A short history of holiday songs on ‘Saturday Night Live’
No other TV show loves the holiday season quite like Saturday Night Live. As one of the few shows that reflects whatever time period it finds itself in, SNL doesn’t treat Christmas like most programmes. Sketches, advert bumpers, and the show’s set all get a full injection of yuletide spirit every year, but when it comes to celebrating the holidays, music is what plays the biggest role every season.
Between the Studio 8H house band cranking out carols and pre-taped sketches blasting comedic spins on traditional songs, SNL has a proud history of squeezing a healthy dose of silliness out of their final episodes of every calendar year. That spirit has been embraced by the show’s various musical guests every year, to the extent that it’s rare for an artist not to pull out a Christmas song on the show’s final episode before December 25th.
In fact, all the way back in the show’s first season, the tradition of playing holiday songs was started by Martha Reeves. SNL was still figuring out its structure, and multiple musical guests in one episode weren’t uncommon (the show’s second-ever episode was a complete musical revue with barely any appearances from the Not Ready for Prime Time Players). Reeves was sharing the stage with the Philadelphia soul group The Stylistics, but Reeves was the only act to embrace the holly-jolly season by performing ‘Silver Bells’.
Season two featured Frank Zappa and the Mothers in the Christmas episode, but the only holiday-themed song was an original entitled ‘Let’s Kill Gary Gilmore For Christmas’. The next Xmas occasion came in season four when host Elliot Gould and cast member Garrett Morris sang ‘It’s Christmas Time in Harlem’ in place of musical guests Peter Tosh and Mick Jagger performing Christmas tunes.
Once Lorne Michaels and the show’s original staff departed after season five, the new recruits dusted off an old favourite for the season six Christmas episode. Mr. Bill and his clay cohorts sang a medley of ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’, ‘Joy to the World’, and ‘The First Noel’. The Yale University a cappella group The Whiffenpoofs brought Bill Murray into their fold with a couple of Christmas songs in season seven, while Robert Plant and The Honeydrippers busted out a version of Elvis Presley’s ‘Santa Claus is Back in Town’ in season ten.
Season 11 would be a legendary fiasco for SNL, and no Christmas-related music was performed that year. While musical guest Lone Justice declined to play any holiday music during their appearance on season 12’s Christmas episode, David Johansen (under his 1980s lounge singer guise Buster Poindexter) stepped up to sing ‘Zat You, Santa?’. The closest that the show got to a holiday-themed musical performance over the next decade was The Bangels playing ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter’ in season 14.
When the holidays made a return to the show, it wasn’t from a scheduled music guest. Instead, Adam Sandler debuted one of his most famous songs, ‘The Chanukah Song’, during the December 3rd episode of season 20. After a solid ten years between music guests performing Xmas songs, Whitney Houston resurrected the tradition when she busted out ‘Sleigh Ride’ during a sketch with Molly Shannon’s Mary Katherine Gallagher.
Luciano Pavarotti and Vanessa Williams performed a version of ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ in season 24 (along with a Kwanzaa song from Williams and Tim Meadows), but after that, another notable gap followed. Season 26 had Horatio Sanz lead another classic Christmas sketch, ‘I Wish It Was Christmas Today’, which appeared twice in sequential episodes on December 9th and 16th. The song would be performed an additional eight times.
Season 28 saw a double dose of holiday content, with Sandler returning to the show with a brand-new version of ‘The Chanukah Song’ for the November 16th show and Phish contributing a yuletide-infused version of ‘You Enjoy Myself’ during the ‘Peanuts Christmas’ cartoon on the December 14th show.
In season 31, two top-shelf SNL Christmas performances were produced by one legend when Darlene Love sang ‘White Christmas’ with the house band and provided the singing for one of the show’s best holiday sketches, ‘Christmastime for the Jews’. Season 32 gave the world another iconic SNL Christmas song when Justin Timberlake joined The Lonely Island for their ridiculous internet phenomenon, ‘Dick in a Box’.
The 2007-2008 Writer’s Guild Strike meant that season 32 had no Christmas episode, and it wouldn’t be until season 37 that SNL would rekindle its Christmas song flame. When they did, however, the show went big: Michael Bublé was on hand to perform ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’, ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’, and a whole host of parody Xmas songs in the ‘Michael Bublé’s Christmas Duets’ sketch.
To pay tribute to the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, the New York City Children’s Choir performed ‘Silent Night’ during the cold open of the season 38 Christmas episode. The choir made a second appearance that night when Paul McCartney played his original holiday tune ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ during his stint as a musical guest.
Justin Timberlake made a quasi-Christmas song out of his ‘Wrappinville’ sketch in season 39, while the season 41 Christmas episode closed with Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney playing ‘Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town’ with the cast. Chance the Rapper contributed to the ‘Jingle Barack’ sketch in season 42, but it was the Foo Fighters who went big in season 43 when they played a medley of ‘Everlong’, ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’, and ‘Linus and Lucy’.
Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus continued the Holiday music the following season when the pair performed a rendition of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘Happy Xmas (War is Over)’ during season 44. Lizzo put her own spin on the tradition in season 45 when she remixed her single ‘Good as Hell’ with a holiday theme. Thanks to the rise of the Covid-19 omicron variant, Charli XCX didn’t get to perform as a musical guest during the season 47 Christmas episode, but she did appear in the pre-taped music video parody ‘The Christmas Socks’.
This year, Lizzo returned once again to perform on the show’s designated Christmas episode, trotting out a version of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Someday at Christmas’. As a farewell to departing cast member Cecily Strong, host Austin Butler reprised his role in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (kind of) by singing ‘Blue Christmas’ to Strong, putting a bittersweet bow on the most recent of SNL‘s long history of covering the holiday season with a song.
Check out some of the best Christmas songs to appear on Saturday Night Live down below.
