Netflix & Sabrina Carpenter’s Retro Christmas TV Special Revival

Carpenter’s Pop-Culture Clout

Although Carpenter has been a figure in the entertainment industry for more than a decade, 2024 has been her year. The star’s latest catchy sound bites have set the internet alight: her earworm lyrical phrase “I’m working late, ‘cause I’m a singer” from her smash-hit single Espresso was used in more than 1.4 million TikTok videos this year (TikTok, 2024). With more than 1.6 billion streams (Billboard, 2024), Espresso also soared to the top of Spotify’s annual worldwide most-streamed tracks chart (Spotify, 2024). Carpenter’s viral success has translated to unprecedented concert ticket sales. On American ticket resale platform StubHub, sales for Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet US tour (of her 2024 album of the same name) are up 44-fold from her previous tour, 2023’s Emails I Can’t Send, leading to projections that she’ll be StubHub’s best-selling female artist for 2025, as Short n’ Sweet travels overseas (StubHub, 2024).

For her Netflix Christmas special, Carpenter harnessed her particular appeal. With her all-American charm and a 1960s starlet aesthetic, she evoked the campy Christmas tone of classic festive TV, while her knowing, very online attitude, best illustrated by innuendo-filled raunchy lyrics and whip-smart humour – delivered in asides to the audience – appealed to her young fans.

A Very Nonsense Christmas: Kitsch-mas & Online Buzz

A Very Nonsense Christmas (named after Carpenter’s 2023 song Nonsense) leaned heavily on 2024’s rising kitsch-mas aesthetic (a style categorised by joyful-meets-garish festive maximalism), exemplified by Carpenter’s theatrical Christmas-themed costumes and a set mimicking festive episodes of 1970 and 1980s sitcoms. For more on brands leveraging kitsch-mas, see Holiday Retail 2024.

The special co-starred other musicians who’ve experienced a dramatic rise in fame in 2023/24, including American emerging pop megastar Chappell Roan (see Dirty Pop Culture in Look Ahead 2025), who joined Carpenter for a cover of Wham!’s Last Christmas, and South African singer Tyla (see Women Fuel Afrobeats Ascendancy in African Pop Culture Goes Global), who covered Donny Hathaway’s This Christmas.

The programme received 2.6 million views on Netflix in the two days following its premiere (Netflix, 2024), but fan fervour has been most prominent online. Carpenter’s Instagram launch post for the special has received more than five million likes (Instagram, 2024), and a TikTok fan clip from Ukrainian creator @NKEditts has surpassed 5.8 million views and 1.6 million likes (see Netflix Moments Champions Fan-Fed Buzz in Pop Culture Pulse: November 2024 for more on online fandom’s ‘clip culture’).

Netflix’s Tent-Pole TV Strategy

In an effort to distinguish itself in a saturated streaming market, Netflix has been experimenting with tent-pole TV since late 2023, spanning live one-offs (including the 2024 Screen Actors Guild Awards – see The Brief), comedy specials with marquee comedians, and sports fixtures. The platform is hoping this strategy will soothe restless streaming audiences: 52% of Americans feel streaming services are becoming too expensive – a 77% increase since 2020 (GWI, 2024).

The plan has been well received by audiences. Netflix’s star event of 2024, live coverage of the November 15 boxing match between American influencer Jake Paul and career fighter Mike Tyson, surpassed 100 million viewers globally – making it the most-streamed singular sporting event of all time (Netflix, 2024). Carpenter’s Christmas special joins other events-based festive programming: on December 25, Netflix will premiere its inaugural live coverage of American football’s NFL Christmas GameDay, including a hotly anticipated half-time performance by Beyoncé.