‘Tis the season and blah blah blah.

Okay, I’m not really an Ebenezer (or Scrooge, if you will) when it comes to the holidays. Christmas is cool by me. BUT, I do like celebrating this festive, historically complicated holiday on my own terms. I go out of my way to find alternative or offbeat Christmas music (and not just run-of-the-mill punk covers of “Jingle Bells” or whatnot). Books, TV and movies themed around the holidays must be a little strange to meet my approval.

For a weirdo like me, the old standards just don’t speak my language, and, let’s face it, they’re all a bit dusty and played out at this point. You hear the same handful of songs, re-recorded every year by whoever’s popular (I’m sure Katy Perry’s got a holiday album either on the shelves now or in the works); you see the same damn movies replayed ad nauseam, the biggest offender being A Christmas Story, which I actually like, but can never watch again because channels like to show it on 24-hour loops. Yeah, yeah, I get it, he gets his tongue stuck on the pole, and it’s funny; he’ll shoot his eye out, ha ha ha. No thanks.

If you’re like me (i.e., you dig Christmas, just not like everyone else digs it), then we have some things to discuss. Here are some excellent offbeat, weird, macabre and twisted holiday narratives to properly put you in the Christmas mood. To borrow a modern phrase, it will be a Festivus for the rest of us!

Not set during Christmastime proper, Hill’s third novel does offer us Christmasland, the eerily bright and cheery mental amusement park created by Charlie Manx. It’s a place where children stay children forever, retain their innocence. This includes, in addition to a permanent childlike sense of wonder about the world, a proclivity to rip the wings off butterflies and play “scissors-for-the-drifter.” See, innocence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. As Hill stated in an interview with Nightmare Magazine: "Much is made, in American society, about the wonder of childhood innocence, but innocent children are happy to burn ants with a magnifying glass because they don’t know better. It takes a sense of guilt, shame, and maturity to realize that sometimes your actions can be really unpleasant or painful for others." Also, Manx populates his amusement park by kidnapping children and eating their souls with his quasi-sentient Rolls Royce Wraith. Merry Christmas! How could a list about twisted Christmas stories not include this wonderfully grim tale of a greedy woman who murders her husband on Christmas Eve, then gets terrorized by an escaped, axe-wielding mental patient in a Santa suit? Being a TFTC classic, the horror is doled out in whacky, over-the-top measures, with a vibrant color palette not unlike the comics that inspired the series (a device also seen in the equally awesome Creepshow). It’s gross, it’s cheesy, and it’s absolutely fantastic: everything a twisted Christmas narrative should be. Neil Gaiman knows how to put a dark spin on classic narratives. Two stellar examples appear in his collection of short works, Smoke and Mirrors. The first, “Snow, Glass, Apples” blends Snow White with vampire mythos; the second, “Nicholas Was...” offers a decidedly morbid take on Santa’s yearly practices, casting the old God as an enslaved servant to his devious elves. Great stuff! Check out this animated Christmas card adaptation of the tale:

My favorite adaptation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Scrooged features one of Bill Murray’s most madcap performances; a gross-out zombie version of Jacob Marley; Buster Poindexter (AKA David Johansen from New York Dolls!) playing a nasty, cab-driving Ghost of Christmas Past; Murray and Carol Kane as the Ghost of Christmas Present beating the holy crap out of each other; and a pretty terrifying Ghost of Christmas Future with a flickering TV screen face. Plus a crazed Bobcat Goldthwait with a shotgun. This movie has it all! I haven’t actually read this book, though it has been on my radar for a while now, chiefly because I LOVE Krampus lore. I’ve included Brom’s book here as an introduction to the mythical demon, who in some European countries is said to travel alongside St. Nick, forming a kind of yin-yang pair, in which the latter doles out presents and good cheer to the good apples, while the former metes out punishment and pain for the bad seeds. Whereas we have the fairly innocuous and largely ignored tradition of placing lumps of coal in a rotten kid’s stocking, Krampus whips the naughty beasts with a wooden switch, stuffs them into a wicker basket and carries them down into hell (or throws them in the river, depending on who you ask). Head on over to Krampus.com for more info, free E-Cards and loads of other nasty goodies. Also this:

2013’s British Fantasy Awards winner for best novel, this “modern fantasy” tale uses Christmas to quickly evoke images of familial strength, good tidings and cheer, and then completely pulls the rug out from under these notions. Joyce’s tale isn’t exactly twisted, though it does subvert our notions of maturity, reality and right vs. wrong. As of this writing, I’m only about half-way through it, but I feel confident in saying this is definitely not your typical Christmas tale, and well-worth the accolades it’s received. From 1971 to 1978 (and again briefly in 2005), the BBC aired adaptations of classic ghost stories in the wee hours of Christmas Eve. According to Wikipedia and a few other online sources, telling spooky tales while Santa made his nightly rounds was a tradition before and after the Victorian era, and thus each adaptation comes from an M.R. James story (one of the best ghost story writers ever). Take a look at the trailer for the DVD box set and tell me those don’t look creepy (you might even be able to find a few full episodes on YouTube, but you didn’t hear that from me).