Saturday Night Live's 10 best holiday sketches of all time, ranked

It’s a markedly simple premise but one that works solely because of its player: John Malkovich celebrated his third hosting gig in this December ’08 ep by settling down in front of a fake hearth to read Clement Clarke Moore’s classic Christmas poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” to a bunch of children during his opening monologue. And, this being the actor who gifted the world some of cinema’s most sinister villains—Mitch Leary, Cyrus Grissom, the Vicomte de Valmont—things get deliciously dark real quick. “Here’s a question: True or false, during the holiday season, the suicide rate increases significantly?” he asks the wide-eyed kiddos, just one of many cynical interjections he makes between those festive verses, touching on everything from home-invasion laws to holiday traditions (Santa steals children’s toes in Portugal?!) to Halls Mentho-Lyptus (“Anybody? No?”).

There’s something inherently creepy about the concept of Santa Claus, an unsettling quality that the show enthusiastically tapped into for this unhinged season-41 short, which stars host Ryan Gosling and cast member Vanessa Bayer as a new-to-the-neighborhood couple who believes a little too much in the existence of Jolly Old Saint Nick. A cheery holiday party morphs into a veritable horror-movie setting after the gullible pair catches word that “that beautiful ancient man” will be making a cameo at the shindig. The clip’s descent into an erotically charged psychological thriller (eating a candy cane has never looked so menacing) is sold by a delightfully game Gosling and Bayer, who fully commit to the absurd bit.

From the goodness of all of our hearts, we also wish for “all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace.” But if we’re being totally honest with ourselves, our holiday wish list looks more like Steve Martin’s in this 1986 sketch. (The legendary comedian would reprise the bit in 2009 with help from Kristen Wiig’s Gilly.) In the original, we find the SNL icon sitting in front of a well-trimmed tree, wearing a well-trimmed suit, as he gets real about wanting peace for the children, sure, but also $30 million tax-free in a Swiss bank account, all-encompassing power of the universe, “an extended 31-day orgasm, to be brought about slowly by Rosanna Arquette and that model, Paulina somebody, I can’t think of her name,” and, of course, revenge against his enemies. (“They should die like pigs in hell!”) Completely wrong, yes, but entirely relatable.

In 1992, Alec Baldwin chilled spines as a venomous troubleshooter in Glengarry Glen Ross, offering up one of the most sinister single-take soliloquies in cinema history. Thirteen years later, the actor would spoof that famous role, trading a power suit for a stocking cap as a head elf sent by Kris Kringle to galvanize a group of worker elves (Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Seth Meyers) building toys for Christmas. The intensity of Baldwin’s speech—pulled almost word-for-word from David Mamet’s screenplay—butts hilariously against the fantastical minutiae of Santa’s workshop (“Your name is Honeydew? And you call yourself an elf, you sonofabitch?”). But it’s a script slip-up by the actor, who accidentally says the film’s famous line “Always be closing” instead of the sketch’s holiday proxy “Always be cobbling,” that makes the whole scene a true gift.

Grinches might think we haven’t had a true Christmas standard since Mariah Carey’s ubiquitous yuletide earworm (we clearly don’t agree), but this enduring SNL song is spirited proof otherwise. It was first performed in a December 2000 skit by Horatio Sanz, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, and Tracy Morgan, a supremely silly set-up that saw the castmates festooned with Christmas sweaters and a Casio keyboard as they warbled their way through a jaunty little holiday ditty. “I don’t care what your daddy says, Christmas time is dear. All I know is that Santa’s sleigh is making its way to the U.S.A. I wish it was Christmas today-ay.” The quartet would repeat the charming bop a week after that, and a year after that, and a decade after that, and in the 23 years since, the sight of Horatio wielding a backpacker guitar and Tracy doing that wonderfully dumb dance has become as much of a Christmastime comfort as Buddy The Elf and Kevin McCallister.

