The Big Group Christmas Special

**"The Big Group Christmas Special"** (retroactively known as simply **"Christmas"**) is the ninth episode of the second season of Big Group, the 22nd episode overall, and the first Christmas episode of the series. Taking place before the events of the series, Wendy becomes the last Cappy to stop believing in Santa, which deeply saddens her. So she decides to make photos of Santa in her house that causes everyone to believe in Santa again, except for Daniel, who believes it to be fake.

The episode, directed by Rich Moore and written by series creators Alan Johnson and David Fisherson, and Jon Vitti, and guest starring Bill Murray as Santa Claus, originally aired on Cartoon Time! on December 22, 1995 and was viewed by approximately 22.2 million people in its original airing. The episode received highly positive reviews from critics and fans, who praised the episode's humor, cultural references and emotional weight, with many considering it to be one of the best episodes of the entire series. The episode is notable for being the first canonical episode to not take place during summer vacation, as "Halloween" (which took place in Autumn) was considered non-canon due to it being an anthology episode. The episode also marks the debut appearances of Barry the Fanboy and Larry the Bird in live-action segments.

## Trivia

### General

* This is the first episode to be longer than 21-24 minutes, as well as the first episode to have more than one production code, with the 22-minute version of the episode having the production code of 3B09, and the 33-minute version having the production code of 999.
* This is the second episode where Daniel is seen crying after "Last Day of School", not counting some previous episodes, which showed him crying of laughter.
* This is the first non-Halloween episode of the series to not take place during summer, and is one of the rare pre-tenth season prod. code post-twenty-first season prod. code episodes to take place outside of summer.
* This is the fifth episode to feature a celebrity guest appearance after "Ultra Man and Super Boy" (Adam West and Burt Ward), "Uncle Jason" (Kelsey Grammar), "Halloween" (James Earl Jones), and "Mighty Morphin' Cappy Rangers" (Steve Cardenas, Johnny Yong Bosch, Karen Ashley, Catherine Sutherland, and Charlie Kersh). The celebrity guest in this episode is Bill Murray, who voiced Santa Claus.
* This is the first Christmas episode of the series, which was followed by season 3's "Miracle on Brookhaven Street", season 4's "Christmas Vacation", season 10's hour-long special "Santa A Go-Go", season 13's "Happy Merry Christmas", season 15's "A Cappy Family Christmas", season 16's "It's a Big Group Christmas", season 17's "Cappy, It's Cold Outside!", season 18's "How a Cappy Stole Christmas", season 19's "A Cappy Carol", season 20's "'Tis the 20th Season", season 22's "The Flight Before Christmas", season 23's double-length special "Holidays of the Future", season 24's double-length special "It's a Cappyful Life!", season 25's double-length special "Cappies in Cappyland" season 27's "Mistletoes on the Cappy", season 28's double-length special "Road to the North Pole", and season 30's double-length special "Holidays of the Far Future".