With “Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo,” South Park gave a Hanukkah gift to holiday outcasts
Thanks to “The Lonely Jew On Christmas,” South Park spoke to viewers who didn't celebrate December 25th—but lived through it anyway
Aux Features Hankey
“It’s hard to be a Jew at Christmas,” sings one of television’s great cartoon Hebrews, Kyle Broflovski (voiced by Matt Stone), in the classic South Park episode “Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo.” Amen, brother. Being the only one in your class not invited to Jesus’ birthday is hard, and it’s clearly not a unique feeling. Even the great Steven Spielberg touches on it in The Fabelmans. “I know what I want for Hanukkah,” Spielberg’s child surrogate Sammy (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) tells his parents. “Christmas lights!” Like Kyle, Sammy’s the only one on the block without a multi-colored string of bulbs decorating his gutter. It’s a feeling any American Jew could relate to.
Kyle’s ballad, “The Lonely Jew On Christmas,” wasn’t subtle, but the feelings around Yuletide rarely are. The ninth episode in South Park’s landmark first season stretched the show’s vocal cords, delivering the first of many musical eps in the show’s 25 years. Moreover, “Lonely Jew” injected “Mr. Hankey” with a unique form of holiday spirit, expressing how depressing the season can be for those not celebrating it. Through “Lonely Jew” and “Mr. Hankey,” South Park delivered one of television’s great Hanukkah episodes, not by retelling the story of the Maccabees but by focusing on the alienation Jewish kids feel during the holidays.
Like every other fourth grader in my class, I was a South Park obsessive. There was simply no escaping the infective strain of raunchy culture foisted upon kids of the period. WWE (then-WWF) was about to enter its “Attitude Era” when “Stone Cold” Steve Austin wore the gold, and D-Generation X suggested just about everyone “suck it.” What’s a 10-year-old boy supposed to do? We were powerless to stop it.
That’s not to say we didn’t have help. When a camp counselor at the local Jewish Community Center gave me a taped VHS copy of Monty Python And The Holy Grail, he told me to check out a new show called South Park coming to Comedy Central. I had my dad tape the episode “Cartman Gets An Anal Probe” and was immediately hooked—I mean, there was a satellite dish coming straight out of that kid’s ass. By the time Christmas rolled around, there was nary a kid in class without some piece of merch emblazoned with the immortal words, “Oh, my God! They killed Kenny.”
But the interest in the darker, more slapstick edges of the show, the areas where a child is brutally murdered and Step By Step’s Patrick Duffy could play a monster’s leg, gave way to an emotional attachment with the show’s first Christmas episode, “Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo.” Its message of seasonal affective disorder resonated with me, a 10-year-old Jewish kid from New Jersey who loved Christmas enough to decorate a ficus in hopes that Santa’s blatant antisemitism was just some lunchroom rumor. Needless to say, Kyle’s ballad “The Lonely Jew On Christmas” was speaking my language. Kyle sings:
“It’s hard to be a Jew on Christmas / My friends won’t let me join in any games / And I can’t sing Christmas songs or decorate a Christmas tree / Or leave water out for Rudolph ’cause there is something wrong with me / My people don’t believe in Jesus Christ’s divinity!”
Willing to play the role of equal opportunity offender, South Park holds some responsibility for keeping antisemitism on television over these last 25 years. “The Joozians” are a particularly disgusting form of this that kept the “Jewish-controlled media” in the public consciousness long enough for the current crop of anti-Jew celebrities to weaponize these hack conspiracy theories for their own enrichment. In 1997, though, creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker did their homework. For American Jews raised on TNT’s “24 hours of A Christmas Story,” Rankin and Bass specials, and the Hess truck, there was nothing more enviable than Christmas morning. Hanukkah’s great and all, but it lacks the romanization of pagan rituals that Hollywood has been so good at codifying and selling back to us. So yeah, like Sammy Fabelman, “Christmas lights” would’ve been a great Hanukkah gift for me in 1997.
The American entertainment establishment has never been great at catering to the smattering of American Jews looking for anything on television that resembled their holiday experience. At the time, the two most prominent pieces of Hanukkah pop culture were Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” and “A Rugrats Chanukah.” Released only a year apart, both opted for different forms of Semitic celebration. Rugrats went for Bible stories, and Sandler offered commiseration, assuming Jews would feel less lonely if they knew that Bowser from Sha Na Na and Arthur Fonzerelli ate pastrami sandwiches together. Sandler and Rugrats hoped to make Hanukkah more attractive to the kids celebrating it. It’s hard enough to fill eight crazy nights, but at least there was a soundtrack to seeing your entire synagogue at Blockbuster every Christmas Eve.
