75 Best April Fools Jokes to Make Kids and Adults Laugh

Ariana Grande's 'Santa Tell Me' Was Written As A Joke

Music

Some Christmas songs are obviously jokes. "Santa Tell Me" by Ariana Grande designed to be a joke, even though it doesn't seem humorous.

Published on December 10, 2024

2 min read

Some Christmas songs are obviously jokes. "Santa Tell Me" by Ariana Grande designed to be a joke, even though it doesn't seem humorous. A songwriter had the idea for the song while he was taking a shower.

Ariana Grande's 'Santa Tell Me' was written by writers from Iran and India

Grande co-wrote "Santa Tell Me" with Savan Kotecha and Ilya Salmanzadeh. During a 2022 interview with Songwriting, Kotecha revealed the song was a bit of an inside joke. "As a crew, it was just this energy and this feeling," he said. "I always used to get ideas in the shower. I think we must have been talking about a Christmas song, me and Ilya. We thought it would be funny because he's Iranian, and I'm Indian – we were like, 'That could be funny if we wrote a Christmas song.'" For context, people in Iran and India rarely celebrate Christmas, as Iran is mostly Muslim and India is mostly Hindu.

"I think that he was in Sweden at the time," he added. "I know it was in July. I was in the shower in LA and it just came into my head. I have the voice note somewhere. I just stepped out of the shower, got water all over the phone and I recorded it. I don't know if that was the first voice note, but I said, 'Hey, Ilya, check this out as a Christmas song … for Ari,' or I got out of the shower and recorded it again."

Ariana Grande made a bold choice

"Santa Tell Me" is different from most popular Christmas tunes. A lot of the older ones, like "Frosty the Snow Man" and "White Christmas," are traditional pop songs. Others, like "All I Want for Christmas Is You" and "Last Christmas," represent more recent genres of pop music. Meanwhile, "Santa Tell Me" is a modern R&B track. It was pretty bold of Grande to put out an R&B holiday song, considering few are popular besides "This Christmas" by Donny Hathaway.

Regardless, the tune remains ubiquitous. Perhaps that's because it stands out from the pack. Or maybe it's just because Grande is one of the most famous musicians on earth. It's also possible that audiences wanted a new Christmas song to enter heavy rotation since the Christmas song canon was essentially frozen between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s. 

'Santa Tell Me' took awhile to become a hit

"Santa Tell Me" was a bit of a slow-burner, but, eventually, it became a big hit. So far, the tune peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying on the chart for 26 weeks. Considering that popular Christmas songs have a habit of recharting, it wouldn't be surprising if "Santa Tell Me" became a top 10 single someday. It could even become a No. 1 hit!

"Santa Tell Me" appeared on Grande's EP Christmas Kisses. That record did not chart on the Billboard 200. Later, a "Naughty version" of "Santa Tell Me" was part of the album Christmas & Chill. That album reached No. 34 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the chart for three weeks.

"Santa Tell Me" became a Yuletide classic for many younger people even though its writers didn't mean for it to be taken seriously. 

Caitlin Clark Is Right. Des Moines Kids Tell Jokes On Halloween

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Halloween Is More Funny Than Scary In St. LouisLAist

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Being a comedian, Joe Marlotti is always afraid he won't get laughs. But he grows especially nervous this time of year. After all, a comedian doesn't want his kids to bomb when it comes time to tell jokes.

Marlotti hails from St. Louis, where local Halloween tradition calls for children not to say "trick or treat," but to tell a joke in order to earn candy.

"I've been all around the block — literally — telling them that it's important to tell the joke right, or it makes me look bad," Marlotti says.

The typical Halloween joke might involve a short quiz about a witch, ghost or vampire. For example:

"What does a skeleton always say before eating?"

"Bone appétit."

The jokes don't have to be about scary subjects — and, despite the pressure Marlotti puts on his children, they don't have to be funny or even told right. Kids are graded totally on effort.

But adults in St. Louis do expect to hear a joke before they'll part with any treats. "When kids come to my door, yeah, damn it, I want them to tell a joke," says Chad Garrison, managing editor of the Riverfront Times, the local alternative weekly. (Here's a compilation of his favorites from last year.)

Joke-telling on Halloween is not unique to St. Louis. Apparently, the tradition actually started in Des Moines, where it began as a Depression-era attempt to curb hooliganism, which included upending trash cans, turning on fire hydrants and shooting out streetlights.

The theory seemed to be that kids would perform fewer pranks if they had to come up with a harmless sort of trick to receive treats.

"You ask a question or you tell a joke — in other words, you tricked that person," says John L. Oldani, the author of Passing It On: Folklore of St. Louis.

When this blogger moved to St. Louis with my family last year, Halloween joke-telling was one of the things about the city that immediately seemed odd.

One friend of ours says he'll give pencils to kids who fail to tell jokes, while any who even try to be funny can count on getting a candy bar. I know of one 8-year-old boy who, for the moment, is saying he's not going to go out tonight because of the pressure of having to perform repetitively for the benefit of strangers.

But for the locals, corny jokes are so much a part of Halloween culture that they're surprised to learn they're not the custom everywhere else.

"When I was a kid, it was required," says Garrison, the alt-weekly editor. "I don't think anyone slammed the door in your face, but you had to tell a joke."

It came as a shock when he moved for a time to Austin, Texas, and kids there didn't come to his door ready with a quip.

"I'd ask them, 'What's your joke?' " he says, "and they looked at me like I was crazy."

Last year, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch posted a video of 90 Halloween Jokes in 10 Minutes.

[Journalist Alan Greenblatt is a frequent contributor to NPR.Org.]

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.Npr.Org.

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