"Road to the North Pole" is the seventh episode of the ninth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy.

Directed by Greg Colton and co-written by Chris Sheridan and Danny Smith, the episode originally aired on Fox in the United States on December 12, 2010.

They discover a dreary, polluting factory full of inbred elves and carnivorous, feral reindeer, along with a sickly, exhausted and suicidal Santa.

Stewie and Brian take pity on him and decide to fulfill Christmas by delivering gifts to the entire globe, albeit unsuccessfully.

On the way, Stewie accidentally causes a traffic pileup by discharging a flare pistol in the cab of the truck, which catches fire and explodes.

Continuing north, they run out of gas, but receive help from the Aurora Boreanaz, who instructs them to stay at a nearby cabin.

Santa is a sickly, exhausted, and depressed old man, the elves are mutated and inbred due to Santa's attempts to keep up with the increasing gift demand year after year, and the reindeer are carnivorous, feral monsters that eat the elves who wander out into the snow to die of exhaustion.

Realizing that they will not complete the deliveries in time and understanding the impossibility of Santa's job, Stewie and Brian abandon this for another plan.

Chastened, everyone agrees; one year later, Santa has recovered, the workshop is once again a lively, colorful cottage, and the elves and reindeer are rejuvenated.

The credits also show Brian and Stewie performing winter activities, such as snowball fights, making snow angels, and putting coal in the (Meg's) Christmas socks instead of gifts.

Continuing with the song, Jillian Russell wishes for Easter eggs, Joe wishes for one day when kids don't stare at him, Bonnie wants platinum-plated silverware, Quagmire wants "Japanese girls of no restraint" to choke him and then whip him and Mort (who is Jewish) says he will sue if they put a Christmas tree in the airport.

The musical numbers, which have often been annoying in the past, are all nicely staged and performed (particularly the opening one, which closes with all of the characters being revealed in a big Advent calendar), and the episode's moral, while a little simplistic, is genuinely sweet".

"Road to the North Pole" was broadcast on December 12, 2010, as a part of an animated television night on Fox, and was preceded by The Simpsons, and followed by Family Guy creator and executive producer Seth MacFarlane's second show, American Dad!.

It was watched by 8.03 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings, despite airing simultaneously with the Desperate Housewives on ABC, The Amazing Race and Undercover Boss on CBS and Sunday Night Football on NBC.

Club gave "Road to the North Pole" a positive review, stating that it is "a satisfying episode of Family Guy all around, filled with funny gags and nice moments."

She especially praised the musical segments, and the portrayal of the North Pole, writing that "the way the episode kept piling more and more ridiculous horrors on top of each other kept the whole thing funny."

[14] Jason Hughes of TV Squad also praised the songs and the depiction of Santa's factory, though he found the delivery of the episode's message "heavy-handed.

While I normally have no problems about Family Guy's shocking or offensive themes, I felt bit disconcerted about the direction of this Christmas episode."

Mark Hentemann, executive producer and showrunner of Family Guy said of the nominating process, "We had internal discussions in the writers' room, and it seemed like we were much more akin to the other primetime comedies than we were to children's shows in animation.