More Than A Sketch
Brooks, Scharff, Smigel at SNL.
Like any great holiday song, “Christmastime For The Jews” sparks nostalgia and joy. But there’s something more: that sense of unity and Christmas magic that Jewish people can feel when it seems like everyone else is celebrating Christmas. And, to paraphrase the great Darlene Love, it’s a chance for people to stop being so serious.
Drysdale: Honestly, it was just a good angle for a good comedy bit. It was something that I have really experienced.
Brooks: Obviously, in the last 40 or 50 years, Christmas has become way more commercialized and prolific and my parents loved this because it’s like, “Oh, this is what we do with our kids.”
Jacobson: I personally have a soft spot for Christmas specials. My wife is Jewish now, and we talk about how she felt it was kind of alienating that there was just this huge mountain of holiday stuff that was directed at people who celebrated Christmas, but she never had anything like that growing up.
Klausner: It’s beyond clever and funny and smart. Like, it really is a moving piece and her voice and the claymation. It really does go above and beyond just how funny it is. I’m just excited that I’m a part of a legacy. It’s nice to see my name at the end of something great.
Scharff: I love this cartoon. It’s one of the cartoons I’m most proud of doing.
Drysdale: I got to meet Darlene Love later. She was a guest on (Stephen) Colbert’s show when I was working there. I was thrilled and introduced myself and she grabbed my hand and she said, “I love ‘Christmastime For The Jews’.” So that was the cherry on top.
Love: It’s always a lot of fun to do those kinds of songs. Come down out of the clouds and let’s stop being so serious. That’s the great thing about this song; people take themselves so seriously about certain things. They can listen to this song and laugh at themselves.
Smigel: Of everything that I’ve written or produced, this is the one I’ve watched the most. It just makes you happy. Just listening to it, watching it. It’s hard to feel anything but joy from it after all these years. A lot of my experience with a lot of cartoons is… the difficult part of the effort melts away over time when you just enjoy the final product. This is an extreme version of that because it’s just a perfect confection.
Up until recently, this song has not been available to download or stream on iTunes or Spotify. But NBC released it this week, just in time to crank it on the streets you cruise during “Christmastime For The Jews.”
