25 years of Xmas with Xtina
LOTS of thoughts on Christina Aguilera: Christmas in Paris
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I’m pleased to report that I’ve been celebrating Christmas as much as humanly possible!!!!! Aside from being the woman who drank the most Black Irish in the city of New York, I also started a “Trees” album on my phone. When all of my travels are done, I will have seen Christmas trees in six states! So simple, yet so whimsical.
I went to see the tacky, over-the-top Christmas lights in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn and they did not disappoint. It’s truly the Times Square of Christmastime. There were multiple full-sized Auntie Anne’s trucks, hot cocoa stands, branded merch, and large groups led by designated tour guides. It’s insane, and I enjoyed every second of it.
I also went to see the Christina Aguilera: Christmas in Paris concert movie in theaters prior to its streaming release, and – as always – I had a lot of thoughts. More on that below. (It’s a long one today! It’ll cut off in your email inbox so make sure to click through to open the whole thing.)
In case you missed it:
It’s imperative that we stop naming arenas dumb things. Welcome back to The Meadows!!
Make Mariah Carey Black Irish-themed cocktails, but don’t drink them consecutively like I did!!
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I personally love Christina Aguilera’s My Kind of Christmas album and thoroughly enjoy singing it, to the chagrin of everyone around me. In Christina’s case, “My Kind of Christmas” is a melismatic one. Though her signature melisma, growls, and vocal runs deeply permeate (and some say ruin) each song, I consider the album a classic in the Millennial Christmas Music Canon. This year marks the 25th anniversary of My Kind of Christmas, along with the introduction of a celebratory album and concert film, Christina Aguilera: Christmas in Paris. There were three main components of the show:
Christina performing on stage at the famous Eiffel Tower landmark, backed by a band, orchestra, dancers, and vocalists
Christina performing on stage with female dancers at the Crazy Horse Paris, a cabaret and strip club known for its nude dancers
Christina exploring Paris while reciting an emotional monologue, in between every block of 2-4 songs
I’ve seen Xtina once in concert, 9 months pregnant, stretched out on a chaise lounge. It was amazing. After not being engaged with her material for 10+ years (although I consider Stripped God-tier), I was really interested to get into with Christina’s new era with fresh eyes and ears. This clean slate in Millennial audience expectations is exactly what Christina was hoping for, even though none of these are new songs. Sonically, she was fabulous, per usual. Christina is as vocally talented as she has always been. If you’re someone like me who doesn’t want to skimp on high notes and big belts, Christina will always deliver. Sadly, there was no key change in the revamped version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, but I’ll live.
While Christina’s vocal performance is consistent, she doesn’t want the audience to mistake her longevity for inertia or legacy status for a nostalgia play. She repeated that she did not want this concert to be about nostalgia somewhere between 2 and 4 times, despite recognizing that Christmas in and of itself, like any tradition, tends to be high-key nostalgic. I understand the point she’s trying to make though. She has been fighting being pigeonholed her entire career and wants to become a legacy act without becoming a watered-down, washed up, or caricatural version of herself. Seems more like the Streisand Effect to me, bringing attention to her fear of being a nostalgic has-been when no one sees her that way. I don’t!
“While Christina’s performance is consistent, she doesn’t want the audience to mistake her longevity for inertia or legacy status for a nostalgia play.”
IMHO, the best part of the show was featuring another legacy artist with relentless energy, dynamism, and talent. I nearly jumped out of my seat and choked on a kernel of popcorn with excitement when living legend Sheila E. played “Little Drummer Boy”!!!12 In addition to Sheila E., she sang “Ave Maria” as a duet with French singer-songwriter Yseult. It was so beautiful!! But Christina is not known for being an easy collaborator. She has always emitted a salty energy, likely due to the fact that she has been pejoratively compared to Britney Spears every day since 1993.3 Literally a dozen celebrities have directly or indirectly spoken out about her being heartbreakingly rude. Mariah spoke of her “questionable behavior”. She even apparently had beef with Mickey Mouse!
