Ariana Grande hosted SNL for a third time, starring in seven sketches that made it to air, plus two bonus sketches cut for time — but fortunately uploaded to YouTube — Saturday night (Dec. 20). The 2025 Christmas episode of Saturday Night Live featured Cher as musical guest, and it also wound up being Bowen Yang’s last day as a cast member at Studio 8H.
Grande’s latest appearance on the late-night comedy series had her supporting her friend Yang through an emotional exit from the show. Throughout a total of nine sketches, she also played an abused elf on the shelf, Kevin McCallister in an R-rated Home Alone, an eccentric dance teacher, Katy Perry and Celine Dion, a judge who believes her case’s defendant is actually Santa, and a contestant in a Love Is Blind reunion special. She was the star of both a PSA on the dangers of espresso martinis and a commercial hawking the saddest last-minute Christmas trees that you ever did see.
Live from New York, Grande kicked her night off with a musical monologue set to the familiar melody of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Her version of the holiday classic had her singing her way through shopping stress as Christmas Day with distant companions of distance relatives nears: “I don’t know what to get for Christmas/ For my cousin’s boyfriend Steve/ I don’t know a thing about him/ Only see him on Christmas Eve/ My cousin says that he’s her rock/ But I’ve never heard him talk/ Is a gift card rude?/ What do I get for Christmas for this dude?”
Besides being a three-time SNL host — on the episodes airing March 12, 2016; Oct. 12, 2024, and now Dec. 20, 2025 — Grande’s twice been booked as musical guest only; though not all musical guests are written into sketches, she rightly was both of those times (Sept. 27, 2014; March 9, 2024).
Here’s a ranking of every scene Grande was in on Saturday night, when she hosted SNL‘s Dec. 20 episode. Watch all nine sketches below.
“Espresso Martini”
Grande leads a PSA warning of the perils espresso martini-fueled ladies face, and what one can do to protect their caffeinated/drunken loved ones when they’re consuming “girly meth.”
From the inventors of the Sangria Straight Jacket comes the Espresso Martini Safe Room, “a completely padded room filled with exactly what they need to ride out their mania until they can reintegrate with society.”
Fully pink and fully decked out with stereotypically feminine comforts like fluffy pillows, unicorns, rosy tumblers and a Lover-era listening station — plus a fake phone to avoid any real social media moves one might regret in the morning — the Espresso Martini Safe Room is a place it turns out Grande herself might need to book a night in. “Thank goodness they’re safe,” she deadpans, making it mostly through the bit without breaking in the cut-for-time sketch.
“Love Is Blind Reunion”
Saturday night’s Love Is Blind spoof has Ariana portraying “Janelle,” who comes back for a reunion special four months after finding out her love interest is the actual Grinch. Some time after “I can’t do this,” “Do you even have a penis?” and letting “Neil” (fka the Grinch) go home to the outskirts of Whoville alone, Janelle has a change of heart. The currently cuddly couple return to reality TV apparently in love — and expecting. In an episode brimming with holiday-themed humor, this bit about their unconventional romance is funny but doesn’t quite measure up to the sketches that rank higher on this list.
“Black Santa”
Kenan Thompson carries this sketch as its title character, with Grande serving strong supporting player energy as a stern courtroom judge who still believes in/is bamboozled by Christmas magic. To the prosecution’s disbelief, and to the tune of Cher’s “Do You Believe in Life After Love,” Kenan’s “Black Santa” plays ’em all.
“Last Stop Christmas Shop”
Procrastinators, unite! Set yourself up for disappointment and meet together on Christmas Eve at Rob & Pop’s Christmas Tree Shop, a sad little establishment run by Grande and Sarah Sherman. You’ve “done blown it” again.
“Whatever we got, that’s what you’re gonna get,” Sherman says, which Grande plays off of while presenting options limited to a long stick barely holding up four ornaments, a not-so-merry pineapple, or a rod with “a full bush.” As Sherman points out: “You’re in no position to turn down what we’ve got.”
