No matter what you did on Christmas, can it top a karaoke party at Lizzo’s house? Sure, you might’ve had a golden glazed ham or a feast of seven fishes with the fam, but where does rank next to tequila shots and matching jammies with Lizzo? And even though Lizzo might’ve made herself up as a Christmas Grinch last week, she proved at her party that she’s more like the reformed version of the Grinch who gets down with all of Whoville in the end.
At Casa de Lizzo on Christmas night, the soon-to-be guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race hosted an intimate affair with friends and karaoke. In a video series that she posted on Instagram, she begins by singing Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song,” in front of a gigantic karaoke projector screen. She closes it out singing “Lose Yourself” by Eminem and she’s doing exactly that, belting the lyrics “Snap out to reality, oh there goes gravity!” with perhaps a few of those tequila shots in her system.
But midway through the Instagram post, we hear her singing a song called “Mrs. Grinch,” with lyrics that are a callback to the captions from the Grinch photoshoot that she posted last week. Some basic internet sleuthing, indicates that “Mrs. Grinch,” is actually a song by Shelby Swain, who has been Lizzo’s hairstylist for years. It’s definitely a Christmas banger and had we known about it earlier, it definitely would’ve been included in our roundup of “Best New Holiday Music That You’ll Actually Want To Listen To.”
Watch Lizzo’s Christmas karaoke party clips on Instagram above and listen to Shelby Swain’s “Mrs. Grinch” below.
Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Musicians spent their Christmas Day in different ways. JoJo got engaged to her boyfriend Dexter Darden, actor from Saved By The Bell. Frank Ocean brought back his “Blonded” radio show and premiered a brand new nine-minute song. Drake shared an adorable video with his 4-year-old son Adonis. But that wasn’t all the Certified Lover Boy rapper did. He also rode around the city and handed out money to unsuspecting people on the street.
A video shows Drake riding in the backseat of a Maybach while passing out the money. It’s unknown how much he gave out, but the video showed the person taking a healthy stack of Canadian 20 dollar bills from the rapper. “@Champagnepapi giving away racks for Christmas,” they wrote on their Instagram Story. “Life’s f*cking unreal man. Legend of the city.”
Drake really going around Toronto handing out cash, lmaooo legend
Drake’s act of kindness comes after he got a “microrealistic” tattoo of the late Virgil Abloh following the designer and DJ’s death late last month. He also appeared beside Ye for their Larry Hoover benefit concert in Los Angeles, which amounted to an epic performance of the best songs from past and present of their respective careers.
You can check out a video a fan took after receiving money from Drake above.
(Editor’s note: This piece was originally published in 2018 but we’re republishing it today because it’s, well, that time of year. Enjoy.)
“You grow up Jewish and you can’t help it, it’s a big part of your life being the person who’s not celebrating Christmas,” TV Funhouse creator and former Saturday Night Live writer Robert Smigel told us recently. (Smigel, by the way, is also the mad genius behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.)
The accuracy of this remark is not lost on me as someone who was raised half-Jewish and half-Catholic and kept on the outside looking in at Christmas revelry during part of my childhood (before my parents eventually relented and started celebrating both — which is its own weird thing). That’s why Smigel’s “Christmastime For The Jews” means so much. Born on the December 17, 2005 episode of Saturday Night Live and inspired by a love of claymation Christmas specials, Wall of Sound music, and the desire to merge them with Jewish and pop culture references that swing from clever to delightfully absurd, this lovingly crafted sketch/song exists as something Jews (and half-Jews) can call our very own.
The weight of what “Christmastime For The Jews” means to people who share an annual laugh, let the song dance around in their head for a few days, and feel utterly seen by its timeless jokes about the Jewish experience is not lost on the people who created it. Partly because they feel it too and partly because, as you’ll see, an immense amount of time, effort, and heart went into making it and getting it as close to perfect as possible. And since you’re reading this, you likely love the sketch and feel like they got pretty close. In the off chance you’ve not seen it, or just want to relive it again, here it is below.
To better appreciate the story of “Christmastime For The Jews,” you have to go back to Smigel’s past tinkerings with the themes that came to life in the sketch. Here’s the short(ish) version: In 1987, Smigel wrote a sketch called “The Assimilated Jew’s Christmas” that was, by his account, a much earlier (and direct) attempt at speaking to the dearth of Jewish holiday standards, at least in contrast to those orbiting Christmas. Smigel acknowledges that the sketch didn’t quite “hit” in the same way that others like “Hanukkah Harry,” Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song,” and “Christmastime For The Jews” did among SNL‘s best-remembered contributions to Jewish holiday pop culture (which are basically the only contributions to Jewish holiday pop culture over the last 30 years). It features Al Franken as Henry Kissinger selling an album of Jewish Christmas songs that were “acceptable for Jewish people to hear, because all Jews love Christmas carols,” says Smigel. “Christmas carols are so much better than Hanukkah songs,” he (accurately) adds before offering a reminder that many great Christmas carols were actually written by Jews.
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“The Assimilated Jew’s Christmas” and “Christmastime For The Jews” were far from Smigel’s only attempts at holiday parody. “I did two that involved a Charlie Brown Christmas, which is my favorite half-hour of television ever, probably,” he says. “I did a big one after 9/11 that was a Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer parody.”
Smigel also has an affinity for crafting what he calls “silly musical stuff” that goes back to the late ’80s, as well. He authored a jingle for the first “Mister Short-Term Memory” sketch in 1988. More jingles followed before they became so common on the show that Smigel says they were mocked by The Simpsons.
Smigel left SNL in the early ’90s to work as head writer for Conan O’Brien during his foray into late-night before joining TheDana Carvey Show, where he debuted “The Ambiguously Gay Duo.” Cartoons had also been an interest of Smigel’s going back to his time on SNL with “Cluckin Chicken” (where he worked, for the first time, with animator and eventual TV Funhouse cohort J.J. Sedelmaier). He was eager to continue playing in that space, conjuring up ideas for “Fun With Real Audio” and “The X-Presidents” before pitching SNL producer Lorne Michaels on an idea for a unique path back to the show after The Dana Carvey Show got canceled. That idea eventually became the TV Funhouse so many of us came to know and love.
“I was aware of how much fun I was having reaching back into what made me laugh as a child,” says Smigel. “It felt very pure and very exciting.”
Which brings us back around to “Christmastime for the Jews.” The stories we collected about its creation, from Smigel and the creative team involved — contributing writers Julie Klausner (Difficult People), Eric Drysdale (Full Frontal With Samantha Bee), Scott Jacobson (Bob’s Burgers), musical director Steven Gold, director David Brooks, producer Samantha Scharff, and legendary singer Darlene Love — shed some light on the mixture of insanity, brilliance, stubbornness, and catharsis that ran through the entire three-week production in addition to the irony of launching the same night that internet-culture game changer “Lazy Sunday” launched.
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