The Office stars Brian Baumgartner, Angela Kinsey recall first Christmas episode

The Office stars Brian Baumgartner, and Angela Kinsey recalled how the first Christmas episode helped save the show while speaking to Yahoo! recently after ironically reuniting as ambassadors for the paperless notepad brand Rocketbook. Dunder Mifflin alumni Baumgartner and Kinsey candidly shared their thoughts on The Office’s first Christmas episode. 

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“We were almost canceled two, three, four, 10, 12 times in the beginning,” Baumgartner, who played the clumsy, uncouth chili lover Kevin Malone on the hit NBC sitcom from 2005 to 2013, was quoted by Yahoo! as saying.

“We were struggling week to week,” agrees Kinsey, who played the tightly wound cat (and Dwight) lover Angela Martin.

“We were almost canceled two, three, four, 10, 12 times at the beginning,” explains Baumgartner, who played the clumsy, uncouth chili lover Kevin Malone on the hit NBC sitcom from 2005 to 2013.

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“We were struggling week to week,” agrees Kinsey, who played the tightly wound cat (and Dwight) lover Angela Martin, Yahoo! added.

The Office’s 10th episode of the second season, Christmas Party, which aired on December 6, 2005, showed how the team’s holiday celebrations ended in disaster (of course), thanks to bumbling boss Michael Scott (Steve Carell), who lubricated the workforce with alcohol and allowed the Secret Santa exchange to devolve into a Yankee Swap by allowing his staff to steal each other’s gifts. (The episode also had a pivotal scene involving a teapot in the subplot between Jim, played by John Krasinski, and Pam, played by Jenna Fischer.)

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This episode was a monumental point of the show as it gained over 10 million followers for the first time. The episode was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, and the Yankee Swap concept won an Emmy award for the best single-camera scene in a comedy series at the 46th Primetime Emmy Awards.

The episode is widely regarded amongst fans as one of their favorite episodes of The Office. It has been collected on four DVD releases. The first two were part of The Complete Second Season, released on November 19, 2006, and December 18, 2006. The third was released on August 19, 2009, as part of the bonus features in The Complete Third Season. On February 20, 2014, it was released again as a bonus feature on a limited edition Blu-ray release of season 2.

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After Christmas Party was a hit, there were nine holiday episodes produced throughout the run of the show, making them an almost annual tradition (including two two-part installments in Seasons 3 and 7).