The Bones Christmas Episodes, Ranked

Even the biggest fans of “Bones” — Hart Hanson’s procedural series led by Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz which ran for 12 years and the same number of seasons — likely don’t associate the series with Christmas, and that’s extremely fair. Across those 12 seasons, the show, which can get pretty dark at times, largely eschews holiday episodes for “case-of-the-week” style installments as well as overarching storylines (a lot of serial killers tend to attack the main characters of “Bones,” which is probably one of the show’s least realistic aspects). So what about the few Christmas-themed episodes of “Bones?” Are they any good?

Actually, they are! While the Christmas episodes probably won’t make a list of the best out of 246 episodes, only three center around Christmas, and each of them is pretty solid. Even sweeter, the best of them all even features a guest star you’ll likely recognize from another hit Fox show (who also happens to be related to one of the show’s leads). Here are the three “Bones” Christmas episodes, ranked from “pretty good” to “actually awesome.”

If your kids still believe in Santa Claus, definitely do not let them watch “The Santa in the Slush,” the ninth episode of the third season of “Bones.” (To be honest, they probably shouldn’t be watching most of “Bones” anyway.) In this episode, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and her FBI counterpart Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) spend the days before Christmas investigating the death of a mall Santa whose body is found in a sewer (apparently, someone wasn’t quite feeling the holiday spirit). The whole thing gets quite a bit weirder when Brennan and Booth discover that this mall Santa went to some pretty intense lengths for his job — his legal name was Kristopher Kringle and was one of the best Santas in the business. 

As they investigate, Brennan deals with the fact that she’d like to spend Christmas with her father and brother — even though they’re both in jail awaiting trial — and has to face off against their prosecutor Caroline Julian (Patricia Belcher). The problem is, Caroline has a huge crush on Booth, so she’ll fulfill Brennan’s request if she gets to kiss him under the mistletoe. To be honest, “The Santa in the Slush” lands at the bottom of this ranking largely because of how weird that is … although Brennan is the one who ends up kissing Booth at the end of the day.

The first-ever Christmas episode of “Bones” definitely stands the test of time. The ninth episode of the show’s inaugural season, “The Man in the Fallout Shelter,” kicks off on December 23, when Booth brings a skeleton into the Jeffersonian Institute that, it turns out, was originally in a fallout shelter. While cutting into the skeleton, Dr. Zack Addy (Eric Millegan) triggers the institute’s bio-hazard alarm, trapping everyone and putting them under quarantine.

Brennan gets to be a little silly for once in this episode — the drugs administered to the Jeffersonian staff cause a sense of euphoria, which affects her more than anybody else — as the team works together to ascertain the identity of the skeleton, who turns out to be an avid coin collector murdered by a man who wanted to steal his rare collection. Booth and Brennan get in touch with Lionel’s former lover Ivy (Margaret Avery) to explain why he disappeared, and the audience gets to learn more about the families of the folks who work at the Jeffersonian. (We meet Booth’s son, and also learn that Michaela Conlin’s Angela Montenegro is the daughter of ZZ Top member Billy Gibbons, who appears a few more times throughout the series.) “The Man in the Fallout Shelter” is a pretty pivotal episode of “Bones,” and it’s an awesome Christmas episode to boot.

The reason that “The Goop on the Girl” is the best Christmas episode of “Bones” is wholly unrelated to its (admittedly awkward) title — it’s the best Christmas episode of “Bones” because Zooey Deschanel is in it. In case you haven’t put the pieces together yet, Emily and Zooey Deschanel are sisters in real life, and though the “New Girl” star isn’t the only real relative of a cast member to show up on “Bones,” she’s certainly one of the most famous. The whole episode kicks off when Booth and Brennan investigate the death of yet another Santa impersonator, except this one wasn’t such a good guy; he dies because he heads into a bank dressed as Santa and detonates a bomb. The goop-covered girl referred to in the title is Georgia Hartmeyer (Melinda Page Hamilton), a witness who turns out to be part of the bank heist.

So who does Zooey play? She plays Brennan’s cousin Margaret Whitesell — and though she’s a distant cousin, Booth relentlessly points out that Brennan and Maggie look similar enough that they could definitely be sisters. Though Brennan initially clashes with Maggie, the two end up bonding at the Christmas dinner featured in the episode, and it’s pretty delightful to see the real Deschanel sisters on-screen together.

“Bones,” including its three Christmas episodes, is streaming on Hulu now.