Miracle on Evergreen Terrace

"Miracle on Evergreen Terrace" is the tenth episode of the ninth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons.

Homer and Marge go Christmas shopping at a Try-N-Save megastore, where frenzied shoppers are snatching the holiday season's most popular toys.

At bedtime on Christmas Eve, the family makes last-minute preparations at home, as Marge tells everyone that no one can get up to open their presents until 7 AM the next morning, but Bart drinks 12 glasses of water to wake up early and unwrap his gifts, one of which is a remote-controlled fire truck.

He plays with it until it sprays water on an overloaded electrical socket, causing a fire that engulfs and melts the plastic Christmas tree and all of the presents beneath it.

When a cameraman, with help from Santa's Little Helper, finds the tree's remains, the family is forced to explain the truth; Springfield's citizens, feeling scammed, shun them in public and mail them angry letters demanding they pay back the $15,000.

Since they apparently did not insure the car they just bought and destroyed, the family cannot get the money back to their former friends and current enraged neighbors.

The film is further spoofed when Homer tells Lisa to stop playing the piano which parodies a similar scene involving George Bailey.

One of the stuffed animals Chief Wiggum is carrying is Binky from Matt Groening's comic strip Life in Hell.

[7] The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide said "A deliberately mawkish Christmas episode that is low on good jokes (although the Simpsons watching their own fire on television is a good start) and a retread of any number of episodes where Bart does wrong, feels guilty and eventually has to fess up.

[9] In his review of the same DVD, Digitally Obsessed critic Joel Cunningham wrote that "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace" is "a good one [...] A nice combo of humor, satire, and heartwarming holiday fuzzies".