Do They Know It's Christmas Time?

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What happens when Status Quo Is God smashes into a Christmas Episode. Perhaps no one ever goes to church or mentions a deity the rest of the year, but every now and again, around Christmas, our heroes will be shown the True Meaning of Christmas (it's never presents - well, not usually) and caring, and realize just how lucky they really are. They may even go to a Christmas service, probably midnight mass on Christmas Eve. At the very least, they attempt to be kinder and more charitable toward those around them, embrace the brotherhood of man, and so forth.

Next week: back to the usual whining, angst, arguments, adultery, and code-breaking.

Common plotlines are the "Gift of the Magi" Plot, Yet Another Christmas Carol, Away in a Manger. But then again, perhaps You Mean "Xmas".

The title of this trope is taken from the Band Aid song, "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Compare and contrast with Santa Clausmas, Did I Mention It's Christmas? and Soapland Christmas.

Examples of Do They Know It's Christmas Time? include:

Anime and Manga

The Love Hina Christmas special focuses on Keitaro and Naru trying to meet up with each other while it is still Christmas Eve.
- ...as does the Marmalade Boy Christmas episode.
Super Dimension Fortress Macross both upholds and subverts the trope, as the protagonist and his ladylove use the holiday as an excuse to kiss over a Christmas cake, while there are scenes of the religious aspect—a priest and a (very obviously Christian) church are highlighted in one sequence, implying that people in the city were taking in Midnight Mass just before the Humongous Mecha attack launched by Kamujin.
On Vandread, Hibiki gives Dita the gift of Christmas snow, despite their position on a ship in deep space, by grabbing a chunk off a nearby comet with his Vanguard mecha.
In Kimagure Orange Road the Christmas episode involved Kasuga time traveling three times in order to create a Christmas Eve meeting that didn't leave either Hikaru or Madoka furious at him, due to the Serious implications of a Christmas Eve Date.
The Big O episode "Daemonseed" takes place on "Heaven's Day", a day of gift-giving whose origins have been lost to the amnesiac residents of Paradigm City. At the end, Alex Rosewater says, "Tell me, Chief, do you know the real meaning behind Heaven's Day? It's the day God's son was born." Also, a Humongous Mecha fights a mutant Christmas tree.
- This could be a subtle subversion, as later revelations about Rosewater indicate he was probably talking about himself.
More than once in the Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch manga, although in the anime, these episodes were all altered to remove the Christmas element. Oddly, the anime still put out Christmas merchandise with the girls in Santa suits.
Tokyo Mew Mew had a Christmas episode where Ichigo tries to give Masaya a magical piece of jewelry she got from Zakuro. He ends up in the hospital after being hit with an exploding Mew Aqua, setting up a plot point that was left unexplained in the manga, so this Christmas episode actually means something.
A character working his behind off to buy his significant other the perfect Christmas or other holiday gift (which is far outside his normal means) is a standard anime plot. Examples include Ah! My Goddess and Ai Yori Aoshi.
Ranma ½ has one of these. Genma and Soun are grumbling about how, in their day, everyone was still Buddhist and didn't celebrate Christmas. Kasumi comes in and asks if everyone is ready for a Christmas ham, leading Genma and Soun to cry, "Hooray for Christmas!"
- Similarly, in the original manga version of Dominion Tank Police, Al gives Leona a Christmas gift, which she gladly accepts, though she mentions if her devoutly Buddhist grandfather ever got wind of it, he'd smack her with his boukken.
Tokyo Godfathers, of course, for a unique Japanese Christmas story. It even opens with two of the main characters attending Mass and watching a Nativity scene, and there is a surprising number of allegories to the birth of Christ in itself—the most obvious being the Three Magi.
Kamichu! inverts this when the rather jingoistic and culturally supremacist Miko Matsuri would rather it not be Christmas Time.

Literature

The Discworld novel Hogfather spoofs the everloving hell out of this one. Most notably, when Death announces that, as the stand-in Hogfather he can teach people "the real meaning of Hogswatch", his assistant Albert helpfully lists the more unpleasant aspects of pagan solstice ceremonies. Death instead resolves to teach people "the unreal meaning of Hogswatch".
In spite of no one ever mentioning deities or religion of any kind in the highly supernatural world of Harry Potter, the wizarding world still celebrates Christmas. Presumably this stems from the series being set in modern Britain, as well as the author herself being a Christian.
- Or rather, that religion is considered a private matter in Britain, and so the characters would naturally refrain from using it to spiel of Aesops.
C. S. Lewis was a fairly inclusive fellow. While Narnia's creator Aslan is indisputably Jesus Christ as a huge talking lion, the world is also populated with various mythical figures. In later books, we would see Triton, Bacchus, and Silenus and their various nymph daughters tending to parts of the world. But in the first book, many was the child delighted to learn that ~~Santa Claus~~ Father Christmas visited Narnia as well as Earth for Christmas. The Narnians certainly had no complaints.

