Saturday Night Live took on the holidays with a sketch about dinner conversations among a divided America, but it was Kate McKinnon's debut as Greta Thunberg that had everybody talking. The SNL veteran portrayed the 16-year-old environmental activist at the very end of the show's cold open, and many fans thought it was the best part of the six-minute sketch.
The holiday-themed skit started with Aidy Bryant playing the Sam the Snowman, the iconic character voiced by Burl Ives in the 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. After viewers spied on three American families and their very different political dinner conversations, McKinnon (as Thunberg) "crashed" the sketch with a chilling warning as she proclaimed that in a decade, the North Pole and Sam the Snowman will have vanished from the planet.
"In 10 years, this snowman won't exist," McKinnon's Thunberg said of Bryant's character. "Her home will be a puddle. Santa, reindeer, the North Pole, all of it, gone. The ice caps will melt and the elves will drown."
The Swedish teen's SNL alter ego then promised to keep it light as she addressed Donald Trump. Thunberg has been in an ongoing social media feud with the U.S. president following his cynical reaction to her being named Time magazine's "Person of the Year."
"Merry maybe-our-last Christmas to all," she continued. "And Donald Trump, step to me, and I'll come at you like a plastic straw comes at a turtle. I can't believe I'm saying this to a 70-year-old man, but grow up!"