From travel delays to family drama (“now it’s a whole thing with Jean”), going home for Christmas always comes with a side of stress. But there’s a specific subset of holiday suffering hilariously explored in this 2013 sketch: the absolute cringiness of trying to “get a little nasty” with your boyfriend in your childhood bedroom, the one with your school trophies and christening dress and Jonathan Taylor Thomas posters. Vannesa Bayer, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Nasil Pedrad, Noël Wells and “your Lil Baby Aidy” Bryant completely sell the raunchy Pussycat Dolls-esque bop (“If you want an old cat to watch you bone, you’re gonna wanna get down in my parents’ home”), but a special shoutout has to go to that rap breakdown featuring the cast’s real-life middle-school photos. (Those overalls!)

From “Hanukkah Harry” to “The Chanukah Song” (more on that in a sec), Saturday Night Live has contributed many gems to the Jewish pop-culture canon. And this 2005 TV Funhouse classic by Robert Smigel is one of the most beloved, melding traditionally Gentile references—the nostalgic Rankin/Bass-style claymation, the iconic wail of the one, the only Darlene Love—with specificities of the Jewish experience. Namely, the joys of Christmas Eve, when “all the happy Christian people take their leave” and the Jews have full run of the city. “They can finally see King Kong without waiting in line, they can eat in Chinatown and drink their sweet-ass wine, they can crank Barbra Streisand on the streets they cruise, Christmastime for the Jews!” Equal parts funny (at one point, the Three Wise Men are replaced with the cast of Seinfeld) and faithful (the SNL music department really nails that unmistakable Wall of Sound), it’s a holiday-classic parody that has become a classic in its own right.

Baldwin’s back in this so-naughty-it’s-nice public-radio parody as baker Pete Schweddy, who’s been invited onto NPR’s Delicious Dish by the show’s co-hosts Margaret Jo McCullen (Ana Gasteyer) and Teri Rialto (Molly Shannon) to discuss his popular holiday dessert, Schweddy Balls. The abundance of immature double entendres to follow are, of course, a delight (“My mouth’s watering just thinking about those Balls!” “Look at that, Teri–the way they glisten”), but it’s Gasteyer and Shannon’s pitch-perfect monotone delivery and specificity of their oddball character choices (“I really got greedy this year, I’m asking Kris Kringle this year for a wooden bowl, some oversize index cards, and a funnel”) that makes this 1998 sketch not only one of the most iconic holiday sketches of all time but one of SNL’s best, full-stop.

Speaking of Chanukah songs, there’s a reason that this one’s known as “The Chanukah Song.” On December 3, 1994, Adam Sandler pulled up to the “Weekend Update” desk to debut this ode to the Chosen People, dedicated to those young Jews who might “feel a little left out” during the Santa Claus saturation of the Christmas season. (After all, there’s only so many times you can listen to “I Have a Little Dreidel.”) Equipped with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a CVS-receipt-length list of famous Jewish people (“Paul Newman’s half Jewish, Goldie Hawn’s half, too. Put them together, what a fine looking Jew!”), Sandler turned a novelty song into a legitimate holiday anthem that encompasses all of the “funukkah” of celebrating Chanukah.

It wasn’t a sketch so much as a sensation. Viral before viral was really a thing, this December ’06 digital short written by the Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer) and performed by Samberg and host/musical guest Justin Timberlake might just be the first phallic-focused song to win an Emmy for Outstanding Original Music And Lyrics.

The tune itself is seeped in R-rated raunchiness (the FCC bleeped the word “dick” 16 times during the original broadcast) and deliriously dumb lyrics (“It’s easy to do, just follow these steps: 1. Cut a hole in a box. 2. Put your junk in that box. 3. Make her open the box. And that’s the way you do it!”). But it’s the instantly iconic video—a period-perfect clip that sees Samberg and Timberlake as a heavily goateed, early ’90s R&B duo crooning about giving their gift-wrapped wieners to their girlfriends for Christmas—that cemented its greatness in the sketch-comedy pantheon.