Mindy Kaling and BFF B.J. Novak Have a Grand Plan to Surprise Her Kids for Christmas

Though some Christmas traditions have been put on the back burner this year due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic—neighborhood Christmas parties, Christmas eve dinner with the extended family, white elephant gift swaps, etc.—new traditions have been born. Mindy Kaling told designer Tory Burch in a December 18th interview that her best friend B.J. Novak has started a new tradition with her two kids, Katherine and Spencer, and it involves Novak dressing up as Santa Claus.

“When you have your own kids, you can kind of make stuff up and then just decide that you’re going to do that every single year,” Kaling told Burch. “And so, this year, what I think we’re going to do is my daughter and I are going to make cookies and apple cider, and we’re going to be in the kitchen. And then [Katherine’s godfather] B.J. Novak…is going to show up and go to the living room where the tree is in a Santa costume.”

Kaling noted that the funniest part of this brand-new tradition is that she and her kids are Hindu and Novak is Jewish so this is really, like, cultural appropriation on our part.

The Mindy Project star said that the plan is to lure Katherine into the living room with jingle bells, where she’ll find Novak, dressed as Santa, asleep on the couch. With two sitcom writers at the helm of this plan, the entire backstory of why Santa is there is bulletproof.

[Santa] needed to take a rest, Kaling said, noting that Novak will also have a huge bag of toys with him.

In October, Kaling told Today‘s Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager that Novak is “so attached to my older child, my daughter. When I said, you know, ‘B.J., if something happens to me, it’s not like I have a husband, like you have to just take the kids.’ And he’s like ‘Oh, my God, don’t tempt me.'”

We hope Kaling documents this new tradition in the making. Novak dressed as Santa may just have to be framed and added to our own Christmas decoration collection.