Welcome to the 2025 Heistmas Advent Calendar, a daily drop of pop culture Christmas icons, oddities, and joy. Check back every day from now through December 25 for each daily entry!
Christmas movies love to portray when the holiday is a disaster. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation? Full disaster. Jingle All the Way? Disaster. A Christmas Story? He shoots his eye out. Disaster. But no movie, no comedy matches the absolute train wreck that was the 1996 National Christmas Tree Lighting, starring diva Patti LaBelle.
This is the clip in question.
If you're at work or something, and can't watch this delightful train wreck with sound, let me explain: nothing goes right, no one is prepared, the right people aren't even on the stage, the cue card guy doesn't know what he's doing and Patti LaBelle doesn't know the song. It's incredible in the way that watching a wrecking ball accidentally take out a parked car is incredible. Fully unplanned, clearly accidental, and perfectly Christmas.
This is a big event, it's airing on CSPAN-2 after all, and it involves no one less than the United States Army['s band]. LaBelle was slated to sing Donny Hathaway's 1970 hit "This Christmas", as part of the pageantry surrounding the Christmas tree lighting, but from the start, nothing goes well.
First off, her introduction flops. The presenter, someone who would generously be described by a screenwriter as "a nerd", mentions her name, pauses for applause, then…has things to add? LaBelle is surprised at this because she's already started to walk out when the applause began, so she sheepishly goes and hides behind a column. THEY MADE PATTI LABELLE HIDE BEHIND A COLUMN, PEOPLE. And if it was just that gaffe? We wouldn't be talking about it on Pop Heist 29 years later.
The band begins to play immediately, so no chance to really greet the crowd or, well, wait for everyone to be in place. Maybe the United States Army ['s band] had another gig that night and time's a-wastin'. And then you see the terror in LaBelle's eyes – her background singers are nowhere to be found. SO MUCH of this song is about the background singers. She's on what could be described as "the barest stage in Washington DC since Ford's Theater on April 15, 1865" and there is no support.
There is no support, not even from the cue card guy. You see LaBelle frantically gesturing off to the bottom of the stage at some barely visible soul who's presumably putting up cue cards that read "To unlock all lyrics to 'This Christmas' please upgrade your subscription." She calls out between lyrics, "Where my background singers?" Not once. Not twice. Three times she points out that HER BACKGROUND SINGERS ARE AWOL. She calls out that the cue cards don't have the right words. She calls this out SIX times.
She's hitting maybe every 3rd line of lyrics, remarkably well, but she is clearly displeased. Two minutes into this farce the background singers show up, dressed in what I'd call "what you'd wear if you were selling Christmas trees in cold weather for eight hours a day" fashion, which clashes mightily with LaBelle's gorgeous burgundy dress. Patti's eyes say it all, just this amazed disgust that may be the most genuine reaction ever caught on film. These background singers will never work in this town again. Patti LaBelle may strike Washington DC from any tours she ever plans in the future.
My favorite part is at 2:32 in the video, where she demands that the cue card guy bring up a card that he dropped because it has the name of the Army guy who's doing the clarinet solo, a solo that's completely outshined by the chaos happening on stage. In what could replace "Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men" in your Christmas lexicon, LaBelle shouts out, "Let me see that card again darling. Let me see that card again! Let me see that one more time because…oh God…Sargent First Class Rick Perrell playing the solo, I have to see his name, his name is on the card. Give him a big hand please?" <eye roll>
To wrap this present up with a bow, who shows up next but Bill and Hillary Clinton, who probably didn't get to witness this madness from backstage. LaBelle has no idea what to do, how to introduce or greet the Clintons, and as such just stands there, confused and alone. They hug, she…continues to stand there.
It's a beautiful Christmas catastrophe. And to all a good night.
Check back tomorrow for even more Heistmas Advent Calendar Goodies!
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