down from those of the previous episode, "Special Education", which was watched by over 11.68 million American viewers and received a 4.6/13 rating/share in the 18–49 demographic upon first airing on television on November 30, 2010. In Canada, 2.37 million viewers watched the episode, which ranked fifth for the week. This was a slight increase over the 2.32 million viewers who watched the "Special Education" the previous week, though it had ranked second in that week. In Australia and the UK, the episode aired after Christmas, in the new year. The episode's Australian broadcast, on February 7, 2011, drew 769,000 viewers, which made Glee the seventeenth most-watched program of the night; it failed to place in the top fifty in the weekly viewership rankings. Here, viewership registered a steep 23% fall from the previous episode, "Special Education, which attracted 1.02 million viewers when it aired on January 31, 2011, and ranked twenty-seventh for the week. In the UK, the episode was watched by 2.20 million viewers (1.89 million on E4, and 315,000 on E4+1), which made it the most-watched show on cable for the week, but the lowest-viewed episode of the season so far, and down over 15% from "Special Education" in the previous week, which received 2.60 million viewers. Critical reception The episode received generally positive reviews from critics, most of whom seemed to have judged it on different criteria from their normal because it was a holiday episode. The Atlantic Kevin Fallon may have called it "sickly oversweet", but maintained "that's exactly what you want at Christmas". His colleague Patrick Burns wrote, "Holiday episodes tread a dangerous line between sweet and saccharine, but this episode splits the difference perfectly." The title of the article they wrote with Meghan Brown, "Glee Does Christmas: Cheesy but Charming", found echoes in other reviews: both Amy Reiter of the Los Angeles Times and Anthony Benigno of the Daily News also thought the episode was quite cheesy, but Benigno characterized it as "the good kind of cheese; the kind you'll eat for antipasti before grandma and grandpa bring out the roast beef on Christmas dinner", and Reiter's bottom line was that it "may not have been the most wonderful episode of the year, but it did feature moments that twinkled and shined like the lovingly trimmed family tree." Time James Poniewozik was less enthusiastic when he noted that Glee delivered an episode "that