However, it was the alienation South Park was interested in. Channeling their breakthrough cartoon short, “The Spirit Of Christmas,” “Mr. Hankey The Christmas Poo” opens with the South Park Elementary chorus singing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” There’s no opening theme, just a quick shot at A Charlie Brown Christmas’ closing prayer before launching into a Nativity scene starring the show’s Chosen child. In the episode, Kyle’s mother, Sheila (Mary Kay Bergman), criticizes the religious nature of the elementary school Christmas pageant. Rather than help her son feel more included, Shelia humiliates Kyle, leaving him to sing his ballad alone as his friends catch snowflakes on their tongues. Kyle’s frustration manifests in Mr. Hankey, a sentient piece of shit wearing a red stocking cap, whom Kyle insists is a crucial Christmas player on par with Santa. Unfortunately, no one else can see Hankey, nor do they believe he’s real.
Kyle’s loneliness becomes a game of “Is Santa Claus real?” played through the lovable character of Mr. Hankey. Throughout the episode, Parker and Stone get a lot of mileage out of whether or not the poop is alive, particularly as it exacerbates the perception that Kyle is mentally ill. In that way, “Mr. Hankey” resembles an early version of Community’s beloved stop-motion episode, “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas,” in which a Christmas outcast pushes his holiday hallucinations on his friends, and it takes over the episode.
Seeing spirits or imaginary ethereal beings is a classic Christmas trope, from Scrooge to derivatives of Scrooge. It’s a way for characters to engage with intangibles, like a feeling of Christmas cheer. Kyle channels his spirit through Mr. Hankey, but everyone else focuses on the things that divide them. The adults in town begin fighting about the most secular way to celebrate the holidays. Mr. Garrison hires minimalist composer Philip Glass to compose a book that gives off the essence of Christmas but without the lights, tinsel, or mistletoe, and the more Kyle tries to refocus the town on Mr. Hankey, the more they push him away.
The thing is, everyone lives through Christmas whether they celebrate it or not. Especially for kids who might not understand why Santa doesn’t visit Jewish homes, joining a celebration and being invited to enjoy some of the holiday is enough. “You people focus so hard on the things wrong with Christmas that you’ve forgotten what’s so right about it,” says Mr. Hankey. “This is the one time of year we’re s’posed to forget all the bad stuff, to stop worrying and being sad about the state of the world, and for just one day say, ‘Aw, the heck with it! Let’s sing and dance and bake cookies.’” Kyle’s father is the first to applaud because Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza all serve the same purpose: to provide a little cheer, warmth, and togetherness at the darkest, coldest time of the year, when the nights are longest and days are hardest.
The episode doesn’t land the archetypal South Park lesson, but you could borrow the one from the “The Spirit Of Christmas” short, which applies here. “I learned something today, it doesn’t matter if you’re Christian or Jewish or atheist or Hindu,” Stan says. “Christmas still is about one very important thing […] Presents.”
“Hey man, if you’re Jewish, you get presents for eight days,” Kyle responds, and the kids walk off singing “The Dreidel Song,” and all is right with the world.
“Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo” doesn’t retell the story of Hanukkah or bother selling us on eight whole nights of presents. Instead, it expresses the jealousy, estrangement, and sadness of the holidays, particularly for children. Unlike Rudolph or Charlie Brown, there’s nothing Kyle can do to prove his worth. Everyone else has to change; the town has to accept him. After all, like Mr. Hankey, this Christmas crap can be for everyone.
33 Comments
This article reminds me of that big Paramount+ deal they signed. Feels like 2 years ago they got something crazy like 11 movies, but haven’t heard a word since?
They’ve done like 3-4 of them already, I think. Off the top of my head there was the two-parters South Park Post-COVID and South Park: The Streaming Wars. They just don’t feel like actual specials or anything, just extended episodes, so they’re not terribly noteworthy.
Hmm yeah that’s probably it then
Yeah color me foolish for thinking that the deal would’ve given the guys a kick in the inspiration parts. I was kinda hoping they’d do less topical stuff, and maybe have some fun. Like the great solo Butters episode or Fun Time With Weapons and whatnot. A little bit of me even thought they might do something live-action like Cannibal the Musical so apparently I’m just a hopeless romantic.
Yeah, but I don’t think South Park has been that type of show for a long time.
Yeah…I’m just a wee bit nostalgic for the olden times, I guess.
Want some of this fudge, Packer?
It was just a manuver to get out of the “HBO Max has excsluive streaming rights for south park episodes” deal. There was nothing creative about it but if they call them “specials” they can put them on their own streaming service.
Rick and Morty does entire episodes about people who make those comments.
They’ve done 4 so far. I think they’re pretty okay. They’re less movies like the first one and more like extended episodes (to me at least)
This was the first SP episode I ever saw. Hankey flying around giving everyone kisses as the end and leaving little smudges of shit on their cheeks had me hooked for life.
