Christmas-themed chicken dance viral video has netizens in stitches; Know its origin, creators, more

Move over Mean Girls, we have a new Christmas dance in town! A Christmas-themed video recently went viral on the internet and it is a dance-off between a group of girls and a flock of chickens. Dubbed the ‘chicken dance’ by netizens, this video is both entertaining and hilarious and people on social media cannot have enough of it. It is being shared across platforms and so far, we have seen it on TikTok, Instagram, X, Facebook, and even in WhatsApp group chats. So, where did this video come from, who made it, and why is it going so viral? Let us find out.

First, a brief overview of the video. It is a 28-second long video, made in TikTok’s Duet and Instagram’s Remix style where two videos play simultaneously next to each other. The first video is of a flock of chickens who can be seen grooving to the tune of Feliz Navidad (translation - Merry Christmas) by Jose Feliciano, a popular Christmas song. The second video is of a group of girls who imitate the moves of the chicken step-by-step. The video is hilarious and entertaining and reminds us of what the Christmas spirit is all about. If you want to watch the video, you can check it on Instagram here.

The viral video had us curious, so we went down the rabbit hole to find out where it came from and who were the creators behind this video.

Christmas chicken dance video: Origin, creators, and more

After a bit of research, we found out that the original video came from TikTok by a user with the handle ilgallinaio_special. TikTok is banned in India and we could not investigate further. But the fears of meeting a dead end disappeared once we found an Instagram handle by the same name.

A creator who is named Vamos Gallinaio has 199 posts of chicken dances. The creator has 24.2K followers on Instagram and over 2 million followers on TikTok. He posts videos of his chickens dancing (likely as he picks them up and controls their movement; we never see their feet) to different popular tracks, and even some dialogues while he hands them cute little props.

While we could not confirm his TikTok, it turns out that he has never gone viral on Instagram before this video. This video has 3.4 million views, 137K likes, and more than 1900 comments, and has been shared 140K times. These are massive numbers for a small channel like this. So, we dug a little deeper to understand how it went viral.

There was another half of the puzzle remaining, and it turns out this is where the virality question also gets answered. The three girls featured in the video were also shown as the contributor to this post. As per Instagram, if you are a contributor to a friend’s video, the post will show up in both your and your friend’s profile and will be shared with both of your followers.

The three girls in the post are Sarah McCreanor, also known as Smac (smacmccreanor), Malia Baker (maliabaker), and Kristi Moore Griffith (kmo_18). All three of them are dancers and content creators on social media. Both Baker and Griffith have a follower size similar to gallinaio in the 16-30K range. But McCreanor is also an actress and has featured in multiple TV Series. This is why she commands a massive 459K followers. We believe this was one of the primary reasons this video blew up in the first place. However, the presence of a celebrity was not the sole factor. The unique concept, hilarious execution, and the chicken deserve an equal amount of credit. The combined result was that even the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, could not stop himself from liking the video.