’Tis the season for my favorite thing in the world: Patti LaBelle’s classic, unforgettable performance of Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” from the 1996 National Christmas Tree Lighting. This is my Charlie Brown Christmas. This is my A Christmas Story. This is a very special time for me, and I’m so glad to share it with you. Watch the infamous performance for President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton, and all of '90s, C-Span-watching America below. Then watch it again. And read my exhaustive breakdown.
0:10 …And we are off to the races. Patti enters too early, which, like everything else that is about to happen, is not her fault. One need not be a certified Toastmaster to know how an introduction goes: you front-load it with accolades in your normal speaking voice, and you end by enthusiastically saying the PERSON’S NAAAAME! Doing it the other way around is a recipe for disaster. When a person’s name is said enthusiastically from a lectern, the crowd will reflexively clap, and the person’s body will involuntarily move itself toward the stage. This is true for any person. Any normal person.
0:33-0:46 Patti attempts a “Thank you,” is drowned out by the horn section, and recoils in barely-contained alarm. What follows is the first suggestion that we are in real trouble. As Patti woooooos, she takes inventory of her surroundings: an empty area where her background singers should be, a military veteran clarinet soloist whose name she does not know, and a cue card with the wrong words on it. At 0:42, she attempts to say “turn the card” with her eyes, but the Cue Card Man below does not speak Silent Patti.
0:52 Patti’s silent pleas to Cue Card Man get louder.
0:56 Patti’s silent pleas to Cue Card Man officially become interpretive dance.
0:59 When one begins telling the truth, it is often hard to stop. Patti gives up on both Cue Card Man and the notion that any of this is running smoothly by howling for her missing background singers, whooping, and revealing that she doesn’t know the song she’s trying to sing. How I know all the words to “This Christmas” when I’ve never once listened to it on purpose, and a professional singer doesn’t, is none of my business.
1:10 A flawless diva moment. She is being hung out to dry by an unprofessional production, but she will emerge with her name and reputation intact. This is among the best ad-libs I have ever witnessed, and I’ve seen Amy Poehler do improv.
1:20 A crowd shot of a child, which would seem to be the appropriate thing for an event of this kind, but a child cannot possibly appreciate the significance of witnessing a moment like this in person. If I were the director, I’d be looking for this guy:
1:23 Patti LaBelle is, we are learning, deeply committed to the art of the whoop.
1:33 A second, louder plea for background singers. I picture them lounging in the green room over an egg nog and a cinnamon biscotti—1996’s hottest treat!—then hearing this and running to the stage so quickly they leave smoke outlines of their bodies and the word "ZIP!" hanging in the air.
1:48 Patti says “Oh, my God” at the exact same moment your brain does. In the next few seconds, she resigns herself to the buffoonery around her, in an elegant, eloquent moment that really should be captured in GIF form so we can use it over and over this year.
I mean, December 2017 is almost as much of a mess as this production. But whaddya gonna do? This is the world we got.
1:58 Patti says so much with a whoop, doesn’t she? Her background singers arrive, but Cue Card Man is still too into his McDonald’s Arch Deluxe to give her the correct lyrics, so she leads us through three distinct emotional states. She begins with anger, travels through shame, and arrives at joy in anticipation of the absolute diva fit she just realized she is about three minutes away from pitching. It is an aria of irritation, and she delivers it flawlessly, while wearing a duvet cover from West Elm.
2:22 Here are three people who are about to be yelled at.
2:35 Insult is added to injury when Cue Card Man discards the most important one. Here is my only note for this performance, Patti: if you don’t know the guy’s name, just don’t say it. He won’t notice or care; he’s got a solo to focus on. It might register as a snub if he’s the type to take offense, but it’s slightly better than shouting “I DON’T KNOW THE MAN’S NAME,” angrily ordering the audience to clap at him, gesturing his way with a furious smile, and then rolling your eyes. Also, whooping over his solo kind of defeats the purpose of a solo at all. Other than that, you played this moment perfectly.
For the rest of the performance, Patti is safe; the last minute of “This Christmas” is all ad-lib anyway. So I will just say this: we are watching a singer perform a song called “This Christmas,” whose lyrics are roughly 40% the word “Christmas,” at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree. This is happening in 1996, about two months after the launch of Fox News, who have spent every holiday season since convincing you that you’re not allowed to say Christmas. One of the dummies they’ve convinced is our president, who has been telling crowds all year that we’ll finally be saying “Merry Christmas" again this season. And we are. But we were. We have always been able to. “Happy Holidays” is a considerate thing to say, especially to a stranger, or to a customer or a clerk in a store, because you never know what a person celebrates. This concept has been around forever; the McDonald’s bags when I was a kid in the 1970s said “Season’s Greetings” every December, and I didn’t know until very recently that I was supposed to be a big, graceless dick about it. All this is to say: If you honestly think you were any less free to say “Merry Christmas” last December than you are this one, go stand in front of a mirror and punch yourself in the face.
4:40 “No more singing for me, honey; I already blew.” Some hear this as an admission of a botched performance. I disagree. Patti LaBelle handled herself beautifully in a disorganized and unprofessional situation, and she knows it. I think she’s using “blew” in the way a singer does, as in “I blew the house down,” which one cannot deny.
We would do well to take a cue from her. Chaos swirls around us. Wildfires and Russia and pedophile Senate candidates and Nazis in the streets and sweeping tax reform scribbled on Post-Its being passed in the dead of night. Our job is to keep on moving, keep our heads up, keep on being excellent. The show must go on.
We must do our jobs to the best of our abilities, and then when this moment ends— and it will, it has to— we must do as Patti almost certainly did, and just fucking let somebody have it.
