Meredith, Christina,George, and Izzie playing patient for Alex. Christina and Burke battling it out over Santa Claus. George finally getting to tell the most annoying family in America to shut the hell up. Bailey’s unglamorized portrayal of pregnancy. 
The longing between Meredith and Derek, the hurt between Alex and Izzie, the unbreakable kinship between the interns. “Because it’s what Jesus would FREAKING do!”

Pick any one of the plotlines in this episode, and it would be enough to earn it a spot on this list. (Honestly, the soundtrack alone ranks it in the top three. Don’t believe me? Check out this cover of It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.)

But it’s that ineffable Grey’s quality that really makes this episode stand out—the way that, even though on paper we might have nothing in common with these characters, they seem to speak some truth about our own lives. It’s an episode that reflects back what the holidays really feel like—stressful and exhausting, overburdened by emotional baggage—and still leaves us believing in the possibility of magic, even if it’s just the twinkling of colored lights on the Christmas tree.

You might have missed the short-lived Aaron Sorkin workplace comedy about a nightly sports news broadcast when it first aired in the late 90s, but it’s worth tracking it down and catching up.

The main story of this episode is that of Roland Shepherd, a black college athlete who is suspended from his team after he refuses to play as long as the school flies the Confederate flag outside the football stadium. It’s more than just his starting position at risk: If he doesn’t play, he loses his scholarship, and if he loses his scholarship, he’ll be forced to drop out of college, the first person in his family ever able to attend. Roland Shepherd may be a fictional character, but his story—of racism and protest in the context of sports—is not, and the episode is sadly as relevant as ever.

Deftly written and superbly acted, the episode’s shining moment is the editorial comment delivered on air by the broadcast’s managing editor (the phenomenal Robert Guillaume) in which he calls for the network’s owner—a distinguished alumni of the school in question, a man with the privilege and influence to make a difference—to stand with Roland. To do what is right and demand the flag be taken down and Roland reinstated.