For over 50 years, the cast of Saturday Night Live has delighted in delivering outrageously crass Christmas jokes every year, but only one sketch had the balls to do it on public radio.
This past weekend, Saturday Night Live fans felt that the show’s annual pre-Christmas episode was bittersweet, given the departure of long-time cast member and fan-favorite Bowen Yang. Add on one of Michael Che’s most uncomfortable jokes about Scarlett Johansson in an underwhelming “Weekend Update” joke swap, and the latest SNL episode didn’t really feel all that festive.
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Thankfully, over the last 50 seasons and counting, Saturday Night Live built up a trove of classic holiday sketches that is deeper than Santa’s sack – and Schweddier, too. For my money, the all-time greatest Christmas sketch in SNL history came during the 1998 holiday season, when Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon and Alec Baldwin hopped on NPR to talk Christmas treats while somehow keeping straight faces:
The beauty of “NPR’s Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls” lies in its simplicity – it’s just a series of escalating testicle jokes delivered in a soothing monotone befitting the most affectless radio station in the country. As easy as it would have been for “Schweddy Balls” to become too overtly crass and lose the audience with juvenile sack jokes, this sketch pulls off the spectacularly stupid premise by taking its sweet time – no one even utters the word “balls” until more than two and a half minutes into the scene.
But ultimately, it’s the performances that puts “Schweddy Balls” atop the SNL Christmas rankings – Gasteyer, Shannon and Baldwin all absolutely nail the dry, breathy NPR voice that somehow remains unchanged throughout the decades. The juxtaposition between the text of the line, “I like the way your balls smell” and Shannon’s serene delivery is the key to making the sketch so unbearably funny.
“Schweddy Balls” even briefly inspired a real-life dessert when Ben & Jerry’s unveiled their limited edition ice cream flavor by the same name, but public outrage from prudish parents forced the cheeky ice cream kings to pull the flavor before its time. Not everyone can stomach Schweddy Balls.
