The X-Files' How the Ghost Stole Christmas mixes comedy, horror and a bit of love

How the Ghost Stole Christmas, the sixth episode of season 6 of The X-Files, was released on December 13th, 1998. I think it's a great Christmas episode in a series you wouldn't expect to make one, and I rank it among the season's top five.

The X-Files starred David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. This episode is a small, haunted house story built on excellent performances. It's also one I think about first whenever I think about the show.

The X-Files season 6 is where many fans say the decline began, but I liked it

Season 6 came straight off the back of the series' first feature film. It began on the 8th of November 1998 and ran into the new year, making it the final season of the millennium. It brought the episode count back up beyond 20, with 22 episodes in total.

It's also the first TV box set I ever bought. I didn't used to buy box sets, so this was the season I went back to over and over.

Many consider this the point where things started to decline. The ratings started to go down here, and that continued until the final season of this run. Most of the criticism was that the standalone entries leaned more toward humor and stopped going for the scares that dominated the earlier seasons. But I liked it. So far, every episode of the season ranks in my top five, and that continues with episode 6.

How the Ghost Stole Christmas turns Mulder into a Scrooge figure

As you can tell from the title, this is a Christmas themed episode. Like all good stories set around the holidays, it strips the day down past the commercial idea of giving gifts. It's about finding who means the most to you and then spending time with them.

It begins with Mulder calling Scully out to a haunted house in Maryland, where several couples have taken their lives. Scully was in the middle of wrapping presents. Mulder is chasing this case instead of spending time with the ones he loves.

He seems like a sad and lonely figure who has thrown himself into his work to avoid facing the reality that he's all by himself. He's a bit like Scrooge, if you will. The episode leans into this too: at the end, Mulder has the 1951 film version of that story playing.

Edward Asner and Lily Tomlin's ghosts push Mulder and Scully toward despair

Though Scully wants to go home, she reluctantly follows Mulder inside, and the two get separated. Throughout the episode they're taunted by ghosts played by Edward Asner and Lily Tomlin, who steal the show anytime they're on screen.

The pair, Maurice and Lyda, were a couple who took their own lives in a pact in 1917. They were faced with the bloodshed of the First World War and an epidemic that was killing people, so they decided to go out together. Mulder suspects the ghosts are the reason the other couples have suffered the same fate.

The ghosts keep popping up to talk to the agents about loneliness and how they feel, pushing them further toward despair. Maurice especially dresses Mulder down, making doorways disappear and turn into brick walls to mess with his mind. Lyda has her fun with Scully, and slowly they push the agents toward recreating the pact. The agents also find corpses under the floor that happen to have the same hair and clothes as them. That plays on the idea of heartbeats under the floorboards, a nod to Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell Tale Heart.

A four actor cast and a haunted house elevate a simple plot

On the surface, the plot is simple. If I were only recapping it, this would be the shortest review of the season. What elevates the episode are the excellent performances and its small scale. When I looked it up on the wiki, this episode apparently has the smallest cast in the entire run, featuring just four actors.

Most of the episode takes place in a handful of rooms in the house, which allows the actors to show their range. There's also a Dickensian feel to the whole thing, and it draws on Christmas stories from the past.

A haunted house is a good place to set an entry in this series. It obviously draws from things like The Haunting, but it has a great sense of humor too, to the point that it feels along the lines of something like Death Becomes Her. It also plays off the ghost hunting phenomenon, which has only become more prevalent with the invention of the internet. Maurice even mocks Mulder at one point for seeming like a ghost hunter. The episode is playing on people's fascination with haunted houses.

How the Ghost Stole Christmas ending explained

The episode culminates with a ghost appearing as one agent so that the other agent carries out a killing like the one the original couple committed. Both lie on the floor covered in blood, but they decide to get out and escape the mansion.

Outside, they realize things aren't as they seemed. They stand up to find the blood is gone and neither of them is injured. As they leave the grounds, Maurice and Lyda discuss how they almost had them. If the agents had stayed on the floor believing they'd been shot, they would have died and been trapped there forever, or got to stay there forever, depending on how you look at it.

The ghosts talk about how lonely the agents are, and they become the voice of the audience. Six seasons in, I think everyone was hoping the pair would get together. They have no work life balance, and they're "two souls that should spend the time they have together." But both are scared to break past that barrier, because it might lead to a situation where the forces of evil can use their loved ones against them.

Mulder and Scully's Christmas gifts make it one of the show's great standalone episodes

Later that night, Scully knocks on Mulder's door, and he's very surprised to see her. They're unsure whether what they went through was real. They realize they came up with a reason to spend the night together and did want to spend Christmas with each other.

They had both said they wouldn't get each other gifts, but it turns out they both lied, and the episode closes as they open their presents.

Overall, I think it's a great Christmas episode, and "it mixes together comedy, horror, and also a bit of love" in a way that works as one of the great standalone episodes in the series. I try to revisit it at least once a year, normally around Christmas. So far, I think the season is seven for seven in terms of classic episodes.