Our take
A melancholy Christmas Eve story built on a familiar fight, a husband who comes home too late, and the reconciliation that has to follow. The row itself feels rushed, but the episode finds real feeling in the lonely bartender who cannot bear a night on his own. It is not one of the classics. Homer's trudge through a closed-up town is unusually sad for the series, and the chimney apology is a lovely touch of desperate friendship.
What happens
On Christmas Eve a lonely Moe uses every trick he has, from fiddling with the clock to blocking the door and begging, to keep Homer drinking at the tavern. Homer finally gets home just before midnight, and Marge, furious, tells him not to come in. He sets off on a sad walk through a deserted town, passing shuttered shops and ending up at an almost empty cinema with the town's other lonely men. Along the way he has an awkward encounter with Ned Flanders in a shop. Moe, guilty, climbs down the family's chimney to explain that the delay was his fault. Homer, meanwhile, works out that the only place a man should be on Christmas Eve is home with his family, and he and Marge make up.
Can the kids watch it?
Fine for children from about nine; the plot turns on drinking and a marriage row.