Christina included her most famous and contentious collaboration in the Moulin Rouge-inspired part of the show. Although I’m sure that Mýa, Pink, and Lil’ Kim got their bag for that “Lady Marmalade” sample, this solo version’s lyrics were adjusted accordingly.4 The part where Missy Elliott gives shoutouts, “Christina. P!nk. Lil’ Kim. Mýa. Rockwilder, baby. Moulin Rouge. Misdemeanor here.” was replaced by the backing vocalists repeating CHRISTINA. CHRISTINA. CHRISTINA. over and over. I was so amused by this. It was as if Christina was trying to remind everyone that she’s still number one on the call sheet, despite being in competition with no one.
“It was as if Christina was trying to remind everyone that she’s still number one on the call sheet, despite being in competition with no one.”
The burlesque subset of songs also included a reworked, oversexed jazz version of “Genie in a Bottle” and “Santa Baby”-ified version of Burlesque’s “Express”. She holds on tightly onto her diva status and sex-positive ethos but still strives to distance herself from her bubblegum baby debut era. Not that she’s a family-oriented artist, or that I am old-fashioned, but the overt sexuality – during a Christmas special – felt like a bit of an overcorrection to me. It’s completely valid to want to be seen and appreciated in her current form rather than reduced and compared to a teenage version of herself, but unfortunately, Christina’s physical appearance has been more famous than her music for over a decade.
In her relentless pursuit of continued perfection – including the ultra-skinny frame and extraordinary financial success of her youth – she has become the Bionic woman: perfectly engineered to meet the media and society’s real and perceived aesthetic expectations of her. I’m not being dramatic when I say her cosmetic surgeon should’ve had a line in the credits. There were so many gratuitous shots of her disruptively large breast implants as she penned a letter in a hotel room, her alleged BBL as she ran in slow motion at the base of the Eiffel Tower, and her chiseled-to-the-bone nose showcasing her flawless profile as she dreamily looked up into the starry night sky.5 I was anxious that her outrageous, nearly floor-length hair extensions would get caught in something as she passed by the famous [metal] locks that lovers and friends had secured on the bridge before her.
“[Christina] has become the Bionic woman: perfectly engineered to meet the media and society’s real and perceived aesthetic expectations of her.”
I found myself analyzing the movie’s choices in showcasing her body as much as her music. Maybe this is something other viewers would not notice, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how every scene was engineered to make her look as young and desirable as possible. This really got me thinking about the state of body positivity, negativity, neutrality, and acceptance in the current state of the world. (It’s bad.) Post-2010s-era body positivity sentiment has arisen, saying we shouldn’t comment on people’s bodies anymore. I’m actually gonna disagree here. This is not about policing people’s physical appearances, nor is it about celebrity “accountability”, transparency, or obligation to inform the public when they got work done. It’s about instating media literacy and rebuilding a modicum of shared reality. When the words of the year are “rage bait”, “slop”, and “brain rot”, it is imperative that we stop believing what we see at face value. Stars are just like us, in that they have the same insecurities and hangups that ‘normal people’ do. Stars are not just like us, in that they are often financially resourced and professionally required to strictly adhere to a prohibitively narrow beauty ideal.
“When the words of the year are “rage bait”, “slop”, and “brain rot”, it is imperative that we stop believing what we see at face value.”
Christina has had a LOT of cosmetic work done, to the point where I was repeatedly distracted from her talent. Sure, her work is her business and prerogative. But weaponizing choice feminism as a defense for plastic surgery is an ignorant refusal to recognize that we all exist under societal hierarchies, constructs, norms & conventions that make people so insecure and fixated on their appearance they spend all of their time, money, and attention buying things to raise their self-esteem. Aguilera, a female celebrity in an aestheticized industry, is particularly vulnerable to this trap, as society places greater (and more volatile) value on her riches, power, and visibility. Especially in our current political climate, it’s important to work together to dismantle oppressive, unrealistic, unattainable, and physically/psychologically dangerous beauty standards. By these standards, she is an objectively beautiful person. Gorgeous! Stunning! But the fact that she is becoming the blueprint for someone who wants to get a facelift in their forties just makes me so sad.
“Especially in our current political climate, it’s important to work together to dismantle oppressive, unrealistic, unattainable, and physically/psychologically dangerous beauty standards.”
