On December 12, 2012, The Office aired its final Christmas episode, “Dwight Christmas.” The show opens with the employees at Dunder Mifflin realizing that they forgot about the annual office Christmas party. A couple of suggestions are made before Dwight (Rainn Wilson) convinces everybody to do a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch celebration. This involves Dwight dressing up as Belschnickel, a companion to Santa Claus in German folklore.
Dwight’s co-workers protest his playing Belschickel after they find out that the character is often accompanied by a sidekick in blackface by the name of Zwarte Piet (sometimes known as Black Pete). Dwight then texts the white warehouse worker he asked to appear as Zwarte Piet—played by Mark Proksch—telling him not to come.
Proksch is briefly seen outside the building, fully dressed as the character and in blackface, receiving the text and immediately returning to his car. You can check out the sequence in question below.
The Final Christmas Episode of ‘The Office’ Had a Scene Removed Years Later
Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, it was decided to remove the blackface segment from both the Netflix and syndicated versions. Series creator Greg Daniels issued a statement at the time saying, “The Office is about a group of people trying to work together with mutual respect despite the inappropriate actions of their boss and assistant manager. The show employed satire to expose unacceptable behavior and deliver a message of inclusion.”
He went on to call the deleted sequence “hurtful and wrong.” “I am sorry for the pain that caused,” Daniels said in conclusion.
The Office joined a number of other comedy shows that removed instances of blackface from their back catalogs that year. Several episodes of Scrubs and 30 Rock were removed from streaming services for the same reason. Five episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which contain examples of racial humor, remain unavailable to this day. That’s all in addition to comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon apologizing for donning blackface in the past.
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