Jesus never put up a tree and exchanged gifts, or left cookies out for Santa. He never made a harried last-minute trip to the mall, or spent Christmas Eve cursing at a toy that he couldn't put together. He celebrated Passover. So, if you want to be more like Jesus, pass the matzo.

Carey’s joke hinges on an anachronism: modern Christmas customs (trees, Santa, mall shopping, assembling toys) are treated as if they were part of Jesus’s life, only to be punctured by the historically grounded reminder that Jesus, as a first-century Jew, would have observed Passover. The punchline—“pass the matzo”—uses the language of holiday conviviality to redirect “be more like Jesus” rhetoric away from consumerized Christmas stress and toward historical and religious specificity. Beneath the humor is a critique of how contemporary culture often conflates Christianity with modern seasonal rituals and commercial pressures rather than with the historical Jesus’s actual context.