Kate McKinnon Is Every Anxious Mom Giving Gifts On Christmas In SNL Skit

Saturday Night Live is really starting to frighten me as a mother. How do the writers and, by extension, people like Kate McKinnon, get inside our brains the way they do? How do they know what our Christmas mornings look like and then bring them to life? Because Kate McKinnon’s SNL skit about an insecure mom giving out Christmas gifts to her kids felt incredibly close to the bone. As in, I’m not even 100% sure how much I was able to like the skit. Much as, like McKinnon’s character, I’m never 100% sure my children like their Christmas gifts. In fact, she seemed pretty positive that all of the gifts were “trash” even as her children tried to reassure her. I get that.

Over the weekend, McKinnon returned to her roots to host Saturday Night Live for the first time alongside musical guest Billie Eillish, and of course the entire episode was an absolute delight. Especially popular (and especially prescient) was a skit where McKinnon played a mom of two adult daughters, played by Chloe Fineman and Molly Kearney, who have come home for the holidays with their boyfriends, Marcello Hernández and Devon Walker. McKinnon, resplendant in a grey cardigan with cardinal accents, sat beside her husband (played by James Austin Johnson) and watched as her daughters happily ripped into their gifts. “Please, just open them,” she tells her daughters. “They’re pieces of trash and I’m the dumbest woman alive.”

As her daughters continue to tell her that they love their gifts, McKinnon spirals. “I crapped in a toilet, and I wrapped it in a bag,” she asserts. “I’m sorry I’m your mother, I’ll send God a letter. Tell him to take me early.” She eventually snaps, taking her daughters’ beautiful gifts and tossing them in the fireplace. Only after her daughter asks her, “Can you just let us open a gift without apologizing?”

Oh man, did I feel that one. And I was not alone.

“Kate’s character was based on me. What the f**k SNL. I feel attacked!” wrote one viewer.

“The anxiety and accuracy! I feel seen and attacked,” wrote another.

“I found Kate’s character in this sketch alarmingly relatable,” one more said.

“As a Mom who’s always offering the receipt before my kids open their gifts, I can relate,” another commented

“Omg I thought I was the only one who felt like garbage because I feel like my gifts are subpar,” added one more, and it’s a good point. It is sort of comforting to know that there are other moms out there who feel anxious and exposed on Christmas morning, terrified they’ve let their kids down with their gift choice.

McKinnon’s husband in the skit, meanwhile, tosses two paper bags at his daughters’ boyfriends and is supremely confident in his awful gift choices. A book about how to pick up girls for when they eventually break up for one boyfriend, and a “FML” baseball cap for the other “because you’re dating her,” he laughs.

As for what her daughters got her for Christmas, don’t worry, they didn’t forget their anxious mom. They bought her the same sweater she was already wearing. And she absolutely loved it.

Saturday Night Live has done it again, as they do every year over the holidays. From moms wanting grandkids to a mom getting just that one robe for Christmas morning while everyone else gets a million gifts, the show has really become a window into the private souls of moms over the holidays. And we’re feeling a little attacked.