It just might be the most wonderful time of the year…to be a soap opera fan! Christmastime episodes have always brought drama to daytime television, and now the Yuletide soapiness is coming to streaming.
As we previously reported, Days of Our Lives: A Very Salem Christmas is coming to Peacock on December 16. In that TV movie, Will Horton (Chandler Massey) writes a screenplay under a Christmas Eve deadline, drawing on his friends and family in Salem for inspiration.
While you bide your time until December 16, you can revisit memorable holiday moments from All My Children, General Hospital, Guiding Light, and The Young and the Restless right here. Just call us the Ghost of Christmas Episodes Past…
Tad “dies” on All My Children (1990)
On the day of his wedding to Dixie Cooney (Cady McClain), Tad Martin (Michael E. Knight) confronts Billy Clyde Tuggle (Mathew Cowles), a man obsessed with Tad’s bride, on a railroad bridge. Unfortunately for them both, Billy has a bomb, which explodes during the scuffle. Billy dies as a result of the blast (until a resurrection on All My Children’s online series) and Tad is presumed dead, as well…until he returns to Pine Valley with amnesia.
Blake gives birth in a cabin on Guiding Light (1999)
Blake Marler (Elizabeth Kiefer) is facing childbirth solo in Ed Bauer’s cabin in this Christmas episode, but at the eleventh hour, Ross Marler (Jerry verDorn)—who only recently found out she was expecting his baby—arrives to help deliver the little one. “The universe just keeps throwing us together,” Ross tells Blake. “Merry Christmas, dear.”
Bianca wakes up from her coma on AMC (2004)
A fall from a balcony during an argument with JR Chandler (Jacob Young) puts Bianca Montgomery (Eden Riegel) into a coma, but after mom Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) wrests baby Miranda away from JR and reunites the newborn with her mother in her hospital, Bianca miraculously regains consciousness.
Michael Baldwin gets the It’s a Wonderful Life treatment on The Young and the Restless (2008)
Michael Baldwin (Christian LeBlanc) learns what life would be like without him in one Christmas-themed episode, and it involves Victor (Eric Braeden) facing serious time in prison, Gloria (Judith Chapman) suffering from a ruined reputation, and Kevin (Greg Rikaart) languishing in a mental health facility.
Nikki meets a guardian angel on Y&R (2011)
The same soap pulled a similar stunt three years later. This time, it’s Nikki Newman’s (Melody Thomas Scott) turn to see how much she matters to Genoa City. After getting into a car accident on the way to her daughter’s wedding, Nikki meets a guardian angel who gives her a new lease on life. “Why would I have come tonight if yours wasn’t a life worth living?” the angel says. “You called yourself ‘nothing,’ but you’re everything, everything to the people who love you.”
The Krampus comes to General Hospital (2014)
A holiday tradition at the hospital gets upended when it falls upon Liesl Obrecht (Kathleen Gati) to tell a Christmas story to the children. Cut to: Liesl, dressed as Krampus, telling her frightened audience about the legendary character who devours misbehaving children. “It is a marvelous holiday story!” she exclaims to complaining parents.
The Abbott family sings on Y&R (2019)
Props to actress Beth Maitland for singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” a cappella before Traci Abbott’s family members chime in—including her ailing mother, Dina Mergeron (Marla Adams)—in this touching moment.
