Learn about the origin and creators of the viral video of a Christmas-themed chicken dance that has left netizens in stitches.
Mean Girls, step aside because there’s a new Christmas dance sensation in town! Recently, a video with a Christmas theme has taken the internet by storm. In this video, a group of girls engages in a dance-off with a flock of chickens, earning it the nickname ‘chicken dance’ among internet users. The video is not only entertaining but also incredibly funny, causing it to spread like wildfire across social media platforms. From TikTok to Instagram, X, Facebook, and even WhatsApp group chats, this video has been shared far and wide. Now, the question arises: where did this viral video originate, who created it, and what is the reason behind its immense popularity? Let’s delve into the details and find out.
First, a brief overview of the video. It’s a 28-second video made in the style of TikTok’s Duet and Instagram’s Remix, where two videos play side-by-side at the same time. The first video is of a flock of chickens, which can be seen squawking to the tune of Jose Feliciano’s Feliz Navidad (translation – Merry Christmas), a popular Christmas carol. The second video is of a group of girls imitating a chicken’s movements step by step. The video is fun and entertaining and reminds us what the spirit of Christmas is all about. If you want to watch the video, you can check it out on Instagram here.
The viral video got us curious, so we went down the rabbit hole to find out where it came from and who the creators of this video were.
The Christmas Hen Dance Video: Origins, Creators, and More
After a little 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 couldn’t investigate further. But the fear of meeting a dead end disappeared when we discovered the Instagram handle of the same name.
The creator named Vamos Gallinaio has 199 chicken dances. The creator has 24.2k followers on Instagram and over 2 million followers on TikTok. He posts videos of his chickens dancing (probably when he picks them up and controls their movement; we never see their feet) to various popular songs and even dialogues as he hands them cute little accessories.
While we couldn’t confirm her TikTok, it turns out she’s never gone viral on Instagram before this video. This video has 3.4 million views, 137,000 likes, over 1,900 comments, and has been shared 140,000 times. These are huge numbers for such a small channel. So we dug a little deeper to understand how it spread.
There was still half of the puzzle left, and this also shows the answer to the virality question. The three girls featured in the video were also shown as contributors to this post. According to Instagram, if you are the author of your friend’s video, the post will appear on both your and your friend’s profiles and will be shared with both 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 are dancers and content creators on social media. Both Baker and Griffith have a similar follower size to the gallinaio range of 16-30K. But McCreanor is also an actor and has appeared in several TV series. This is why he has a whopping 459,000 followers. We believe this was one of the main reasons why this video blew up in the first place. However, the presence of a celebrity was not the only factor. Unique concept, fun execution and chicken deserve equal credit. The result was that even the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, couldn’t stop himself from liking the video.
