One of the most beloved and influential shows on television, the longest running animated series in history, the most enduring shaper of American popular culture – these are just a few of the superlatives that could describe The Simpsons. Cartoonist Matt Groening came up with the idea of an animated series of a dysfunctional family when he realized his first idea, an animated series of his weekly Life In Hell comic strip, would require him to give up the rights to his life’s work. In a pinch, Groening quickly sketched out his family – both in character and in figure. From those crude outlines, the Simpson family was born.

On this day, December 17, in 1989 The Simpsons premiered with a one-0ff Christmas special “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.” The television series itself would start the following January.

The show was scheduled to air earlier in the fall, but the animation that came back from Korea was deemed too poor to run (observant viewers would notice the early episodes were already poorly drawn, because rather than refine Groening’s rough drawings, as he assumed they would do, the animators just traced over them). Some 70% of the episode had to be redone – an ironically inauspicious start for a television show that would see over 20 seasons.