SNL's 'Christmas Conversation' Is Perfect PSA For Anti-Masker Parents

Do your parents — and your kids’ grandparents — love you only slightly less than they used to this year? And is it because you refuse to travel to be with extended family? If you’re struggling with making your parents understand COVID-19 travel restrictions, the latest SNL sketch is basically a PSA.

Although the sketch mostly focuses on people who are seemingly childless, trying to explain to their parents why they can’t come home for the holidays, the spirit applies to all of us. Our parents, and aunts, uncles and cousins will not, and should not, make us feel weird about not wanting to travel during a huge surge in COVID cases. And yet, it does feel like affection and love is being held hostage in some families if you don’t break with what Anthony Fauci is telling us to do: Don’t travel for the holidays! (Or if you do, you know, be really careful about the quarantine policies.)

The sketch also has another message: We can’t ever become the parents in this sketch. For those of us who have very young children, you never know, this kind of thing could happen again when our kids are fully-grown. And it’s kind of up to us to remember how tragically uncool the faux-Jason Bateman dad is in this sketch. No, you can’t quarantine in the airplane bathroom. No, it’s not cool to guilt your kid into being unsafe. Not only do we need to be safe now, but we also need to not turn into the kinds of parents who pretend like the world is “normal,” when it’s totally not.

Watch the sketch above! It’s funny, but you know, serious, too.