In November of 2022, Hip-Hop pioneers Run-DMC briefly reunited to perform their 1987 Holiday hit “Christmas in Hollis” for the first time in 20 years. Officially, they were only performing as Run and DMC; they had broken up in 2002 upon the death of their DJ, Jam Master Jay–murdered in his own recording studio in Queens, New York–without whom they felt their crew would never again be complete. That “and” was their way of honoring their fallen friend.
Not that that “and” put a damper on the festivities, which by all accounts was a rousing success. Even as the rest of Run-DMC’s groundbreaking catalog is already fading fast from our pop-cultural consciousness, their one Christmas song remains as popular as ever (which is further evidence that if you’re a singer who wants to be remembered long after you fade into irrelevance, figure out how to record an iconic Christmas song—as folks like Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, and Brenda Lee can all attest).
The success of “Christmas in Hollis” was by no means a given. Even today, there remain no other Christmas rap songs to cite, at least none that have achieved anywhere near this level of ubiquity; “Christmas in Hollis” is pretty much it. Partly, perhaps, that is simply because Run-DMC did it first, and everyone else could only come off like they were just copying them, so why bother (though fear of copy-catting sure didn’t stop the glut of Christmas rock ‘n roll tunes in the late-1950s). Partly that is because Hip-Hop, with its emphasis on authenticity (or at least a performative “authenticity”) does not really lend itself to novelty songs the way, say, Rock or Country or Swing or R&B does. Really, what’s astounding is that any rap song at all has joined the canon. So why this one?
What I would perhaps offer is that it wasn’t the novelty of “Christmas in Hollis” that ensconced itself in our pop-cultural consciousness, but on the contrary, it’s antiquity.
The first verse, remember, describes a sighting of Santa Claus in Hollis, Queens on Christmas Eve. Over a sample of Clarence Carter’s 1968 “Backdoor Santa,” the narrator tells of how he spotted a man with a dog and “an ill reindeer/But then I was illin’ cause the man had a beard/And a bag full of goodies, 12 o’clock had neared.”
The narrator looks away for a second but then, miraculously, “the man was gone.” Nevertheless, he sees that the mysterious man had “dropped his wallet smack dead on the lawn.” He checks the wallet and finds ID confirming that this was indeed Santa Claus himself—and what’s more to his surprise, the wallet had “A million dollars in it, cold hundreds of G’s/Enough to buy a boat and matching car with ease.” Rappers galore have bragged about committing far worse crimes for far less, but our narrator is not even tempted, declaring: “But I’d never steal from Santa ’cause that ain’t right/So I was going home to mail it back to him that night.” For his generous impulse, the narrator is promptly rewarded; for no sooner does he get home than he sees that “under the tree/Was a letter from Santa and the dough was for me!”
A cheesy little Holiday story? Of course, that’s part of its charm. But it’s also a retelling of Baucis and Philemon, from Rome in the first century BC.
In Ovid’s telling from The Metamorphoses, Baucis and Philemon are a humble old couple living in a corrupt city. Despite their poverty, they are the only people in town to welcome in and entertain the gods Jupiter and Hermes, who are traveling in disguise as humble peasants. They treat these gods in disguise far more generously and kindly than any of the wealthy denizens of their town. In reward, Baucis and Philemon are spared while the rest of the city is destroyed in divine retribution for their meanness of spirit, while their humble cottage is miraculously transformed into an ornate temple. (The tale should sound familiar to us: Less than a century after Ovid, another resident of the Roman Empire would similarly declare, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me”—and as a king on the other side of the world also said, “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”)
Though the details differ, the broad strokes remain the same: in both cases, the poor and humble denizens of a corrupt city are richly rewarded for their selflessness and generosity of spirit. It is a folk tale as ancient as history and contemporary as now. The reason it continues to resonate is because normally the exact opposite happens: the generous are exploited, the selfless are mocked, the righteous are unrewarded—all while (as Malachi somberly notes) “we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered.”
Yet the whole reason why we remain outraged at every violation of justice, every oppression and cruelty, no matter how often they happen, is because we all intuitively understand, on a very primal—nay spiritual—level that this isn’t the way things are supposed to be at all. We have told each other these stories since the dawn of time because we all unconsciously know, almost in spite of ourselves, that One will come while we most unawares, like a thief in the night, and reward the righteous. Santa, then, is but a folksy expression of a much more profound reality. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour; the return of the Master is what the Christmas holiday reminds us of, after all.