‘Martha Holidays’ On The Roku Channel Is A Hype Video For The Whole Martha Stewart Vibe

Martha Stewart’s new Roku Channel series, Martha Holidays, is by no means her first Christmas rodeo. Longtime fans may recall the time when her special guest Aretha Franklin shocked Martha by pouring 2 liters worth of Vernor’s over the heritage ham Martha had just been introducing. We would also be remiss not to mention Ana Gasteyer’s legendary turn in the “Martha Stewart’s Topless Christmas” SNL skit, which appears to be missing from the version of that episode streaming on Peacock. 

Yet even after all of these years, I am still having a hard time figuring out who or what Martha Stewart is for. She’s a nice white lady from Connecticut who parlayed a catering business into a massive media empire. She is a female celebrity who defies US society’s general revulsion for women who look like they are over 30. She is a polarizing figure who somehow became more endearing by going to prison and then hanging out with Snoop Dog. (If that’s not rehabilitation, then I don’t know what is.)

Anyway, Actual Martha Stewart is in rare form in her Roku Channel series (three Thanksgiving episodes were released in late November, and three Christmas eps just dropped earlier this week, along with a New Year’s Eve installment). Episode 4 (“Martha’s Favorite Christmas Cookies”) features Martha making Christmas cookies with her niece Sophie. They make Noel Nutballs, cutout cookies with royal icing, spritz cookies (basically sugar cookies with preserved fruit in the middle) and Vienna tarts. Throughout a day-long cookie making marathon, Martha assures us how easy and fun and simple it is to, say, do a sponge paint effect on the frosted cutout cookies. She delivers these words of encouragement with a pot rack festooned with glowing copper pots and holiday greenery in the background. Your home kitchen may or may not have this feature, and may or may not have invisible hands that whisk away dirty bowls and spatulas as they are used. 

Episode 5 (“Gorgeous Gingerbread Houses From Start to Finish”) raises the stakes. Making a gingerbread replica of the three-building barn complex on your estate, as it turns out, requires an industrial sheeter, which moves things from the realm of the aspirational to the realm of the fanciful. Martha has a gingerbread guy — as one does — not a gingerbread man, but a man who is a gingerbread specialist as part of her retinue. His name is Jason, and Martha mentions offhand that one of the most iconic gingerbread projects of theirs was Gingerbread Downton Abbey. The way Martha says it makes it sound as if there are several iconic gingerbread houses they have built that she could have mentioned, which, I have to admit, is a flex. Jason shows us how to make caramel windows for the gingerbread house, and he diligently assembles the several hundred pieces of gingerbread needed for the finished product. There is more royal icing, and Martha helpfully points to the things on the roof and tells us, “those are called cupolas.” 

It’s hard to know for sure, but I would guess there are close to 100 hours of work sunk into the gingerbread replica of Martha’s horse barns. This masterpiece sums up Martha Stewart’s perverse genius. She takes a simple thing and elevates it to a breathtaking level. Along the way, though, it loses its function. In my experience, gingerbread houses are little sheds you slather with frosting, stud with gumdrops, and gobble up soon after completion. Eating Martha’s creation would be like smashing a Lego fortress you spent all day constructing. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine what you do with something like this — as Mallory Archer would say, “that’s how you get ants.” 

The challenge for any kind of home, kitchen, garden TV programming around the holidays is that it has to be at odds with what its viewers mostly do. This dynamic is in full force the final installment in Martha’s Roku Christmas trilogy. Most people who celebrate Christmas have a box or two of Christmas stuff in the attic that they put up sometime after Thanksgiving, and then take down after Christmas. Having the same person putting up the same decorations year after year is not great TV, so there is a need for TV personalities like Martha Stewart to change things up from year to year. Which is how you end up with twin gold Christmas trees. The gold carries to the peripheral decorations, and also to the cardigan Martha wears while she makes her special eggnog, which has rows of gold sequins on it. 

The tree that Martha’s tree guy Kevin decorates in Episode 6 (“Celebrating Christmas”) is what appears to be a gold artificial tree, decorated with gold ornaments in various shapes and sizes, mostly gold balls. There are lots of schools of thought about how to decorate a Christmas tree, but in this instance, Martha seems to be summoning a tree she saw at Gianni Versace’s place in Miami in 1988. 

Kevin and Martha add more decorations they made to the tree. In keeping with the theme, the ornaments are embossed gold leaf medallions they made out of something called “paper clay.” It is certainly Martha’s choice to decide how much of her life she wants to put in TV, but every Christmas tree I have ever known has ornaments with stories, and particular connections to people who are present or absent from the celebration. The lack of personal touch her results in something that looks like it belongs in a Nordstrom’s instead of in someone’s house.

The episode concludes with a present wrapping tutorial. The wrappings are designed to coordinate with the metallic tones of the Christmas tree. Again, in terms of what Christmas involves for human beings, usually the gifts under the tree do not match, because different people put gifts for different other people under the same tree. In her commitment to bold and unconventional colorways for Christmas, this episode will appeal to folks who miss former First Lady Melania Trump’s approach to Christmas decor. 

The episodes of this special are filled with throwbacks to earlier Martha Christmas — to show she’s been in the gingerbread game for a minute, or simply to show that Martha is, and always has been, Martha. It would be nice if it were more commonplace, but there is something refreshing about Martha regarding a 30 year old picture of herself and not making some comment about how young she looked then and how old she looks now. Martha’s job is to look like Martha. 

After watching these episodes, I am maybe less sure than ever about what or who they are for. When I asked some friends if they watch Martha more for the general vibe or more for actual projects, the consensus was that her shows are more for vibes, but her cookbooks are solid resources for actual kitchen stuff. One of the nice things about being a multimedia brand like Martha is that you can differentiate a bit between your TV and your print personas. Martha does mention a couple of her many cookbooks during this episode, and ultimately, I think that her Roku Christmas special is basically a hype video. Even if you don’t do all of the things, Martha wants you off the couch and in the kitchen, creating holiday cheer to the best of your abilities. 

Jonathan Beecher Field was born in New England, educated in the Midwest, and teaches in the South. He Tweets professionally as @ThatJBF, and unprofessionally as @TheGurglingCod. He also sometimes writes for Avidly and Common-Place.