The forever-catchy Christmas song made its iconic debut on SNL back in 2000.
Santa’s sleigh is making its way to the USA, and you might as well celebrate with one of Saturday Night Live‘s catchiest holiday tunes.
“I Wish It Was Christmas Today” debuted in Season 26 on December 9, 2000 and like many of SNL‘s most memorable moments, it was born out of a lack of ideas at 2 a.m.
“We always try to write something musical for the holidays,” Jimmy Fallon told American Songwriter. “And someone had given me a backpack guitar for Christmas, which is a tiny little guitar that you take backpacking — I have no idea what you use the guitar for.”
He and fellow cast member Horatio Sanz started messing around with the tiny guitar and Fallon’s ’80s keyboard, and came up with a concept: “What if we were writing a really great pop song but dumb lyrics?”
“That’s what we ended up doing,” The Tonight Show host said. “It was just a keyboard and that little guitar, and [Sanz] wrote all the lyrics.”
They performed the song in coordinated maroon sweaters, with Sanz on tiny guitar, Fallon on the keyboard, Chris Kattan holding the keyboard and shaking his head, and Tracy Morgan dancing along. All are doing their best not to break during lyrics like, “I don’t care about the CIA, I don’t care what the calendars say, I wish it was Christmas today.”
“I Wish It Was Christmas Today” debuted in 2000 and aired two weeks in a row
Don’t Miss a Minute of SNL Season 51
New episodes of Saturday Night Live air at 11:30 ET/10:30 CT/8:30 PT on NBC and Peacock, streaming next-day on Peacock.
In addition to returning Season 50 performers including Ashley Padilla, Jane Wickline, Bowen Yang, and longest-running cast member Kenan Thompson, the show welcomed five new Featured Players for Season 51 in October 2025: Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson, and Veronika Slowikowska.
The season’s Hosts have included a mix of returning fan favorites like Amy Poehler and Melissa McCarthy as well as first-timers like former Sabrina Carpenter in a double-duty turn and actor Josh O’Connor. Stream sketches from every single episode of SNL on Peacock anytime.
A week later, on December 16, 2000, the song returned once again after its debut. This time around, they were all wearing green sweaters, and the lyrics were ever so slightly different. Instead of trying to convince the listener that it should be Christmas today, they were declaring that Christmas is fun and cool.
The song returned yet again in Season 27 on December 1, 2001 and got a few upgrades. The group initially disguised the performance with an orchestra, and even added some new pre-recorded beats to the tune.
Then for Season 28, the guys emerged from a present, dressed like toys (and Harry Potter), and the performance continued to transform in various unexpected ways. The Muppets joined Sanz in Season 30 after the departures of Fallon, Morgan, and Kattan, and all four original guys returned in plaid blazers when Fallon hosted in Season 37.
Once you’ve walked down memory lane with “I Wish It Was Christmas Today,” click here to see how the song transcended SNL when The Strokes’ frontman Julian Casablancas got ahold of it. He turned it into a “real song,” as Fallon put it, and released his own punk version on his 2009 album.
We don’t care what your mama says, this song is a banger — even when you watch it five times in a row.