With a tongue-twisting slogan and a sheer willingness to look ridiculous, the pair’s comedy seems poised for broadcast — until Grande just can’t hold it together anymore, losing it over a line about stroking an ICU worker who’s been too busy to buy a tree. (That’s probably why this one was cut for time, but it’s otherwise good in that delirious sort of way, and silly enough to want to watch more than once.)
“Random Duet Christmas Spectacular”
In an informercial for a collection of random Christmas duets, Grande put her impressionist skill to work and took on Katy Perry and Celine Dion, the SNL way.
In an unlikely duet opposite “Bob Dylan,” Grande as Perry (space version) belts without abandon, “Baby, you’re a Christmas tree,” a parody on “Firework.” And next to “Andrea Bocelli,” Grande as Dion earnestly sings about a world covered in menorahs, chocolate coins and yummy latkes in Italian, in tribute to Hanukkah. Any sketch that has Ariana’a vocal prowess carrying it has the potential to hit the right notes.
Other fun musical mashups here are spoof performances of holiday-themed duets in pairings including Bruce Springsteen and Bad Bunny, Kate Bush and Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder and Benson Boone, and Bjork and Post Malone.
“Dancing 101”
“We are the people who choreographed the dances in three Jardiance commercials,” Grande says alongside her co-instructor, played by Marcello Hernández, which should set some kind of expectation of what’s to come in this sketch with improv vibes. The two dance class instructors have quite the lesson planned for their small class of SNL players, demonstrating that anything you want to say can be said with your body — whether that’s expressing hunger, vaccination status or the best part of pooping.
Just remember, “fast, fast, fast, slow” is the first rule you need to know when it comes to what they call “great dancing.” And if you can’t remember those steps, Yang’s trick might help: “Cocaine, cocaine, cocaine. Red wine, red wine.”
“Delta Lounge”
Yang has his last hurrah with Grande by his side. The duo’s real friendship, born and nurtured within the set of Wicked, soars in Studio 8H in a way that makes the comedian’s final sketch as an SNL cast member all the more touching. (Plus there’s a cameo by Cher — why not? “Everyone thought you were a little bit too gay,” she says. “But you know what? You’re perfect for me.”)
Hardly holding back tears, Yang’s “I just feel so lucky that I ever got to work here” should touch even the coldest heart this holiday season.
Grade and Yang share a sweet duet of The Eagles’ “Please Come Home for Christmas,” with Saturday night’s SNL host topping it off with the sweet line, “I wouldn’t miss your last shift for the world.”
“I just wanted to go out on top,” Yang says. The pop star remarks, “Everyone knows you’re a bottom, honey.”
“Elf on the Shelf Support Group”
Is there no one looking out for the Elf on the Shelf? Based on the first sketch to air after Grande’s monologue, the holiday season props have been traumatized beyond repair. In fact, one bad thought might lead to spontaneous combustion.
Grande plays one such elf, a poor little one they call Twinklebutter, whose family welcomed a cat that proceeded to tear Twinklebutter’s “ass right in half.” “It hunts me like a rat,” she reveals. “And since Santa says I can’t move or speak, I just have to let it happen. I just wish elves could die. Why can’t we die!”
The sketch is a recipe of absurdity, dark humor and seasonal depression to get you laughing through the horrors of the holiday season — all wrapped up in cute elf costumes and voices, expertly performed by Grande and Co.
“Home Alone”
What if Home Alone was a horror flick?
In the best sketch from Grande’s Dec. 20 episode of Saturday Night Live, the host and cast explore that prompt so thoroughly you might think it’s just how the story was always meant to be. In increasingly outrageous degrees, the singer’s Kevin McCallister witnesses his family taken out one by one, by the violent booby traps he’s set and forgotten to dismantle prior to their return home. There’s a twist at the end that’ll make you chuckle in relief, only to be actually surprised by that end’s ending. Set to a nostalgic holiday favorite, the pre-taped scene is a masterclass of macabre sketch comedy that had this writer’s whole family laughing so hard there might have been tears.
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