Live-Action TV

The episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Amends," which ends with the heroic vampire Angel being saved from his Christmas morning suicide attempt by a miraculous snow storm (in southern California, for those of you wondering why it's miraculous).
- Subverted, the ~~people~~ gods that caused it, called The Powers That Be are an important thing on his own show.
Double Subversion in Scrubs, where Turk, who becomes suddenly very religious, vows to show the more cynical doctors the true meaning of Christmas... which, for doctors, turns out to be working all of Christmas Eve on call, treating victims of alcohol-fuelled violence, car crashes and suicides. Then, just when all hope is lost, a Christmas Miracle! A star falls from the sky, allowing Turk to find the pregnant teenager who ran away earlier just before she goes into labour and everyone gathers round in the snow as Turk delivers a candy-cane sweet Golden Moment. Awww...
Eastenders is infamous for subverting this trope most years, by turning the usual tone of the series up to 11.
As a radio show, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy almost did a Christmas special in which Marvin would have been both figuratively and literally the star (of Bethlehem), and by participating in a nativity scene would be cured of his depression. This concept was What Could Have Been; the episode broadcast instead on 24 December 1978 was the pilot for the second series.
Parodied to the max in the Britcom Nightingales. In the Christmas special, three security guards are attempting to celebrate Christmas when they are approached by an unmarried, highly pregnant girl called 'Mary' for a room for the night. They let her stay, only if she promises NOT to be an allegory for the true meaning of Christmas. She later gives birth, but to a stream of unlikely objects (such as a goldfish, a set of golf clubs and a toaster). At the end of the episode, she reveals that in fact, it WAS an allegory all along and mocks the guards for not noticing how she was showing that Jesus had been replaced with a stream of consumer goods. The episode ends with The Pope and Harold Pinter leaving on a trandem.
At the end of the TV movie The Hebrew Hammer, the titular Hammer brags to his mother that he's saved Hanukkah, and she isn't at all impressed - it's not like he saved one of the high holy days.
The Brady Bunch had a Christmas Episode in one of the earlier seasons. Carol developed laryngitis, and Cindy pleaded with a department store Santa Claus to give her back her voice so she could sing the solo at church on Christmas Day—which of course is exactly what happens. It was the only instance in the entire series where the family attended church or mentioned religion at all.
The Christmas episode of My So-Called Life has this. Especially blatant in that it's the (otherwise irreligious) teenage kid and not the parents who insists that everyone attend Christmas Eve mass.
Subverted in the Community episode "Comparative Religion". Shirley plans an overtly religious Christmas party for the group, but learns that the others are all non-Christian. In the end they share a decidedly secular, inclusive holiday together.
- By attempting to beat the crap out of Star-Burns and his friends.
On Wonderfalls, the "twice-a-year church attendance" trope is referenced and spoofed when Jaye's former classmate, who has converted to Judaism in order to marry her husband, demonstrates some ignorance of the basic tenets of the religion and then cheerfully informs Jaye, "I'm more of a Christmas and Easter Jew."
- Later on, when Jaye befriends a Catholic nun (well, former nun), her family reveal themselves as actual Christmas and Easter Protestants when they try to drag her to church, to her bewilderment.

Jaye: Is it Christmas? Because if it is, it snuck up on me and nobody is getting any presents!

Although the only religious background shown in Warehouse 13 is Arty and family being Jewish, the show still had a Christmas-themed episode that had a Santa Claus themed villain-artifact creation, but brought everyone together and celebrated the theme of 'family togetherness'.
Averted in Misfits. The typical idea of the christmas spirit does not include killing Jesus (or at least, the man pretending to be him.
Roswell's Christmas episode had Max saving a ward of young cancer patients because he was being haunted by the ghost of a man he didn't save. Yeah. He ends up at Mass with - well, everyone.
Glee's Christmas episode of the third season had Rachel, who is very vocally Jewish, greedily demanding Christmas gifts from her boyfriend and eventually learning the "true meaning of Christmas" after having a bible verse about Jesus read to her during a Christmas special the Glee club is shooting. Her Judaism is not mentioned until literal last second of the episode as the camera is pulling away and Rachel throws out a "Happy Hanukkah" that is essentially lost in the shuffle of the other noise going on.

Music

The Trope Namer is "Do They Know It's Christmas?," a charity song by Band Aid. It is certifiably an Ear Worm, but it really doesn't have to do much with the trope; the question is whether the poor and starving children in Ethiopia (which was having a famine at the time) knew about the joy and happiness that was their due on Christmas Day. Of course, while their hearts may have been in the right place the Western-centric overtones of this premise was not lost on younger listeners (For instance, most Ethiopians are Christians, although they don't celebrate Christmas the same way, and, being Orthodox, it falls on 7 January; to say nothing of the Unfortunate Implications of a line like "Tonight thank God it's them instead of you"), and so the song was parodied and its premise subverted by "Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?," which is what happens when a bunch of (mostly Canadian) indie rockers get their hands on something like this.
Tom Lehrer mocked this trope with his song "A Christmas Carol":

On Christmas Day you can't get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore,
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four.

