Christmas Special

For a 33-minute set billed as a holiday release, Mark Chalifoux’s Christmas Special is mostly an exercise in relaxed, Midwestern parenting comedy that happens to take place next to a decorated tree. Billed as a slight pivot once the comic noticed the stage decorations at his filming venue, the half-hour special relies on his easygoing, conversational presence to make the routine details of raising three daughters feel like a series of small, strange victories. Filmed in a strip-mall comedy club in Cincinnati, Ohio, and released on YouTube by production company Four by Three in December 2023, the set catches Chalifoux at a point in his career where his dad-focused writing was already well-honed. Aside from his stand-up, Chalifoux spent years as a writer for the popular social media brand The Dad, a background that shows in his tightly structured but breezy domestic bits. He spends his time on stage spinning stories about his kids’ bizarre creations, including a hand-drawn Christmas ornament featuring a crucified puppy, and the naming logistics that led to his second daughter being born on Dick Smith Avenue. The set also touches on his marriage to his high school sweetheart, which apparently succeeded because she simply said no when he tried to break up with her before college. Rather than chasing festive cheer, Chalifoux keeps his gaze trained on the suburban Midwest, finding his targets in unhinged Facebook rants about school levies and the dread of getting stuck in a Starbucks drive-thru chain in Mason, Ohio.