The scene where Mr. Hankey is dancing around the bathroom, leaving poop smudges all over, and then Kyle’s dad opening the door and seeing the smudges and a piece of regular old poop in Kyle’s hand still makes me choke with laughter.
Oh for sure. Absolutely sublime.
Between this and the somewhat more tame Rugrats this was huge for representation at the time. TV rarely if ever depicted anything beyond protestant-coded families
Damn, your dad let you watch South Park when you were a 4th grader?My wife gets irritated when she finds our 5th grader watching The Simpsons with me.
I watched it when I was in (the equivalent of) 5th grade. I think at the time a lot of parents just thought, “well they’re watching a cartoon, how bad can it be?”
Probably because the Simpsons is bad (now)?
Ha! I never watch it first-run anymore. I typically watch stuff season 2 through the “Behind the Laughter” episode (even though the shows really starts to drag a couple seasons before then), because in my mind, “Behind the Laughter” makes a darn good finale.
As long as your passing that along to your child!
Re: Hanukkah representation, no mention of the Hanukkah Armadillo from Friends?
To be fair, every Jewish person (myself included) was probably too busy watching Seinfeld.
“Hanukkah’s great and all, but it lacks the romanization of pagan rituals”Oh yeah, like the pagans weren’t making macaroni pictures and popcorn necklaces too!
I’m pretty sure I can still sing this whole thing from memory. “Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics” is one of my go-to holiday music. Along with Dr. Demento, Charlie Brown and Jorma Kaukonen.
Dr. Demento and Jorma Kaukonen? Hell yeah!
As a kid, I didn’t know any Jewish people—or even know of any Jewish people beyond fictional, my end of town just didn’t have a Jewish community. That made Judaism a weird prospect for me; I knew it existed, but it might as well have been a fictional religion, and nobody exactly sat me down and explained it, especially not as a kid.Piecing together Judiasm basically only through abstract knowledge from a Catholic education and pop culture that assumed you already knew a lot of it was… weird. My ground-level education was basically a team-up from Tommy Pickles, Krusty the Clown, and Kyle. That was by no means a respectful curriculum, but weirdly, looking back it was probably early South Park that gave me the most functional information.
When I was in elementary school (early 80’s on Long Island), my teachers, each year, taught us about Judiasm. We made dreidels and ate chocolate coins. We also learned a little about Islam and Hinduism.
Here’s a fun little story. About 15 years ago, my cousin (father’s side) brought his new girlfriend to a family gathering. She was the poster child for The Master Race. Tall, blonde, and gorgeous. My sister and I were talking to her when she started letting little things slip. She was a 2nd grade teacher and bitched about how they had to teach the kids about Judiasm, “playing with their fucking dreidels.” Laughing and saying things to herself like, “Here’s your little weird top, you fucking Jew.” We kept our cool and waited for more bullshit to spew out, and oh, did it ever. Her grandfather was SS. She was a Holocaust denier. The Nazis also didn’t have forced labor camps, etc. “That shit never happened!” My sister looked over to my mother, sitting a few feet away and yelled, “Hey, mom! How long was grandma in the Nazi camps for, again?” My mother turned around and said, “4 years.” The girl’s eyes widened and she went paler than she already was. We just smiled. My grandmother and her family were in work camps after they fled Russia (KGB wanted to have a chat with my Great-Grandfather) and were caught in the Ukraine. Anyway, needless to say, later on, we had a quick little chat with my cousin about her and she disappeared out of his life after that.
Let me guess, was her name by any chance Aryanna?
It’s really weird the American Jewish obsession about Christmas. I am a European Jew and there always was a sort of tension when I was a kid but in Europe Xmas is a very secular festival for most people and we never felt excluded or something. We even celebrated it when I was a kid and it is us, the kids, that asked our parents to stop it since we are not Christians. But we loved and still love the atmosphere of the end of year festivals and we love Hanukka, and feel very good. Also the “eat Chinese food” thing is 100% purely American, does not exist outside the Anglo world.
My mom was an art teacher when this episode premiered and wouldn’t you know it, she was teaching the kids pottery that week. The very next day almost every student made a Mr. Hankey.
“The Joozians” are a particularly disgusting form of this that kept the “Jewish-controlled media” in the public consciousness…”I think you’re giving them a bit too much credit there.
My octagenarian mom has a beaded change purse of Cartman’s head, a huge Kyle fridge magnet and a Mr. Hankey keychain. She hasn’t kept up with the later seasons but once in a while one of us kids will say “oh my God” about something completely unrelated and she’ll chime in, unprompted, “YOU KILLED KENNY” and this ep was probably what started it all for her.
Member that one where Jesus and Santa are singing Christmas songs about themselves, cocktail lounge style and they get into a fight because there’s more songs about Jesus than Santa? And the psychotic looking piano player?
I love that Philip Glass’s official Twitter account sometimes references his “appearance” in this episode.