Rooted in light, laughter, and lobbying, The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show (Wed/18-Thu/19, the Warfield, SF.) is continuing to branch out after seven years.
Reaching 40-plus American cities in 2024—including, for the first time, the South—the seasonal spectacular gifting audiences with all new material year after year persists in its mission of spreading unity and reclamation amid record-breaking anti-drag and anti-trans legislation.
San Francisco, already embodying these ideals, is a favorite stop for Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme—a place the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alums pine to return to every chance they get. Like the star atop the Christmas spruce, the birthplace of LGBTQIA equality beckons them with its promise of Qmunity.
“There are places where because of the community there, a member of the queer community feels instantly at home,” says Monsoon, who remembers her year and a half living in SF with great fondness. “I know many wonderful people there, like our mutual friend Peaches Christ. You know her and you know the city.”
“San Francisco has such a legacy, and every time we get to return, it feels like being a part of it,” adds DeLa. “It’s a place that represented a lot of freedom and joy for our community at a time when people everywhere weren’t experiencing that. So getting to be in that world is beautiful.”
I spoke to the duo, ahead of their two-night engagement, about the challenge of creating an entirely new show each year, keeping their collaboration fresh, and how their holiday traditions press on in the show today.
48 HILLS It’s a major deal that you write an entirely new holiday show each year. What’s new this time around?
BENDELACREME It is bonkers that we write a new show every year. It is always a race to the finish line, and we are always so proud of the work that we put into it. Many people would say we don’t have to write a new show every year, but we are driven to, and that’s because every year we want to reflect the culture we live in.
So what’s new this year is that we continue to take stock of the world around us, the things that are both joyful and dark—and we don’t shy away from them.
This year, the division is at an all-time high. That is a theme we are exploring in this year’s show, but, of course, in the signature Jinkx and DeLa style, through comedy, camp, and sparkle; it is Christmas after all. So we’re always returning to those classic Christmas tropes that give us all a sense of warmth and familiarity. We are doing another riff on another Christmas classic that we’ve never touched before, but with the Jinkx and DeLa spin, where we turn the whole thing on its head.
JINKX MONSOON There is a lot of great pop music this year. There are a lot of amazing female pop stars to pay homage to. We have an embarrassment of riches—topics and cultural moments both light and dark—to include in this year’s show. So it’s going to be fresh, brand new, and also classic Jinkx.
48 HILLS You have now known each other for 16 years. What keeps your collaboration interesting?
JINKX MONSOON Mutual trust and respect. If that wasn’t there, we wouldn’t be able to keep doing this. We had to come to a point where we said, “Let’s remove our egos from this and just put on the best show we can.” And year after year, we try to lean more and more into that.
Now, we’re at a point where we are very mindful and thoughtful of each other’s feelings and ways of working. But we have streamlined this process of working together so that we know that every joke, every little gag that we come up with is meant to serve the overall show. Neither one of us is the star. We create, star in, and perform this show as equal partners.
48 HILLS How do you ensure that your performances resonate with both the queer community and its allies?
JINKX MONSOON That comes from meticulous preparation. For years, we only had two or three weeks to build this show. So we would write it, rehearse it, tech it, and then begin to tour it—with about three weeks of prep time.
Now, we’ve gotten to the point where we can take two months of prep time, and that means we can put a lot of meticulous work into it. That meticulous attention to detail makes our show special to everyone, whether you know about drag or not. Our producer ensures this show invites you in as much as it is made specifically for this community.
BENDELACREME We do come at this from making work for the queer community. It’s about reclaiming the idea of homecoming and reinventing the idea of family togetherness. And we work to explore those topics and create levity within them because we are passionate about uplifting the queer community.
Those are universal themes, and if you come at it authentically and with the real intention of making people feel good, everyone will feel good because we all can relate to being and feeling alienated. When you do that work for the queer community, you realize that the queer community is not alone because this feeling is universal.
48 HILLS The holidays can be a tough time for the queer community. What message do you hope your holiday special conveys to queer viewers?
JINKX MONSOON You can create your own family and your own traditions. Though it sucks when your given family isn’t that supportive group of people, luckily the queer community is a global community. It’s not about who you love. It’s about who loves you. There is always a place for someone in the queer community if they come with an open heart, mindful and thoughtful intentions, and ready to love everyone equally.
BENDELACREME We want to emphasize reclamation—that you can make this what serves you. You can reinvent tradition but there are universal aspects.
If you peel away the Christianity and look at all the different types of winter celebrations, they’re all about light and coming together. It’s about the fact that we are facing the coldest, darkest part of the year. We know how important it is to gather in preparation for that and derive joy from that. So it’s not just that this time is difficult; it’s also that we carry on a human tradition of support at this time of year.
JINKX MONSOON One beautiful thing we’ve seen through the years is people finding that chosen family at our show because we create that safe space where that dialogue is had. We like to treat our shows like one big conversation between the two of us and between us and the audience. When you create that safe space and open dialogue, you find like-minded people. So it’s a whole thing that just continues to feed the other. We hold a space for community and the community has supported us in this artistic endeavor so we get to create a bigger space. Through the years, this ongoing support in our community has allowed us to create The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show as you now know it.
48 HILLS On a personal level, what does the holiday season mean to you? Are there any memories, traditions, or rituals that you carry with you when you celebrate today?
JINKX MONSOON DeLa and I have had very different relationships with the holidays. My grandma put on a big Christmas Eve party every year for the family, the extended family, the chosen family, the friends who had nowhere else to go, and the people who were visiting from out of town. DeLa helped me see how I could take the positive memories of my grandma’s Christmas Eve party from my childhood and infuse them into our show.
BENDELACREME When I was very young, Christmas felt magical. But around the time that I got into the double digits. I saw how dysfunctional the family was. Christmas became a difficult time. It was when everyone theoretically came together—but just physically. There was so much conflict and the type of loneliness you can only experience when people are together. I was so affected by that that I just hated Christmas. I never wanted to be there and never wanted to go back.
I started creating Christmas content because it gave me an excuse not to be there. “Sorry, I have a job; I can’t go.” But what that meant was that I got to create a family that brings me warmth and joy. That is exactly the thing that I was so sad I didn’t have.
It sounds sort of cheesy. It sounds like I’m selling it. But the reality is this show—and performing, in general—is my most joyous Christmas tradition. The people who we work with are the family that I get to spend the holidays with—and I would not have it any other way.
THE JINKX & DELA HOLIDAY SHOW Dec.18-19, The Warfield, SF. Tickets and more info here.
