‘SNL’ mom-robe sketch hits too close to home
Pre-Christmas, postChristmas, pre-New Year’s — wait, where are we? Things are coming at us fast and furious, and we don’t even leave the house as we end our third contact-tracing quarantine. That means we have been in quarantine 36 days since November, with little slivers of temporary, masked freedom sprinkled throughout, like breadcrumbs from Dr. Anthony Fauci himself. (When I go to the grocery store, I’ve upped my game to a Kirkland face shield with goggles and a mask.)
Because ... is it just me, or is everyone suddenly COVIDpositive? On my first day of freedom, I went out to get food for two families that were stuck at home, having just tested positive. I ran around on Christmas Eve like a pandemic Santa with frozen meals and a Hungarian salami that can only be purchased at Citarella. (Trust me on this
one.)
“Isn’t that for the guy who exposed you to the virus in the first place?” my mother asked.
“Yes, but if I end up getting sick from him, I’m taking back the salami,” I told her.
“It just doesn’t feel like Christmas this year,” my husband Ian mused from on high.
Ian had been closing a deal all week, which left me hustling to make Christmas happen solo, and it was not going well. My 9-year-old’s big gift (a Jeffy puppet featuring a diapered boy — who is clearly too
old for diapers — with a pencil up his nose) was held up in the Shipageddon of Christmas 2020.
To make matters worse, I realized I had forgotten Ian’s name on our family Christmas card, just after mailing them to everyone we know. This omission was especially problematic when I realized that not only had I listed every family member’s name but his, but I had also listed all six pets by name, right down to our turtle, Shelton.
“You put the turtle’s name but not mine,” Ian said, blankly. (Ian will work this one well into 2021, I suspect.)
“Hey Claire,” my friend wrote from Calif., “we love the card, but is Ian on the lam?”
“Look,” I told Ian, “you are in every picture in the card, we even have a solo shot of you pretending to be Dumbledore. It’s obvious that it’s just a mistake, don’t worry.”
“People are going to think we’re getting divorced,” Ian told me.
We had just received two family cards where the recently divorced father was completely omitted. It was like he didn’t exist anymore.
“Are you getting a divorce?” a friend texted me, later.
“I am NOT getting a divorce!” I told her, suspiciously emphatic. “Rodolfo (our old au pair) designed the card and forgot Ian’s name on the last draft, OK? — and no one caught it on the proof — including Ian.”
“It’s just that you listed the turtle’s name —”
“— But not my husband! I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW. ... Does anyone out there realize that I’m trying to be Santa in quarantine while Ian closes a deal — which basically means: no elves?!
“I’m an elf,” Ian said, blankly.
Meanwhile, a friend sent around a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that is going viral. Basically, the scene is of a family rapping about Christmas morning, chronicling all the amazing gifts they’ve received — all except the mother (played by the great Kristen Wigg) — who gets a robe. The mother’s stocking is flat with no gifts inside, but they have to hang it — because it would look weird if it wasn’t hanging in their Christmas pictures, she tells us, with a blank stare.
“But I bet her name is on the card,” Ian added.
As the song goes on, the mother’s plight worsens: She burns her arm making breakfast, she realizes the robe was 40 percent off and as things go downhill her rap lyrics fall flatter with each chorus, her lines failing to rhyme alongside the rest of the family’s ecstatic and frantic tintinnabulation.
The entire piece is a hilarious homage to how pretty much every mother I know feels on Christmas morning: neglected and exhausted.
The finale comes when the family realizes there are a few last presents under the tree (maybe for mom?) — only to cheerfully rap that they’re for the family dog. Including a dog robe.
Iwatched this video four times in a row — and then sent it to everyone I know, including Ian and all three kids — who suddenly bolted to do some “last minute shopping.”
Hours later, I smiled knowingly, as I let them sneak into the house pretending I didn’t see while they filed upstairs with their last-minute purchases, only to realize that all the bags were from our local pet store.
“Yeah, what the kids got from that video was that they needed to get gifts for all the pets … including the turtle,” Ian told me, laughing.
And on Christmas morning I discovered that what Ian had learned from “SNL” was that a robe could qualify as a Christmas gift.
Happy New Year, Greenwich!