhausting, and sometimes the rituals you have won’t continue. But it’s an excuse, in the middle of the winter, to be with your family — whether biological or the one you chose — and to make something meaningful. One of the funniest jokes in the episode is at the end of Abed’s Christmassy version of the opening theme. He hopes that people in the future will think that the ‘most successful Christmas was today’, but Christmas isn’t something you can do well or badly, it’s just a place you are. It’s about finding, or trying to find, home and comfort with those around you. A lot of people won’t be able to follow their normal holiday routines this year, and I know too many of the people reading this will have to sacrifice the winter break you’d want — whatever it is you’d be celebrating, however you’d normally or ideally spend the period. But I hope that wherever you end up and whoever you end up with, it feels in some way like home, even if it’s not the home you expected yourself to find. I hope you and those you care for stay as safe and happy and loved as possible.

The next post for this newsletter will likely be in the New Year. Until then, much love, and happy holidays.

-ellie.