Every SpongeBob Christmas Episode Ranked

Still going strong after 25 years of nautical nonsense, "SpongeBob SquarePants" ranks among the best cartoons of all time. With the main show running for 15 seasons and counting while inspiring multiple movies, spin-offs, specials, and even a Broadway musical, you can find "SpongeBob" content for all occasions — and there's a lot of it when that occasion is Christmas.

Reviewing the Christmas-themed episodes of "SpongeBob SquarePants" (and its related series "Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years" and "The Patrick Star Show") offers a demonstration of the franchise's flexibility. This list includes hand-drawn, computer-animated, and stop-motion episodes. Some aim for more seasonal sweetness while others go for pure absurdity. The quality of these episodes varies, but the crew behind the show is still putting effort into this super-silly, lovably optimistic series.

From forgettable clip-shows and specials that lack festive cheer, to genuine classics that deserve to become an annual tradition at holiday time, here's every single Christmas episode from the "SpongeBob" franchise, ranked from worst to best.

Looking at the history of "SpongeBob" Christmas episodes, one notices that they've become much more frequent as the series has gone on — all but two of the specials on this list premiered after 2017. That increased demand for "SpongeBob" holiday content seemingly led to two Christmas-themed clip shows: "Twas the Night Before Spongemas" and "A Very Patchy Holiday Livestream," which aired in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

If you encounter these clip shows while channel surfing at holiday time, you'll find some entertainment, sure — but you'd be far more entertained actually watching the episodes that the clips are from. The "Patchy" episode does have some original content that fans might be curious about, but the animation of the new scenes is uncharacteristically stiff and cheap-looking. Clip shows are an increasingly dated format in the streaming era, and, due to the lack of must-see original material in these specials, they share a spot at the bottom of our list.

The "SpongeBob SquarePants" spin-off series "Kamp Koral: Spongebob's Under Years," where the characters are all kids at summer camp, doesn't take place in the same universe as the main series, so don't even attempt to find continuity with other "SpongeBob" specials' timelines. This one involves Santa going to Bikini Bottom for the first time, embarrassed to learn there's a town he's never visited, and the campers being terrified by this giant creature they've never met before.

Watching "Kamp Koral" is a weird experience for those who grew up with the original "SpongeBob" series. Where the original show (as well as "The Patrick Star Show") have an anarchic comedic edge that keeps them engaging as an adult, "Kamp Koral" feels targeted at little kids only. With ugly 3D animation and awkward vocal performances by the original cast trying to sound like kids, it's hard to even say this is a good show for its target audience, and this underwhelming Christmas episode reflects that.

This Season 12 episode is the only 11-minute Christmas special from the main "SpongeBob" series — barely a "special," and only tangentially Christmas-themed. Plankton invents a fictional holiday called "Chum Day," parodying Christmas traditions. His goal is to trick SpongeBob into helping him dispose of his leftover chum. SpongeBob celebrates by wearing a Santa hat and singing Christmas carols with chum lyrics. Squidward ends up recreating the famous Christmas morning scene from "A Christmas Carol," which might make you want to watch some actual adaptations of "A Christmas Carol."

More than anything else, the problem with this episode is that it's just too gross! We don't remember seeing the chum from the Chum Bucket being depicted so graphically and intestine-y in older episodes. Characters even eat toes here! It's an unpleasant watch and not funny or subversive enough to turn the gross-out comedy into an asset. It does continue the "SpongeBob" Christmas special trend of introducing new characters — this is the first in-series appearance of the Mayor character from the Broadway musical. But, overall, this is very skippable.

The most recent holiday special is Season 14's "Sandy's Country Christmas," which brings back the stop-motion animation from Screen Novelties previously used in "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" and the Halloween special "The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom." It also brings back Sandy's family, characters first introduced in the much-hated "Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie."

Unlike that movie, "Sandy's Country Christmas" won't spark hatred in you, but it probably won't spark much excitement, either. The songs are mediocre, Bikini Bottom's new squirrel guests aren't particularly interesting, and the "saving Christmas" story wants to be a celebration of family but ultimately ends up feeling a bit too materialistic. That being said, the stop-motion animation is beautiful. The part where they blow up a SpongeBob puppet (which was done with real fireworks) is great, but, as Christmas specials go, this one is pretty forgettable overall.

Season 11's "Goons on the Moon" is a solidly entertaining Christmas episode, but it's also far from the most festive of the specials. For the first half of the episode, it's just Sandy taking her Science Scouts — SpongeBob, Pearl Krabs, and the debuting character Squidina Star (who would go on to feature in "The Patrick Star Show") — on a trip around the moon. Squidward also tags along, and his continued misery offers some of the episode's most inspired slapstick.

Everything goes awry when SpongeBob, mixing up the "lunch" and "launch" buttons in their rocket, messes up the moon's orbit. His further attempts to try and fix the problem blow up the moon. It turns out Santa is vacationing on the moon's dark side, in case you're wondering where the Christmas element comes in. The ultimate solution to the ensuing tidal disaster? SpongeBob absorbs enough super-soaker water to actually become the moon while Santa promises to bring a new moon as a Christmas present. It does at least make for a fun "SpongeBob" adventure, if not a great Christmas special.

