It’s been three years, so let’s update this thing. Saturday Night Live’s produced some funny Christmas sketches and videos since 2017, and they also finally uploaded two of their all-time classic Christmas sketches to YouTube, “It’s a Wonderful Life: The Lost Ending” and “Consumer Probe: Irwin Mainway.” So it was time to revisit, revise, expand, enhance, and do whatever else this piece needed to be up-to-date and of-the-moment. So hey, we did it.
If there’s one thing Saturday Night Live is good at, it’s leveraging holidays for a constant stream of sketches that will be repurposed for primetime specials for however long network TV continues to exist. Take Christmas: Lord knows the show certainly does. SNL has been pumping out Christmas-themed bits stretching back into the 1970s. Some of them are very good. Some of them are popular today due to repetition and nostalgia. A lot of them have been posted to SNL’s YouTube page (here’s a direct link to its Christmas playlist). Here are some of the good ones!
There are some gems among the 100 sketches included on that YouTube playlist. Of course Schweddy Balls is there, and here. Eddie Murphy’s Christmas installment of Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood is still a classic. We will always stand up for any version of Bill Hader’s Vincent Price TV specials. And several years ago a Christmas episode of SNL brought the best of the show’s post-Lonely Island music videos, “Twin Bed.” Here, starting with the most recent additions to this list, and otherwise in no particular order, are the best SNL Christmas sketches on YouTube.
Christmas Morning
It’s a Wonderful Life: The Lost Ending
Consumer Probe: Irwin Mainway
December to Remember Car Commercial
Home for the Holidays
Children’s Clothing Ad
Twin Bed
St. Joseph’s Christmas Mass Spectacular
Steve Martin’s Christmas Wish
Jingle Barack
NPR’s Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls
Vincent Price’s Christmas Special
Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood: Christmas
TV Funhouse: Christmastime for the Jews
Ornaments
Holiday Jewelry