A version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" first popularized by Pete Seeger and the Weavers makes note of the love and goodwill that predominate during the holiday season, then rhetorically asks, "Why can't we have Christmas the whole year around?"

Newspaper Comics

An Easter Sunday strip of For Better or For Worse from The Eighties calls attention to this very trope. The Pattersons get dressed up and go to church, where young Michael is somewhat fascinated by the choir and stained glass windows and such. He asks his mother if the church is always open and she tells him yes, it's open every Sunday. In the final panel, to the amusement of the nearby preacher (and the chagrin of his parents), he innocently inquires, "Then how come we only come here twice a year?"
Huey Freeman of The Boondocks is an inversion, as he is seen to become even more cynical and cold around the holidays due to knowledge of the origin of all of the secular traditions and how bastardized the holiday really is.
From a 1965 Peanuts strip:

Lucy: At this time of year I think we should put aside all of our differences, and try to be kind.
Charlie Brown: Why does it have to be for just this time of year? Why can't it be all year 'round?
Lucy: What are you, some kind of fanatic or something?

Web Original

From the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, the story in which Bungie and Ultra-Man brow-beat the normally aloof Achilles, who's never really experienced a real Christmas himself, into dressing up as Santa Claus for a local orphanage and handing out presents. It ends with Achilles discovering a gift-wrapped present on his bunk in Guardians headquarters. We never find out who sent it, or what was in it, but it is implied that the gift came from his father.
In the Whateley Universe, the story "Ayla and the Grinch". Except that Ayla and her big sister can't go to the Christmas Eve church service because of what they are.

Western Animation

While it was played fairly straight in the rest of the episode, one plot-line of the Justice League episode "Comfort and Joy" involved an alien bar fight.
- That was how Hawkgirl celebrates her holidays.
Subversion of the parenthetical note above: Dexter's Laboratory had a Christmas short that ended with Dexter and Santa discussing what the holiday's really about. Dexter argues with the usual (family and things like that)... surprisingly, Santa says "No, (it's about) presents."
- This is the same conclusion reached by the kids in "The Spirit of Christmas," the short film that formed the basis of South Park.
South Park also subverted the trope in the "Red Sleigh Down" episode; Santa Claus is taken prisoner in Baghdad and Jesus leads a commando mission to rescue him. Santa makes it out alive, but Jesus is shot and killed during the escape, which prompts Santa to give a conclusory speech about how Jesus died for him.
- Also parodied in the first Halloween episode. At the end of said episode, Stan says he learned that, "Halloween isn't about costumes, or candy. It's about being good to one another, and giving and loving." He is then told by Kyle that it actually applies to Christmas and that Halloween is about, in fact, costumes and candy.
- Going even further back, "The Spirit of Christmas," the original South Park short from before there was a South Park, concludes with "Christmas is about presents."
The final episode of Invader Zim entitled "The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever" is a highly absurdist Christmas episode, ending millions of years in the future with a monstrous spider-like Santa Claus who returns to Earth having gathered power from being shot out into space by the show's protagonist.
Spoofed in the two Christmas episodes of Futurama, "An Xmas Story" and "A Tale of Two Santas", in which everyone is terrorized by a robotic Santa Claus who judges everyone as naughty and attempts to kill them. At the end of the second, Fry comes to the conclusion that Christmas does bring everyone together... through fear of death.
In the show Clone High, Christmas had been replaced by the highly-secularized "Snowflake Day", with "traditional gifts" of hot sauces and a pirate mascot. Joan of Arc learns the True meaning of Snowflake Day from what she suspects was ~~an angel~~ Mandy Moore, but was really a homeless person whose buddies looted her house. (I would recommend not watching the episode if you are offended by gratuitous amounts of blood.)
Static Shock had a Christmas episode which dealt with homelessness - Virgil is forced to constantly miss holiday celebrations over a Bang Baby with the power to cause snow storms. Following the advice of his preacher, he tries to see the Bang Baby as a person and realizes that she's just a scared, crazy, homeless girl who never meant to hurt anyone. It all follows up with Virgil, Richie, and their families attending a massive Christian/Jewish/Islamic celebration at the local church. Very touching, although the Hawkins family already was shown to put massive amounts of time and energy into community service and helping others, so yeah...
Hilariously subverted in The Spectacular Spider-Man when Spidey tries to use this on Sandman and Rhino.

Real Life

Anyone who's seen the way that even an otherwise sparsely-attended church can fill up for Christmas Eve services will attest that this is very often Truth in Television.
- This can also apply, incidentally, with Easter; a church that has been half-full all Lenten season will suddenly burst at the seams with churchgoers on Easter Sunday.
Charity drives are a real-life example of just how seasonal the spirit of Christmas is.
Subverted by stores everywhere, who will remind people months ahead of time that Christmas is coming...because they know they'll make money.