You're tuned to the good stuff

A Very Cuban Christmas

Saturday Night LiveSNL
SKETCH-O-VISION
A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.

The setup

Gloria Estefan and Pitbull host a holiday special celebrating restored U.S.-Cuba relations, until a parade of famous Cubans and Cuban-adjacent guests keeps derailing the broadcast.

Community rating

– / 10

The funny people

Meet the cast. 11

Say it with us

Highly quotable.

Hi, I'm Hurley from Lost. And yeah, I am Cuban, dude.

Swing your dreidel round and round

The premise

Here’s the bit.

Cecily Strong and Taran Killam play Gloria Estefan and Pitbull as co-hosts of a joint NBC-Cubavision Christmas special marking the thaw in relations between the two countries. Their guests include Hurley from Lost, Scarface's Tony Montana and his girlfriend, and a gleeful Elian Gonzalez, whose boat-crossing fame is promptly challenged by an outraged Diana Nyad. After a pitch for tiny cups of coffee, Cuba Gooding Jr. introduces Raul Castro, who fumbles holiday greetings alongside a Santa-suited Fidel, and Barack Obama beams in from Hawaii to oversell the benefits of the new deal. The special ends with Pitbull performing a Hanukkah song for the Christmas broadcast.

The rabbit hole continues

One more couldn’t hurt.

More from across the archive.

Explore the show