General Hospital Holiday Episodes Fans Couldn't Get Enough Of

Tradition is the name of the game for the holidays on "General Hospital." Since the 1990s, it's been a humorous and downright hilarious tradition at Thanksgiving for something to go wrong with the Quartermaine turkey, resulting in this rich and raucous clan ordering in pizza for the holiday. In 2021, the turkey "mishap" occurred when Valentin Cassadine snuck into the Quartermaine kitchen and began eating the turkey and then fed the rest of it to the family dog, Annabelle II (via Soap Hub).

At Christmas, a heartwarming tradition always takes place in the hospital, as the chronically ill children, often played by some of the actors' children, at General Hospital gather around Santa on a red throne to hear the Christmas story. Santa was first played by Dr. Steve Hardy (John Beradino) (via Soaps Central) and when he passed, the torch was passed to Dr. Alan Quartermaine (Stuart Damon). Since Alan's death, various characters have taken on the part of Santa, including Alan's widow, Monica Quartermaine (Leslie Charleson).

Through the years, the soap has given us some wonderful Christmas episodes centered around the reading of that classic story, but it has also thrown a few fantasy episodes in for good measure that fans can't stop watching over and over again.

In 2019, "General Hospital" gave us one of its most memorable Christmas episodes ever when Dr. Hamilton Finn (Michael Easton) was fed up with life and didn't want to celebrate the holidays at all. So, of course, he had a fantastical dream in which he was really Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" (via Soaps.com).

In the episode, Monica reads the traditional story to the children at the hospital and Finn just wants to take his daughter, Violet (Jophielle Love) home and not think about Christmas. So, instead he dreams about Christmas in which Franco Baldwin appears as Bob Cratchit, Monica appears as his servant, and a man resembling Curtis Ashford (Donnell Turner) is a man looking for a charitable donation, and Josslyn Jacks (Eden McCoy), Liesl Obrecht (Kathleen Gati), and Ava Jerome (Maura West) are the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future, respectively. Of course, Finn awakes ready to celebrate, as this episode was as cliched as it gets.

The story of the Christmas Krampus is a mythical one that has been around for centuries, according to History, but in 2014, when Liesl Obrecht took on the part at the annual reading of the "GH" Christmas story, she frightened the children she was supposed to be comforting while they were sick in the hospital for the holidays.

Kathleen Gati, who plays Liesl, recalled that episode fondly for TV Insider. "That was a very special episode for me for multiple reasons, and has left me with great memories!" Gati said. "First of all, introducing this well-known European character to our audience here was an honor. The story of Krampus was so interesting that a film was made shortly after. I believe many people now know who and what Krampus represents."

Gati knew that the Krampus is there to convince children they won't get any presents if they are naughty and not nice, so she spoke to the kids on the set first.

"I remember worrying about the many young child actors in the scenes with me, and requested that I may talk to them all before the shoot to show them that I wasn't really nasty or evil, and it was just a big hairy and creepy costume and that they shouldn't be scared," she said. "Well, I've never met a cooler group of young kids! They were so groovy, they were like, 'Yeah, it's all good!' I was shocked!"

Thanks to the magic of soap opera aging, Kristina Corinthos Davis (Lexi Ainsworth) is now a grown woman and a bartender at Charlie's Pub, after already escaping life in a cult a few years ago, per Soap Central. But in 2004, she was just a baby who had undergone stem cell surgery after her half-sister, Sam McCall (Kelly Monaco) lost her baby, but the stem cells were a match. While Alan Quartermaine was on hand to read the traditional Christmas story to the children, Alexis Davis (Nancy Lee Grahn) and Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard) took the time to baptize their daughter for the holidays (via Soaps.com).

Of course, Sonny, the mafia don that he is, was also mentally recovering from yet another mob shootout that can happen at any time of the year on "General Hospital" — even when the spirit of Christmas takes the boss to the hospital to make sure his healing daughter has the best holiday ever.