The 5 Best Thanksgiving Episodes Of The Simpsons, Ranked

"The Simpsons" is one of the best TV shows of all time, and certainly one of the most popular and influential. With hundreds of episodes across 35 years, the show has covered countless stories, visited many different countries, and touched on just about every major holiday. Indeed, holidays are integral to the history of "The Simpsons," as the show's very first episode was a Christmas special (replacing the original idea for the pilot), and since then there have been many more Christmas-related episodes.

Of course, the holiday most closely related to "The Simpsons" in terms of episodes is Halloween, as we've had a horror episode every year since the show's second season (and some years even more than one) with various degrees of success. But for as many Treehouse of Horror episodes as there are, the opposite is true for Thanksgiving episodes of "The Simpsons," with most just barely touching on the holiday, and some (like "Homer vs. Dignity") being objectively awful. Still, there are a few that are quite good or even excellent Thanksgiving adventures, so we're here to rank the best turkey day episodes of "The Simpsons." 

The most recent Treehouse of Horror episode (as of the time of this writing) includes one very effective little Thanksgiving ghost story that takes cues from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" (and the excellent Netflix show it inspired) as well as the rather maligned film "Winchester" starring Helen Mirren.

The segment follows a Victorian-era Mr. Burns who owns a corn syrup factory and is somehow even more cruel toward his employees. After he denies them time off and a meal on Thanksgiving, Burns is haunted by the ghosts of his abused workers. It's a fun little segment with gems like Agnes being Burns' ex-wife, gruesome ghost imagery, and even some social commentary about Black Friday and the mistreatment of workers. Sure, it's barely about Thanksgiving, but it is set during the holiday and comments on the weird contrast between people supposedly treating each other nicely on Thanksgiving before acting like jerks the very next day.

Though "Holidays of Future Past" only barely features Thanksgiving in the very beginning before becoming more of a Christmas story, it does capture the spirit of the holiday, so it counts here. The episode mostly takes place in the future, when both Lisa and Bart are parents themselves and realize how difficult kids can be. There are great gags about where the characters end up like Bart being a divorced mess living on top of Springfield Elementary and how they impact the world (like Homer inspiring a no-strangling-your-kids law), the episode is mostly a rather heartfelt story of family.

This is one of the most underrated episodes of "The Simpsons," and a perfect ending to the show if it ever comes to pass. Though not strictly about Thanksgiving, it is very much about the idea of giving thanks and accepting people's flaws. The kids learn the difficulty of parenting, and even Homer appreciates his own dad despite his many flaws.

"The Simpsons" has been full of great episodes in recent years, episodes that either offer something new or revisit some of the flaws of past stories. Such is the case with "It's a Blunderful Life," a season 35 episode that is essentially both a sequel to "The Simpsons Movie" and also an episode that fixes that movie's biggest mistake by making Mr. Burns the villain rather than a random new character. In the episode, an elderly Lisa recounts at the Thanksgiving table the story of how Homer was once scapegoated for causing a power outage that affected all of Springfield in the days before Thanksgiving.

It's a heartfelt episode that repeats much of the beats of "The Simpsons Movie" — mostly the mob chasing the Simpsons family out of town and Homer being blamed for everything until Marge decides to believe in him — but nevertheless offers an emotional story about this family coming together. Plus, there are some delightful jokes about Mr. Burns busting unions.

Now this is a proper Thanksgiving episode, complete with a lengthy Thanksgiving dinner, references to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and everything else we associate with the holiday. "Bart vs. Thanksgiving" definitely feels like an early episode of "The Simpsons," back when the show was more like a sitcom about a family than an animated show about cartoonish shenanigans. The episode takes place on Thanksgiving day after Bart destroys the centerpiece Lisa made for dinner by throwing it into the fireplace, and he runs away from home to avoid apologizing for what he did.

This is a heartfelt episode with a wonderful depiction of the relationship between Bart and Lisa, an episode that asks the audience to invest in the characters more than the sitcom hijinks, showing the two eldest Simpsons kids as actual siblings who fight but still care about each other. When Bart finally comes around and apologizes, it makes for a sweet scene and a rare moment of affection between Bart and Lisa. 

The single best Thanksgiving episode of "The Simpsons" is a non-canon episode that takes a page out of the Treehouse of Horror series and delivers a fantastic, gory anthology of horror segments — this time all centered around the past, present, and future of Thanksgiving. 

The episode begins with a disturbing story where the Simpsons are reimagined as turkeys being sent to slaughter in a gnarly sacrificial ceremony, before moving on to a segment where Homer buys an A.I. of Marge to help her with the cooking, which makes Marge jealous. Lastly, there's a space adventure where Bart creates a blob-like monster out of cranberry sauce. The episode is filled with many references, from the first segment being a big "Apocalypto" parody to the middle segment being all about "Black Mirror" (mostly "White Christmas," but with references to other episodes), and the final segment is about "Alien" and the movie "Life." The sheer genius of the idea of having a trilogy of Thanksgiving horror segments is matched by how funny and creative the segments are, taking different elements of the holiday and twisting them into horrific stories. The episode even ends with a fun and very meta-reference — footage of the 1991 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade where a giant Bart Simpson balloon paraded down the streets of New York.