Inside ‘The Simpsons’ Touching Disney+ Christmas Episode: Homer Regains Some Maturity, While Prof. Frink Restores Ned Flanders’ Belief in God

variety.com:

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Longtime “The Simpsons” writer Carolyn Omine was dealt a few personal setbacks the past few years, as both her father and sister died — while she was also facing the professional uncertainty that came with the Hollywood strikes.

As Omine faced these hard moments, she found escape in watching videos of English mentalist and illusionist Derren Brown. The clips of Brown show him playing pranks on people — not in a mean-spirited way, but rather to explore human behavior. “There was something very moving about them,” Omine says. “Something that sort of reflected the just the beauty of what human beings are.” When the strikes ended, “The Simpsons” found itself on an accelerated timetable to produce its first-ever original episode for Disney+, a Christmas-themed special that premiered Dec.

17 (timed to the 35th anniversary of the first-ever “Simpsons” half hour, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” which premiered on that date in 1989). “We were, like, six months behind,” she says. “And normally, I would probably just not have done an episode that year, because I had just been going through so much.

But it was all hands on deck. Everybody’s got to do something because we were so behind.” That’s when she pitched the idea for what would become “O C’mon All Ye Faithful,” inspired in part by Brown. “I just wanted something uplifting and sort of soul nourishing in some way,” she says.