Sitcoms writers love to throw their characters into awkward holiday situations, and New Girl is no exception. Throughout the series, the roommates of 4D celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine's Day on-screen almost every season.
While fans might find the Christmas and Thanksgiving episodes the most memorable, ratings compiled on the Internet Movie Database actually indicate that the audience enjoyed the large variety of the holiday episodes. The highest-rated holiday episodes range from a 7.1 to an 8.1. Only seasons 5 and 7 don't feature holiday episodes for the series.
Updated on November 28th, 2022 by Amanda Bruce: Since New Girl actors Zooey Deschanel, Hannah Simone, and Lamorne Morris reunited for a podcast about their time on the show in early 2022, New Girl has continued to maintain that popularity on streaming platforms. Fans have rewatched episodes of the show alongside the actors to gain behind-the-scenes information from the podcast. With all of those rewatches, fans have also continued to rate the holiday episodes on IMDb, allowing for the rankings of the episodes to continue to change.
S6E07 Last Thanksgiving (7.1)
Because season 7 is a truncated season, there are no holiday episodes within it to rate. As a result, this is the, as the title implies, the last Thanksgiving episode of the series. It’s also the last one spent in the loft with all of the main characters together, though the episode also features a lot of relationship dynamics that the audience isn’t interested in.
Nick spends much of the episode worried about Reagan while Jess is concerned with Robbie’s interest in her. Schmidt spends the episode trying to reconnect with his father. While these are all understandable directions for the show at six seasons in, the audience was waiting for Jess and Nick to get back together, and they wanted to see a focus on Schmidt and Cece’s relationship as it changed.
S3E10 Thanksgiving III (7.4)
This episode took the holiday celebrations out of the loft, as so many did. It didn’t take the main characters to another apartment or to a series of parties though. Instead, the group heads into the wilderness to have a more classic version of a Thanksgiving celebration. Nick wants them all to use what they find in the wild to celebrate the holiday the same way the first Thanksgiving would have been celebrated.
The episode sees the group rally together to try to make Nick feel better, but it also sees some of them eventually give up and purchase produce from a local store so that they have something edible for their dinner. It’s got the classic combination of heart and humor that New Girl is best known for.
S4E11 LAXMas (7.5)
While most of the holiday episodes in the series involve the group spending their time together, this one involves them all planning to split up. Each of the main characters has a plan to spend their Christmas away from the loft, and much of the episode is spent in their airport as the group prepares to go their separate ways.
As is often true in the sitcom world, nothing goes according to plan for the characters. Much of this episode is predictable, but that doesn’t stop it from being fun for the audience.
S6E10 Christmas Eve Eve (7.5)
It might not be the best Christmas episode of the series, but “Christmas Eve Eve” definitely has its charm. It features a Secret Santa gift exchange in the loft that gets a little out of hand with gifts that don’t entirely make sense without in-show explanations and Jess leaving herself out of the exchange completely.
The episode features one of the best musical sequences in the show, which is a tall order considering how much Jess loves a good musical number.
S3E06 Keaton (7.6)
This season 3 Halloween episode gives the audience quite a bit of backstory on Schmidt — and sets up an awkward situation for the roommates that makes a big change to the show.
Jess discovers that Schmidt grew up exchanging letters with Michael Keaton, but in reality "Keaton" was first Schmidt's mother, and then Nick in college. Jess takes it upon herself to write to Schmidt as Keaton as well in an effort to put him in a better mood, with Nick and Winston joining in. When Schmidt discovers their betrayal, he's so hurt that he decides to move out of the loft — across the hall. It sets an arc in motion that the show almost can't come back from.
S4E15 The Crawl (7.6)
Valentine's Day is always an event on New Girl, especially for the single characters. Instead of wallowing in his single status, Nick decides to plan an epic pub crawl with Winston as the group's designated chaperone.
Along the way, the group picks up more singles at each bar, but Jess and Ryan, who are supposed to be staying sober to still go to dinner, find themselves drinking the night away and worried about the future. The episode even sets up a big storyline for Coach and this is when he first meets May, the woman who would eventually get him to move to New York. In the end, Nick starts to break down when he realizes he can't complete his pub crawl, but the always prepared Winston saves the day by creating their own last stop for the crawl just outside the pub.
S1E09 The 23rd (7.6)
With everyone going home for Christmas except for Schmidt, the group decides to have one last night out by attending the holiday party at Schmidt's work. The night doesn't go well for Nick and Jess when Nick accidentally spills the beans to her boyfriend Paul that she doesn't think she's in love with him.
