Saturday Night Live rarely breaks format, which may be one of the reasons why the show’s irregular Christmas tradition of bringing its end-of-show goodnights down to the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink is so revered by fans.
But for as fondly remembered a tradition as it is, it may surprise some to learn that it’s only happened eight times over 49 seasons.
The first instance, on December 11, 1976, involved host Candice Bergen and indirectly hearkened back to “Bee Capades,” an SNL short film shot at the rink that Bergen had starred in almost a year earlier.
Dressed in a full Victorian caroler outfit (as were each of the show’s cast members and writers), Bergen closed the final show of 1976 by saying, “On behalf of the Saturday Night crew and myself and all good people everywhere, Merry Christmas.” With several minutes remaining in the show’s runtime, Bergen was apparently asked to “stretch (ie: keep talking), which she attempted to do—quipping that it was “such an unfair thing to do to me”—before breaking away with John Belushi to enjoy the skating session.
That first segment played out for nearly five minutes, making it on of the longest goodnights sequences in SNL history.
A full twenty years later, on December 14, 1996, host Rosie O’Donnell resurrected the tradition when she and the Season 22 cast (with special guest Penny Marshall) took to the rink themselves.
One of the fun things about the skating rink goodnights in their earlier years was that the show’s writers were invited to join the cast on the rink for the credit roll, in this case capturing a young pre-Daily Show Stephen Colbert skating by Rosie O’Donnell. Colbert helped write (and voice) that week’s “Ambiguously Gay Duo” cartoon with Robert Smigel, who can also be spied out on the ice:
Just a year later, on December 13, 1997, Helen Hunt took to the rink, marking the only time in SNL‘s first 50 seasons that the show staged skating rink goodnights two years in a row.
Jack Nicholson, Hunt’s co-star in the film As Good as It Gets, was a special guest that night and also donned skates to participate, while musical guest Hanson, who had performed in the segment just before, waved goodnight from the studio.
When Ellen DeGeneres hosted SNL on December 15, 2001, she chose to hang back in the studio with musical guest No Doubt, but after saying her own goodnights, she threw it to special guest Rudy Giuliani who was down at the rink with the cast. Coming just over three months after 9/11, the then-NYC mayor wished viewers happy holidays and “a joyous and victorious” new year.
Giuliani did not skate himself, but cast members including Will Ferrell (then in his last season at the show), Ana Gasteyer, Horatio Sanz, and Chris Kattan can be seen on the ice in between patriotic shots of the American flags surrounding the rink and glimpses of the in-studio goodnights.
Elijah Wood was the show’s host two years later when SNL returned to the rink on December 13, 2003, wherein we witness Finesse Mitchell hanging on to his fellow castmates for dear life, and SNL alum Chris Kattan (a special guest that night) taking a hard fall on the ice. Kattan’s fall was cut from rebroadcasts but is preserved in this clip from the live show:
On December 17, 2005, Jack Black became the second person to wish viewers a Happy Hanukkah from the rink (Giuliani was the first four years earlier). For his goodnights, Black was joined by special guests Tracy Morgan, Johnny Knoxville, and his Tenacious D bandmate Kyle Gass:
The show seemed to be settling into an every-other-year pattern at this point, but if there were plans for a 2007 redux, they were scuttled by a Writers Strike that shut down production from November 2007 to February 2008.
It would end up being another four years until December 17, 2011, when shivering host Jimmy Fallon went old school, accessorizing his skating gear with a classic SNL bee costume. He and the cast were joined on the ice by a slew of special guests, including fellow SNL alums Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Horatio Sanz, Chris Kattan and Tracy Morgan, musical guest Michael Bublé and surprise guest Jude Law. (Also visible skating in the background is Poehler’s then-husband, Will Arnett.)
The show’s most recent skating rink goodnights occured on December 16, 2017. The host of that Season 43 episode was Kevin Hart, who was joined by special guest Scarlett Johansson. For the first time, this edition added a cardboard island on the ice for a handful of cast members who went without skates. While Hart did wear skates, he did not venture far from the island.
It was on the occasion of that Kevin Hart-hosted episode that the show produced an installment of its “Creating SNL” mini-documentary series, showing just how little time the cast and crew has to make its way from the show’s eighth floor studio inside 30 Rock down to the rink, laced-up and ready to skate, providing some context for why they only attempt the feat from time to time.
It’s now been seven years since the last time the show went live from the skating rink for goodnights, the longest hiatus since the twenty-year break between the first two installments. A hypothetical Season 50 edition would be the first time that much of the current cast and this week’s host Martin Short have participated.
They also did it in 2001 when Ellen DeGeneres hosted. She stayed in the studio though.
Bobby, thanks for pointing this out. We’ve just added it!
No prob! Let me know if you want a clip of it!