A simple Christmas lunch video from the Dougherty Dozen launched TikTok’s latest viral meme: the Black Santa napkin. After mom Alicia Dougherty included festive plates and a Black-Santa-shaped napkin in her children’s lunches, TikTok users quickly latched onto a clip of her mentioning it, remixing, reenacting, and generally memeing the moment. What began as a wholesome holiday prep has transformed into a chaotic trend spanning sped-up voice edits, fan tributes, all centered around the Black Santa napkin.
What is the Black Santa Napkin meme?
TikTok meme videos about the Black Santa napkin come in a few varieties. One of the first to go viral was a simple remix altering the speed of Alicia Dougherty’s voice as she says the line, “and a Black Santa napkin.” This inspired similar videos that soon slid into the fan edit genre, some adding additional footage from the Dougherty Dozen account with strange lighting and rapid transitions.
Other posts leaned into an existing trend of reenacting Dougherty Dozen videos or imitating the way Alicia talks. In a video from April 9, 2025, that gained over a million views, user @nacho_average_nick referred to this as a “vocal stim” before delivering the Black Santa napkin meme line.
A third variety, like the one posted by @thirtytwoinchbussdown on April 14, refers to a whole new type of girl—the Black Santa napkin girl. That one earned over 1.2 million views in two weeks.
As of April 28, the TikTok hashtag #blacksantanapkin hosts 2,233 videos.
@thirtytwoinchbussdown #blacksantanapkin #alexdougherty #pinterest #aesthetic #doughertydozen #minifridgerestock ♬ Come Back (Buddha Remastered 2001) – The Five Stairsteps
How the Black Santa napkin meme started
The account @doughertydozen posted the original video on Dec. 19, 2025. The footage shows Alicia sorting out a packed lunch for all (at the time) 11 of her kids with a Christmas theme, nabbing over eight million views.
@doughertydozen What did you have for lunch? #Christmas #ChristmasLunch #PackingLunches #LunchIdeasForKids #BreakfastForLunch #HolidayVibes ♬ Cooking – Oleg Kirilkov
On Jan. 2, 2025, TikTok creator @ljc11212 posted one of the first simple remixes of the Black Santa napkin clip, earning over three million views. The sound is no longer available, but reposts of the original reveal a TikTok classic—speeding up and slowing down Alicia’s voice as the clip repeats.
The meme picked up traction in April when users targeted the Black Santa napkin video as part of the accuracy reenactment trend. In this meme, people attempt to imitate the voice, tone, and cadence of a speaker from a viral video, often claiming something like 99.99 percent accuracy.
Who are the Dougherty Dozen?
The Dougherty Dozen consists of Alicia’s 12 biological, adopted, and foster kids. She has multiple social media accounts, including on Instagram and Facebook, as part of the large family gimmick that has been so successful online and on TV over the years. These families are typically some type of conservative Christian following a doctrine to have as many kids as possible, but Alicia appears to be more of a progressive mom.
On Instagram and TikTok, Alicia posts videos nearly daily, with many of them showing her preparing meals for all those kids. She also does grocery haul posts, general day-in-the-life vlogs, and clips of the kids performing dances.
Alicia decided to start adopting after she and her husband Josh, endured 11 miscarriages and other fertility issues. Six of the adoptees have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD), and at least two of the foster kids came from homes deemed unsafe by authorities. She does have four biological kids, as well.
Why Black Santa is ‘controversial’
The draw of the Black Santa napkin meme likely has something to do with the rather intense controversy around the idea of a non-white Santa that cropped up around 2013. During the Obama years, when inclusiveness was cool and nobody had yet used “DEI” as a slur, the idea that Santa could and even should be thought of as Black took off online.
On Dec. 10, 2013, writer and journalist Aisha Harris wrote an essay for Slate titled “Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore.” This sent then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly into a rage after she took the piece too seriously.
“This is so ridiculous, yet another person claiming it’s racist to have a white Santa,” she declared. “And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white.”
This only resulted in progressives pushing the idea of Black Santa harder until some companies began making Black Santa Christmas decorations. Even amid anti-diversity backlash from the current administration, these still exist somewhere.
More Black Santa Napkin meme videos
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