Jess and Paul end up breaking up while Winston spends most of the night hanging out with Schmidt's boss' son and Nick finds himself trapped on a balcony with a fighting Jess and Paul. When Nick sees how upset Jess is after they leave the party to go to the airport, he stops in "Candy Cane Lane" to cheer her up, a place she had previously wanted to visit with the group. All of the houses already have their lights off, but after some rallying from the friends, the entire neighborhood lights everything back up just for them. It's one of the most heartwarming endings to an episode of the show.
S2E08 Parents (7.6)
The second Thanksgiving-themed episode of the series focuses on Jess' relationship with her parents. She invites both of them to the loft for Thanksgiving, supposedly at different times, but as it turns out, she's trying to "Parent Trap" them.
Jess might deny it, but she's always wanted her parents to get back together. That means awkwardly trying to get Nick to flirt with her mom and bond with her dad while Cece and Winston encourage competition between Schmidt and his cousin.
S1E06 Thanksgiving (7.7)
In the first season, Jess spends a lot of time trying to move on from her ex, Spencer. When she connects with Paul, a fellow teacher, she invites him for Thanksgiving dinner. Though her roommates aren't initially interested in celebrating the holiday, they decide to find a way to pull it off as long as Schmidt does all the cooking.
The guys are surprised to see that Paul is essentially a male version of Jess, complete with impromptu singing. Winston interrogates Paul to see if they'll get along, while Nick isn't initially thrilled with him. Cece decides to help Schmidt with dinner, but her tendency to not wash her hands, put her fingers in the food, and get under Schmidt's skin makes cooking dinner difficult. The evening is topped off by their neighbor turning up dead.
S6E16 Operation: Bobcat (7.7)
"Operation: Bobcat" is another Valentine's Day outing. Unlike previous seasons, the group goes their separate ways.
Jess spends the day single, but she also cashes in on a dinner prepared by Gordon Ramsey that she won at an auction, and decides to help Winston with his plan to propose to Aly. Forced to speed things along when Aly voices that she wants to marry him, Winston sees a lot of his plan go awry, but eventually, he ends up in the place where they went on their first call together and is able to pop the question — in costume as a bobcat.
S2E06 Halloween (7.7)
While Jess is unemployed in the second season, she takes on some interesting jobs. One of them is as a zombie in a haunted house in October. Working the haunted house just happens to coincide with her developing genuine feelings for Sam, the doctor she's been casually seeing.
Though all of her friends come to the Halloween celebration, they refuse to go into the haunted house, despite her having free tickets for them. Jess even invites Sam, who does show up, but Nick discovers Sam is still seeing other people. Nick decides to brave the haunted house to warn Jess, which only ends in him being terrified, feeling like he's in a horror movie, and getting beat up by costumed performers after he accidentally punches Jess in the face. It's one of the earliest episodes to indicate Nick's growing feelings for Jess.
S1E13 Valentine's Day (7.8)
The first Valentine's Day of the show doesn't go very well for Jess or Schmidt. It's her first single Valentine's Day in six years, and she asks Schmidt to help her have a one-night stand.
Instead, Schmidt, Jess, and the guy Jess meets at the bar all end up at his place watching TV before the tires are stolen right off of Schmidt's car, leaving him to call Cece for help. Jess' date ends up getting back together with his ex, and she almost decides to have a one-night stand with Schmidt instead. Luckily for her, Nick is there to stop her from making that mistake, or she would have caught Schmidt and Cece together. This episode kicks off the longest-running relationship of the show. Schmidt and Cece might start as a hook-up, but they become the emotional backbone of the series.
S2E11 Santa (8.2)
It's fitting that "Santa" ranks just above "Halloween" since it continues the Jess and Sam storyline. While Jess and her friends try to attend as many holiday parties as possible in a single night, Sam pursues them because he wants to have a real relationship with Jess.
His attempt to reconcile with her is complicated by Jess being terrified to talk to him, Winston having a piece of food stuck in his ear all night, and Nick getting into an argument with his new girlfriend Angie about her rule-free lifestyle. Eventually, Angie and Nick make up and Jess has all of her friends tag along while she tracks down Dr. Sam at work, complete with one of the strangest renditions of "O Come All Ye Faithful" ever performed on television.
S4E09 Thanksgiving IV (8.1)
Like "The Craw," this is one of the few holiday episodes to feature all six main cast members, which is part of the appeal. Seeing how the dynamic changes when all four of the guys spend the holiday with Jess and Cece is highly entertaining — especially once Schmidt dubs the event "Bangs-giving."
The idea is that everyone brings a potential hook-up for everyone else to dinner. This doesn't work out for all parties involved, but it certainly keeps the audience entertained.