As a horror fan, I think we’re all familiar with this scenario. It’s finally October. The air is thick with the smell of Fall with leaves littering the ground. You know this means Halloween is right around the corner. You decide to go inside a store to see all the cool stuff on display. Maybe you’ll take home a new costume for a party or to take your kids trick or treating.
So many things practically begging to be purchased as you browse the seasonal section, mugs, plastic jack-o-lanterns to put around the house, oversized lawn decorations of horror characters, and Christmas Ornaments. Back up. Call me crazy, but that last thing feels out of place. Right off the bat, I want to say I love Christmas to the point I start putting things up for it on November 1st. In fact, my admiration for Halloween only beats it out by a hair. With that said, holy fuck is this holiday the equivalent of a black hole.
Especially living in the US, expect to start seeing stuff for Christmas pop up in October, to hear Christmas music starting in November, and all of that doesn’t go away until sometime in January. I know. When it comes to complaining about Christmas Creep, get in line, right? That’s only the appetizer for this article. What I want to focus on is the pushback.
In particular, I want to talk about Christmas horror movies. These are nothing new. Hell, a lot of slashers owe their existence to Black Christmas. However, there’s been more of a surge of them in the last decade or so. It seems every year a movie that puts the slay in Sleigh Ride gets added to the lineup. Terrifier 3 (which I think is the best in the series) saw massive success this year.
Speaking of, that’s a good example of what I’m referring to. It was released this year on October 11th (September 19 for Fantastic Fest) and October. I waited until after Halloween to see it because, well, it is a Christmas movie. Also, probably one of the most brutal horror movies you will watch. Art Claus and chainsaws go together like rum and eggnog.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think it was better to have my first viewing of it when I did, rather than when it was still October. Think about what Christmas represents, that being peace and harmony. Terrifier 3 turns all that into a gore stain on the bottom of the clown’s shoes. The contrast, watching it with holiday music and lights in the background enhanced the film for me. It will be a movie I watch at least once during the Xmas season.
With that said, is it a problem that these two holidays seem to keep bleeding into each other? I get it. Some people like to keep the mashed potatoes and peas on their plates separate, I imagine for the non horror Christmas lovers, it can be a bit jarring to keep seeing ads for movies about people being slaughtered during this festive time. Here’s the thing. Christmas and fear are no strangers.
Even before Xmas horror films, there were plenty of creatures designed to scare children into obedience that are associated with the holiday. If you want to know more about them, fellow writer Justin has recently posted an article on them that you can read here. As the sensitivity of Society increased we began eschewing the darker parts of the holiday. It’s similar to what happened with many fairy tales. We decided that a tall goat man didn’t need to come along, beat up naughty kids, and take them to hell for a year.
The lump of coal and lack of gifts was a significant enough punishment. Creatures like Krampus made more sense for the periods they were in since times were tougher back then and things such as children’s feelings were put on the back burner for more important matters. That isn’t to say parents back then had no love for their kids. It’s just that a lot may have been too focused on providing to show it as often as they would have liked. Given this, is it any wonder why people came up with these monsters?
They would spend hours in the town or village gathering what you need to prepare for winter. They didn’t want to come home to a bunch of screaming so they told a little white lie to make the children behave. Deceptive? Yes. Effective? For a while. Therefore, it could be argued that putting horror back in Christmas is taking it back to its roots. I don’t know if I entirely agree with this point. Going back to fairy tales, most of the monsters associated with the holiday have some kind of lesson or morality with them.
It’s not fear for the sake of it and I’m not saying horror on its own can’t teach anything. Hell, it’s great for social commentary. Just look at Night Of The Living Dead or The Twilight Zone (whose creator I wrote an article about that you can read here.) When bringing Christmas into it specifically, though, I think you need that aspect to be present (no pun intended) to truly make it holiday horror as opposed to something frightening that happens to be occurring during the holiday season. At the very least, in addition to the setting, certain themes associated with it need to be included such as family, togetherness, friendship, and things of that nature.
A Christmas horror movie can still be great without those things and even then I would still consider it such. I simply think having those elements makes the argument of taking Xmas back to its roots stronger. As with much, it all comes back to tradition. I tend to think of that word as the double-edged sword of humanity. It’s what defines culture, but it often ends up being a roadblock to progress. Then again, traditions evolve.
I think that’s what we’re seeing here. Christmas isn’t “becoming second Halloween” as this article is asking. Rather, I think the fact we are getting so much Christmas horror could be a sign it’s changing into something new. What does this mean for the whole Christmas creep problem regarding Halloween? I see it as a sort of Yang and Yin. Christmas, while considered a wholesome holiday by most, has its darker parts. By that same token, Halloween, a time for scares, can still be lighthearted.
As long as both holidays keep the core of what makes them great, I don’t have an issue with them bleeding into each other. Sometimes fusing them can make something great like Nightmare Before Christmas for example. In conclusion, I think to keep celebrations strong, we need to be open to mixing them up occasionally. With that, I wish you all a happy and fun holiday season.
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