In parallel to beauty standards in the year 2025, I was also thrown by the seemingly earnest message of it all. Christina has always had High School Bully energy, like the girl who said she’s your “best friend” then talked shit about you immediately afterward. I’m all for growing, learning, evolving, and becoming a better person, but I don’t need her to be “healed”, I need her to make good music. Dressing super cunty in a church and gazing off into the distance was campy and unserious, but this unintentionally imbued the film with comedic heart and landed well with the girls, gays, and theys who were in my New York City movie theater. It seems odd that she brings up faith so explicitly until this artistic choice is placed in broader industry context. Christian and Country were two prominent mainstream genres in 2025, making its listeners part of valuable market segments. Music industry decisions (both creative and financial) based on geopolitics isn’t new though. It’s like how immigration patterns of the late 90s and early 2000s led to America’s “Latin Explosion”, and specifically, Mi Reflejo. (Banger!!)
“I don’t need her to be “healed”, I need her to make good music.”
To the traditionally religious, something like this would seem blasphemous (e.g. Madonna and Lady Gaga using religious imagery, particularly Catholic imagery, which is fabulously grandiose and ornate). But to the average, Middle America person who has a more modern take on religion (i.e. socially conservative), it’s like she’s pandering to reach a broader audience (à la Gwen Stefani). I talked to my friend Colette Shade, author of Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything about what being a socially progressive person of faith can look like, and while it is absolutely possible, something about Christina’s performance of religion felt too uncanny.
All of her monologues were in a similar vein of late-stage therapy-speak adoption, trying to prove that she is a distinctly different version of herself. Tonally, it sounded like she was doing a voiceover for a MasterCard commercial, supported by a dramatic and sentimental orchestral soundtrack:
“Now, I still have that fire, but it burns differently. It’s steadier, deeper, more purposeful.
Reinvention isn’t running away from the past, it’s honoring it while making space for what’s next. Music has been a constant through every chapter – it’s my language, my diary, my connection to the world.
Though every sound, every lyric, every reinvention, I’ve found new ways to speak my truth. Paris feels like the perfect mirror for that – timeless but ever-changing, rooted in tradition but fearless about the future.
It reminds me that artistry never stops evolving. The city rebuilds itself every day, yet somehow, it always remains Paris.
I think that’s the gift of longevity – learning how to change without losing yourself. To trust your instincts. To keep creating, even when no one’s watching. To follow the spark that started it all.
After 25 years, I don’t take any of this for granted – the music, the audience, the chance to still do what I love. As I look to the future, I feel that same spark that brought me here in the first place – the desire to create, to connect, to keep evolving, because the heart of it all is love.
Twenty five years later, I’m still here, still grateful, still inspired, and still believing that the best chapters are yet to be written.
I thoroughly enjoyed the performance, but it left me wanting more for Christina. (Notice I said FOR not FROM.) She wants to continue writing her story, albeit in a chicken-or-egg kind of way. Who will let go of Christina’s past first, the media, the public, or her? As soon as the resentment of being second place – to Britney, to Pink, to younger pop artists, to her younger self – no longer rules her self-perception, or at least the packaging of her “reinvention” narrative, she will be able to move forward as an artist.
Now, she’s still stuck in a transitional phase. What does an original, monocultural Main Character do when access to Main Character Energy has been not only democratized, but obliterated? She ended her concert by saying, “Be good to yourself.” It reminded me of Jerry Springer’s old sign off, “Take care of yourself and each other”, and how now, people are more obsessed with themselves – their lives, their screens, their individualized algorithms – than with her. Aguilera mentions in the monologue above to keep creating, even when no one’s watching. I hope she does, and I can’t wait to see what she’ll have in store.
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You may know Sheila E. as part of Prince’s band, Nicole Richie’s aunt, or the original singer of “The Glamorous Life”, covered by Eden’s Crush and featured on Michael Kors glory days.
I don’t even like that song! The Jessica and Ashlee Simpson version is an exception, because obviously.
Not getting into this today, but astrologically, it makes sense…
Not that Pink needs the bag anymore! Pink’s career success has far outshone Christina’s and she no longer has anything to prove. I still would really love to hear her sing Christina’s part in “Lady Marmalade”, though.
I know people are divided on Lorry Hill, but I personally think her videos are a fantastic tool in media literacy and deconstructing the facade of American beauty ideals. She alleges that Xtina spent $470k on cosmetic procedures, including several nose jobs, boob jobs, bleph lift, insane amount of dermal filler, BBL, lipo, veneers, etc.