The episode was produced in stop motion animation at Screen Novelties, and was directed by Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh, two of the founders of the company.

Written by Luke Brookshier, Marc Ceccarelli, Derek Iversen, and Mr. Lawrence, "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!"

was based on Tom Kenny and Andy Paley's 2009 song "Don't Be a Jerk (It's Christmas)", which was also featured in the episode.

In the opening wraparound of the special, Patchy the Pirate and Potty the Parrot are driving in a mail truck which the former had stolen.

When Santa Claus arrives, however, he states that everyone in town is on his naughty list except for Plankton, whom he gives the secret formula.

After Santa puts Patchy on the naughty list for stealing the mail truck, he and Potty wish the audience a Merry Christmas.

[2] Kenny explained, "...Eventually somebody at Nickelodeon found it [the song] on their desk and decided to make it into a holiday special.

"[3] The network let Kenny and Paley write three more songs for the upcoming special episode (Nickelodeon eventually decided to release a soundtrack album, which became It's a SpongeBob Christmas!

Series executive producer Paul Tibbitt also had a minor speaking role as the voice of Potty the Parrot.

In addition to the regular cast, American actor John Goodman guest starred in the episode as the voice of Santa Claus.

"[8] Production on the episode officially began in October 2011 at Los Angeles, California, after several months of research and development.

[6] The animators worked closely with executive producer Paul Tibbitt, creator Stephen Hillenburg, and creative director Vincent Waller to ensure the cartoon characters were properly translated into three-dimensional puppets.

Walsh described the initial stage of production as "a very busy period for all of us ... We came in at about 8:30 in the morning and didn't leave until midnight some days.

He said that they "felt pretty lucky because usually executives involved with productions look at the stop-motion process as annoying, but on this special, they were very jazzed and gung-go about it.

[8] Caballero and Walsh had conflicts on making sure the stop motion version of Bikini Bottom will resemble the 2D world of the series.

[6] Caballero said that "We didn't want to make exact sculptural copies of the cartoon drawings and layouts, just because it might've ended up feeling too 'perfect' or something.

Art director Kelly Mazurowski focused on "digging through salvage yards", picking the right materials to be used in the set.

Other props and materials used were an actual starfish, three Christmas trees (for the Patchy the Pirate's Winter Wonderland scenes), six boxes of puff cereal (to create the fruitcake inside SpongeBob's mouth), 21 pounds of googly eyes (for rivets, texture pieces, knobs, etc.

We ended up using a type of cushion foam that was pretty malleable and gave off a bit of a translucent yellow glow off him.

We wanted to retain as much of that squashy-stretchy goofiness as possible, so he had dozens of replacement parts, like arms, noses, even various sizes of cheeks and freckles.

According to Caballero, the decision to make the episode a CBS prime time special "came along later" and the crew "were stoked when [they] heard the news."

[16] The DVD features exclusive content including behind-the-scenes making of the special and interviews with the cast and crew, a pre-color animatic, and yule log.

was released for digital download on October 31, 2012, featuring over 30 minutes of exclusive behind the scenes footage, a sing along version of "Don't Be a Jerk (It's Christmas)," and more.

[22] In its original airing on CBS on November 23, the episode was viewed by an estimated 3.626 million households and received a 0.9 Nielsen rating and a 3% share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49.

"[31] David Hinckley of the New York Daily News wrote, "It's enough to make you want to dream of a yellow Christmas.

"[9] Judge Dawn Hunt of DVD Verdict called the episode "a sweet holiday treat, punctuated by musical numbers that'll leave you smiling."

"[35] The animators responded to this comment about their interpretation of Santa Claus, saying "We definitely wanted to keep an element of strangeness, almost scary aspects in the story."

Caballero explained that the idea of making Santa Claus look tired and strange came when they saw a drawing of him by Marc Ceccarelli or Luke Brookshier.

"[8] Nickelodeon and Random House released a book based on the episode called It's a SpongeBob Christmas!.