Olivia Rodrigo’s First Christmas Song, “Take Me Home (4 Christmas),” Meets the Family With Cynthia Nixon

All Olivia Rodrigo wants for Christmas is for her boyfriend’s grandma to think she’s cool. “Take Me Home (4 Christmas),” her first holiday song, arrived Thursday (Nov. 5) at 8 p.m. ET, and it is about the most nerve-racking December ritual there is: meeting the extended family on their turf, Pitchfork reports. She wrote it with her usual collaborators Dan Nigro and Amy Allen. Watch the video below.

The video stars Saturday Night Live’s Ben Marshall, also of the comedy trio Please Don’t Destroy, as her boo, and Cynthia Nixon as his mom. It opens with Rodrigo cleaning up after an all-night rager and stepping over Marshall passed out on the floor, then plays out her fantasy of being taken home for the holidays, with scenarios that Rolling Stone calls very *The Family Stone*-inspired. Nixon is the welcoming future in-law. Rodrigo joins in charades, builds gingerbread houses and helps carve a Christmas bird.

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The Nixon casting is a fan’s move. Rodrigo told Jimmy Fallon earlier this year that Sex and the City is her favorite show and that she has “watched every single episode maybe three times.” A scene between Nixon’s Miranda and Steve inspired a line in “Maggots for Brains” on her latest album, Rolling Stone notes, and Nixon later posted a video of herself dancing to “Drivers License” in her kitchen. In the days before the release, Rodrigo teased the video with a 40-second clip of Marshall and Nixon playing a game of Heads Up, Billboard says, and premiered the cover art: a photo of her on the floor in a red Santa hat and matching lipstick.

It is her first original holiday song. In 2020 she covered Joni Mitchell’s “River” for a High School Musical: The Musical: The Series holiday special, per Rolling Stone. The release lands as Mariah Carey’s annual “It’s time!” announcement kicks off the holiday-music season, Billboard notes, with Hilary Duff and Alanis Morissette also putting out holiday records this year.

The song also extends a busy fall. Her third album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, came out in June, and the remix of “Expectations” with Chappell Roan, which we covered in October, rose to No. 3 on the Hot 100. She is currently on her Unraveled Tour, with openers including Grace Ives, Wolf Alice, the Last Dinner Party and Die Spitz, and has dates booked through summer 2027. Earlier this year, her Daisy Chain Fields festival raised $20 million for women’s charities. Earlier this fall she also drew a “hard line” on AI, which we covered.