“December 24th, 9 pm…” - Make Jonathan Larson Your Christmas Eve Tradition

by Chris Peterson

Every year, right around now, it happens.

My feed fills up with the same line, posted earnestly, sometimes reverently, sometimes just tossed out into the void like a signal flare.

“December 24th, 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.”

No context needed. No explanation required. If you know, you know.

It’s funny how a lyric from Rent has quietly become one of the most reliable Christmas Eve traditions there is. Not an official one. No Hallmark branding. Just a collective pause from a bunch of theatre kids, former theatre kids, and people who once felt deeply seen by Jonathan Larson at exactly the right moment in their lives.

And maybe part of why it lands the way it does is because Larson himself was Jewish — an artist writing from just outside the holiday’s center of gravity. Christmas Eve, for him, wasn’t about pageantry or nostalgia. It was a night of waiting. Of watching the clock. Of standing slightly apart and observing what everyone else seemed so certain about. That outsider-within feeling is baked into his work, and it’s why it still resonates so deeply on this particular night.

Christmas Eve is already a strange night. The pressure’s off, but not completely. The work is done, but the feelings aren’t. You’re not quite in the holiday yet, not quite done with the year either. It’s a night built for reflection, even if you don’t mean it to be. Which makes it kind of perfect for Jonathan Larson, whose entire body of work lives in that exact in-between space.

So yes, I’m here to gently suggest that watching a Jonathan Larson piece on Christmas Eve should just… be a thing we do.

Not as homework. Not as some sacred ritual you have to get “right.” Just as a way of sitting with work that understands what it means to be unfinished.

If your choice is the Rent movie, I get it. Does it have flaws? Sure. But the spirit is still there. The love for these characters is unmistakable. There’s something genuinely moving about seeing that original cast, older now, still singing these songs like they matter. Because they do.

If you’re watching a proshot of Rent, honestly, you might have it best of all. The show lives so powerfully onstage. Messy, loud, imperfect, emotional in ways that can’t be cleaned up or softened. It reminds you that Rent was never meant to be pristine. It was meant to feel like a bunch of people grabbing microphones and telling you the truth before the clock ran out.

And then there’s tick, tick... Boom! — which I’ve said before and will keep saying — is, for my money, the best movie musical of the 21st century. Full stop. Not just because it’s well made, though it is. Not just because it’s inventive, though it absolutely is. But because it understands Jonathan Larson as a person, not a myth. It understands the panic, the ambition, the fear, the ridiculousness of believing your life has to mean something right now or it never will.

That’s a Christmas Eve movie if I’ve ever seen one.

All of Larson’s work circles the same questions. What does it cost to make art? What do you owe the people you love? How much time do you actually have? And what are you doing with it? These aren’t neat questions. They don’t come with bows. They sit with you. They nag. They show up when the room finally gets quiet.

Which is probably why that lyric keeps resurfacing every December 24th.

“From here on in, I shoot without a script.”

From here on in, I stop pretending I know how this all turns out. From here on in, I tell the story as honestly as I can.

That feels like the right energy for Christmas Eve. Not forced joy. Not compulsory gratitude. Just honesty. Presence. Taking stock.

So keep your traditions. I’m not here to replace It’s a Wonderful Life or your favorite Christmas album or whatever show you’ve watched every year since childhood.

But when the night settles in and the year feels close enough to touch, consider spending a couple of hours with Jonathan Larson. Let his work remind you that art doesn’t have to be finished to be meaningful. That community matters. That love is an action. That time is precious, but not something you have to outrun.

It’s not a bad way to welcome Christmas. And it feels like exactly the kind of tradition Jonathan would’ve understood.