Darlene Love wants to bring her SNL hit “Christmastime for the Jews” back to NBC.
Love, the voice behind the classic Saturday Night Live musical sketch, took to Instagram to suggest that she perform the song live on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon or SNL this winter, in honor of the song’s twentieth anniversary.
“I think this milestone deserves something special, don’t you?” she wrote. “Everyone’s always asking me to perform it live.”
After teasing that she might include the song during a concert setlist, she pitched her case to Jimmy Fallon and SNL: “If you want me to sing it on your stage, give me a call!”
“I’m 83, tomorrow isn’t promised, but today l’m alive, healthy, and still blessed with the voice and the passion to perform,” she added. “Let’s make this anniversary unforgettable!”
“Christmastime for the Jews” premiered during SNL’s Jack Black-hosted Christmas episode on December 17, 2005, and has become a frequent part of SNL’s best-of and holiday specials.
Penned by Robert Smigel as part of his recurring “Saturday TV Funhouse” segment, the claymation video parodies 1960s holiday specials with a song in which Jewish people rejoice over having the world to themselves on Christmas Day, while Christians are observing the holiday.
Last time Darlene Love shared her wishes to revive one of her late-night staples on The Tonight Show, she got what she asked for. In March 2024, Love posted on Facebook that she had hoped to do one last late-night performance of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”—an annual tradition on David Letterman’s Late Night and Late Show—on Fallon’s show, but that producers had been “giving [her] the runaround.”
“We’ve been trying for almost 10 years,” she wrote. “Jimmy had told me in the green room at The View a few years ago that he was a huge fan and welcomed me on to perform whenever I want but his producers keep passing.”
Her public appeal worked. Love performed that song on The Tonight Show that December.
Time will tell if SNL or Fallon take her up on her latest holiday pitch. Smigel, for one, appears to be on board.
“I would do whatever she says,” he commented on Love’s post.
