It is the third Christmas-themed episode of The Office and the first in two years, as 2007's planned edition was abandoned due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike.
Alcohol is served at the party, of which Meredith Palmer takes full advantage—she gets so intoxicated that she accidentally sets her hair on fire while she is dancing.
Dwight has been performing research to determine what will be the most popular toy of the current Christmas season: a doll named "Princess Unicorn".
At the end of the episode, he returns to the party to play "Deck the Halls" for Angela on the sitar, before she asks him to take her home.
[3] Although Flannery has done her own stunts in previous episodes, including when she was struck by a car in the fourth season premiere "Fun Run", a stuntwoman was used for the scenes in which her hair catches fire in "Moroccan Christmas".
This recipe for classic Office awkwardness doesn’t quite work — it feels kind of wrong and weird, even if the image of Michael dragging Meredith by her arms across the floor into the waiting room sounded funny.
Phyllis's takeover of the Party Planning Committee and the subsequent fight with Angela ranked number 9 in phillyBurbs.com's top ten moments from the fifth season of The Office.
But Howard said he did not enjoy the Moroccan Christmas party theme, and felt scenes of Meredith's alcoholism and Michael dragging her to rehab were more awkward than funny.
Alan Sepinwall, television columnist with The Star-Ledger, was highly complimentary toward "Moroccan Christmas", which he said featured "consistent hilarity mixed in with some of the sharpest emotion we've ever gotten from a non Jim & Pam story".
[4] TV Guide writer Shahzad Abbas called it an "excellent episode all around", referring to the intervention scene and the fighting among Phyllis and Angela as "really intense stuff".
Abbas said he looked forward to seeing the new developments unfold, and said Ed Helms had "never been better with his 'where's these people's Christmas spirit' reaction".