The second "SpongeBob SquarePants" Christmas special aired as part of Season 8. "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" was the first "SpongeBob" episode animated in stop-motion animation reminiscent of classic Rankin/Bass holiday specials. The visuals are the main strength of this special, and the character animation won a well-deserved Annie Award. The story, on the other hand, feels a bit more weakly thrown together: Plankton decides to put "Jerktonium" in fruitcake to turn everyone else in Bikini Bottom into jerks and make himself look less naughty in comparison.

It's a silly continuity quibble, but it's weird that the characters suddenly like fruitcake after learning to discard it in "Christmas Who?" When the Jerktonium doesn't work on SpongeBob, Plankton builds an evil robot lookalike which Santa (voiced by John Goodman here before Lewis Black would take over the role for future specials) believes is the actual SpongeBob. However, SpongeBob's town-saving song "Don't Be a Jerk, It's Christmas" is a total charmer, and this special has already accumulated some nostalgic value 12 years later. It might not be consistently great, but it's a whole lot of festive fun.

The Season 13 special "SpongeBob's Road to Christmas" is one of the more outright festive ones, even if the majority of it takes place in July. The premise: SpongeBob wants to give a gift to Santa, and when he realizes months later that Santa didn't see it under the tree at Christmas, he decides to deliver it directly to the North Pole, with some help from Patrick and Plankton.

This episode marks a rare time that "SpongeBob" has depicted the surface world with animation as opposed to in live-action. We even get to see Patchy the Pirate and Potty the Parrot in hand-drawn animation for the first time! The episode won an individual achievement in animation award at the 2022 Children's and Family Emmys.

While far from the peak of "SpongeBob" cleverness, this special gets some good laughs with some memorable lines — "Christmas is about bleeding, man" — and the ending is just the right mix of nice (the reveal of SpongeBob's gift) and naughty (Plankton's plot the following the Christmas). This is definitely one of the series' better holiday episodes.

One of the best-kept secrets in the "SpongeBob" universe is that "The Patrick Star Show" kind of slaps. A lot of older fans opposed its initial announcement on the grounds that Stephen Hillenburg dismissed the idea of a Patrick spinoff in an interview once ("Patrick by himself might be a bit too much," he told Television Business International), but it's really funny and very creative. If "SpongeBob" is nautical nonsense, "The Patrick Star Show" is nautical insanity.

The spin-off's latest holiday episode, "Squidina's Holidaze Special," is set around Christmas but is also a New Year's, Easter, Halloween, and almost every other holiday special. After Patrick messes up the script for his sister Squidina's holiday play and the actors get launched off in a rocket, the siblings have to get extra creative, putting together a new one on the fly. It makes zero sense why Bikini Bottom theater classes don't involve rehearsals, but logic is secondary to laughter here. Where else are you gonna see Mr. Krabs and Plankton basically taking Super Saiyan forms to tell the story of St. Patrick's Day?

"Just in Time for Christmas," the first Christmas episode of "The Patrick Star Show," is an 11-minute fever dream. Patrick realizes it's Christmas Eve when his dad Cecil cuts down a telephone pole to use as a Christmas tree. He doesn't have gifts ready and can't reuse the garbage he gave his family last year, so he travels through time to acquire a laser in the future, a pterodactyl egg in prehistoric times, and a tattoo at a 19th century carnival — but not without making a few enemies.

This episode is completely deranged in the most entertaining way while still staying true to its Christmas theme. The stylized animation used for the future scenes is a delight to look at. Some of the episode's "I can't believe what I'm seeing" visual gags include a "handsome Patrick" and Cecil shaving his own face off. Somehow all the random parts come together into a fairly cohesive story, wherein Patrick's sheer stupidity manages to be both the cause of and solution to multiple problems. This might have the most laughs-per-minute of any entry on this list.

Of course, the one Christmas episode made during creator Stephen Hillenburg's time as showrunner is the best "SpongeBob" Christmas episode overall. In this Season 2 special, Sandy introduces SpongeBob to the idea of Christmas. He's super excited about it and gets everyone into the festive spirit... except for Squidward. However, when Santa doesn't show up, Squidward is moved enough by a homemade clarinet gift from SpongeBob that he becomes "Santa" himself to save Christmas.

This was the first ever "SpongeBob" episode to take up a full half-hour time slot — and the first to feature live-action Patchy the Pirate segments to both pad out the runtime and hype up the cartoon within. Patchy may be a little divisive among fans, but his cheesy skits here are funnier than they usually are (the "name and address withheld" voiceover is a highlight). Rewatching "Christmas Who?" today will remind you just how incredible "SpongeBob" was back then. The sad photo! Patrick tearing paper! The "Very First Christmas" song! And, one underrated bit: Squidward wondering, "What do little girls like? A book of matches? A shaving kit? A copy of my birth certificate?" This episode offers the perfect mix of great comedy and wholesome holiday cheer, and it was always going to top this list.