Quinta Brunson Promises That ‘Abbott Elementary’ Will Keep Up the Tradition of Sitcom Holiday Episodes
The students and teachers of Abbott Elementary will continue to celebrate Halloween and other holidays with festive episodes planned for Season Five, even though half of them are still trying to figure out what that headass couple Janine and Gregory were dressed as last year.
Every year in past eras of TV comedy, it was industry standard for sitcoms to doll up their cast in kooky costumes and have a spooky, misadventurous Halloween episode when the leaves began to change and kids across the country geared up for their candy hunts. Then, when December rolled around, you’d get a colorful, musical, sentimental episode secularly celebrating Christmas — or, on rare occasions, accurately explaining Hanukkah. Back then, all the best shows premiered new seasons in broadcast TV’s fall schedule, and, with 20-plus episode orders being the norm, shows like Cheers, Friends and The Simpsons could be counted on to deliver both a fall and winter holiday episode each year for families to enjoy over piles of candy and presents respectively.
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Sadly, the decline of linear television, the reduction in average sitcom season length and the irregularity of the TV schedule has rendered the holiday-themed sitcom episode a rarity in 2025, but Quinta Brunson and Abbott Elementary are keeping the tradition alive through the Season Five, as Brunson explained in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly:
“We’ll be doing a Halloween and Christmas episode again this season,” Brunson assured Abbott Elementary fans, who have grown accustomed to celebrating each holiday season with the Willard R. Abbott Elementary School staff and students. “This Halloween episode is really fun because we’re out of the school with this one. It’s a joy to have an episode out of the school for the audience, and seeing what Halloween is going to look like now.”
Brunson then teased of the second holiday storyline in Abbott Season Five, “For the Christmas episode, we are celebrating more than one thing on Christmas. Our Christmas episode is going to be a game changer. A lot’s gonna change after this Christmas episode.” What exact innovation Brunson plans to bring to the famously traditional holiday remains to be seen, but, just like any Christmas present, that surprise will have to wait until December.
Abbott Elementary began its tradition of celebrating the holidays with their fans in Season Two, first with the horror-themed “Candy Zombies,” then with “Holiday Hookah,” which delivered the gift of Vince Staples to the series. Then, the strike-postponed Season Three of Abbott was, unfortunately, pushed off the fall schedule and premiered in February, thus preventing us from getting another pair of holiday episodes — hell, we didn’t even get a Valentine’s Day B-story.
Thankfully, Season Four was a return to form, as Abbott made up for lost time by delivering a Halloween episode and two Christmas ones, right before the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Gang showed up to terrorize the school in early January.
In an age of binge-watching, streaming releases, shortened seasons and a general dearth of quality, funny and heartwarming sitcoms, Abbott Elementary remains one of the last bastions of seasonal programming that reminds us that, much like the holidays, comedy is supposed to be a communal event — so don’t wear such a lame costume this fall, or the entire community will roast you for a half-hour straight.
