EXCLUSIVE: The Inside Story Behind ‘The Simpsons’ First Special for Disney+

The first episode of The Simpsons, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” aired on December 17, 1989, which has tied the show to Christmas pretty much ever since. With more than a dozen yuletide episodes in the intervening decades, the tradition continues this year with “O C’mon All Ye Faithful,” a new holiday special debuting on Disney+ tomorrow. (It’s the first double-length Simpsons episode that isn’t a two-parter, as well as the first in a series of specials that are exclusive to the streamer.)

“O C’mon All Ye Faithful” begins in a surprising place: English mentalist and illusionist Derren Brown is submitting the people of Springfield to a social experiment to restore their holiday cheer. His plan has some unintended circumstances, though, with Homer coming to believe he’s the real Santa Claus and Ned Flanders suffering a crisis of faith, doubting his long-held belief in God. After Marge tries to help Flanders, it’s Professor Frink who ends up saving the day, with a trip to the deep sea to explore some of the strangest life on Earth — a vision so wonderful that it restores Flanders’ faith.

In the tradition of the other Simpsons Christmas episodes, it’s a moving story, and here to discuss it are the episode’s writer Carolyn Omine and Simpsons showrunner Matt Selman. 

This is the first in a series of episodes that are exclusive to Disney+. How was the decision made as to what to put on Fox and what to put on Disney+?

Matt Selman: Well, our beloved Fox partner loves Halloween so much, but we’d heard from them that they weren’t as in love with the idea of other holiday episodes because they didn’t think they would rerun as well. So, we wanted to respect Fox — they’re smart, they know what’s going on — so we thought, for our first Disney+ episode, let’s make a Christmas show.

Where did the inspiration for this episode come from?

Carolyn Omine: I had a really bad 2023. I had a couple of family members die and a lot of drama, and I had to do a lot of travel. Some of it was international, so I ended up watching a lot of YouTube. Part of it was YouTube, and part of it was wanting to look for certain things when you’re in a dark place. Derren Brown was very comforting to me because it was wildly entertaining, but there was something very deep about it as well. It seemed like it was a light and fun reality show, but there’s also these experiments he did. Like he made an entire town think this statue was lucky, and it ends up being very moving and a story about the beauty of humans. Even though he’s a cynic and a stoic, there’s a beautiful humanity that comes through.

There’s a punk rocker named Peter Hammill, and he has this song called “Four Pails of Water.” It’s about how we’re just four pails of water in a bag full of salt — that’s all humans are. You can get this very scientific description of what a human is, until someone you love dies, then that sounds crazy to say that all that person was was four pails of water in a bag full of salt. 

So, I was in this place of “What is a person?” And: “What is magic? And does it exist in this world? And how can you find it?”

Is that where Flanders’ crisis of faith came into play?

Omine: I think so. A lot of Derren Brown’s stuff is people being tricked into believing in things, but then he also very much understands that people do need to find meaning in this life. I thought about that, “What if he came and accidentally made Ned not believe?”

Growing up, I always had this idea that God exists. It wasn’t until I was in college where people were like, “Of course not.” It was the first time I ever let that thought into my head, and it was very scary to me. I thought that, when you think of somebody like Ned, if he ever let that thought come into his head, it would be terrifying. I wanted to play with that aspect.

Selman: I like the comedic idea also that Hell might not exist either. In the episode, he’s really like, “Oh no! What if Hell doesn’t exist?!?!” Nobody ever has a crisis about Hell not existing.

That story had a really lovely conclusion, and it’s surprising that Professor Frink is involved. You’d think it’d be Reverend Lovejoy or someone like that.

Selman: Lovejoy is sort of the spokesman for corporate, uninspired, mindless faith.

Omine: In the pitch-out, there were ideas about Lovejoy calling Flanders on his phone, but every time I tried to put him in, I was like, “Nah. I don’t know if he belongs here.” But part of choosing Frink was just having this great faith in Hank Azaria. We hadn’t really seen a more human side to Frink, but if you know Hank is doing the character, then you know he’ll find it — and he did. 

Of course, when I first thought in my head that we were going to take this away from Ned, the question became, “How do we give it back?” I was then on this quest to find out how someone would find their way back. 

There was this thing on (L.A. public radio) about this woman who was taken really deep into the ocean, and she talked about what a moving experience it was. Because once you see these creatures that exist that science says can’t exist, it makes you realize that actually, everything is possible. 

The thing that Frink said — “I find God in the orderly harmony of nature” — that’s what Einstein said when he was asked if he believed in God. Einstein was quoting someone else, but I can’t think of who.

Selman: Einstein: huge credit hog.

Omine: Basically, you can’t look at the way the world is put together without thinking that that is God in some way.

Selman: Carolyn gave a terrific speech before the screening of the episode that was about the energy between people.

Omine: In chemistry class, you learn that there’s energy passing between the atoms and it never goes away — it always has to be balanced. So I always thought maybe that’s what God is. And, not just the energy between the atoms, but the energy between people.

For me, the giant siphonophore, which is a real creature that is this colonial organism where each segment is an individual organism that connects to the other and they act as one, I think of that as being like the whole world is God — all the trees and people and everything in it. That’s one interpretation, for me.

Carolyn, I saw that you’d posted about there being several references to “Simpsons Roasting Over an Open Fire” in “O C’mon All Ye Faithful,” can you shout out a favorite?

Omine: One that’s a favorite, because I don’t know if people will see it right away is, at the end, the Christmas tree Homer and Marge were kissing under, only has one ornament and it’s a birdhouse. In “Simpsons Roasting Over an Open Fire,” Homer can’t afford a Christmas tree, so he takes a tree from the neighbor’s yard, and when he brings it in, Marge is like, “Why does it have a birdhouse?” He says, “It’s an ornament!” 

Selman: For the Disney+ viewer that likes to pause things, there are a lot of Easter eggs — or maybe they’re Christmas eggs — planted through the show to the 15 Christmas episodes we’ve already done. Funzo is in there, the Astrolabe and some other stuff. Then, the ending is a shout-out to the original Christmas special with the Christmas card freeze frame.