Scary Santa

As it is Christmas, I figured I should talk about Santa. More importantly, about how we as cultural beings often love to turn a Patron saint to children into a killer. We love movies like Silent Night, Deadly Night, Don't Open till Christmas, or even Santa’s Slay. But why do we want Santa to be violent? It’s often exclusive to adults and the cynicism that comes with it, other times it would be the shock value, sometimes it’s a mixture of both.

Let’s chat about it.

Killer Santas in movies

Christmas horror seemingly first came around in the 1970s, starting with Whoever Slew Auntie Roo , Silent Night, Bloody Night and the Tales from the Crypt episode “And All throughout the House”, all released somewhere around 1972. While the first two are noticeable due to the Christmas setting, they don’t have the killer Santa we all know and love.

That honour comes from The Tales from the Crypt, often the pioneer of the silly and macabre. It would establish the trope of Santa as a deranged killer instead of the patron saint to children. There was also the general theme of marrying Christmas imagery with the grim horrors of the real world, like broken families, trauma and mental illness.

However, the killer Santa trope in horror would become famous thanks to Silent Night Deadly Night in 1984, featuring the deranged killer dressed as Santa we all know and love. It wasn’t the first, it wasn’t even the most original take on the killer Santa. In my opinion, that goes to Christmas Evil in 1980, which featured a very similar plot about a traumatised young man snapping and killing people dressed up as Santa.

It is shocking just how similar the two movies are in terms of theme, character arcs involving childhood trauma with Santa and adults appropriating Santa imagery to commit moral judgements on the populace. As I was researching this and learning the plots, I can’t help but wonder if Silent Night, Deadly Night had ripped off Christmas Evil. Regardless of how true that was, Silent Night Deadly Night unleashed a moral panic upon America and received a drumming from critics. Mental Floss’s Jake Rossen wrote an excellent article on the matter here.

The controversy didn’t really do much in the long run, aside from making an otherwise meh movie the focal point within film circles (a common result of culture war nonsense). Silent Night Deadly Night doesn’t really add anything new that Christmas Evil didn't do already, down to the shock value.This would go for on a while, with such entries like Silent Night Deadly Night 2 in 1987 and Deadly Games in 1989. All featuring killer Santas doing what they do best. SNDN 2 is the more infamous one because of that scene. You know that scene. Let’s check it out now!

Deadly Games is pretty unknown as killer Santa Movies go. Weirdly, it predates Home Alone by a year and has a very similar plot to the latter. There was an accusation of plagiarism by Deadly Games director Rene Manzor towards Home Alone, but nothing seems to have come of the accusation in the legal sense.

Things started to change around 2005 with the release of Santa’s Slay, a dark comedy horror film. It revolves around Santa being a demon who is released from his enslavement and starts killing people. That’s kinda it, its rather one note as premises go. However, this would mark the time killer Santas would go from being a killer dressed as Santa to actual killer Santas. Such examples would include Santa’s Slay and Dutch comedy Sint, which have the Santa myth perverted with him becoming a monster.

Nowadays, we get a mixture of the two types. Sometimes we get the killer dressed up as Santa like in Silent Night or we get Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, which has a killer Santa. Honestly, this is pretty cool as cultural threads go. We can have more variety in the trope all fulfilling the purpose of subverting and perverting a beloved saint to children.But why do we love to subvert something as pure as Santa? I think I might have an idea why…

The appeal of subverting expectations

As we grow older and more cynical, we tend to find a thrill, in one way or another, in making the stuff of our childhood darker or bloodier. This can be seen in it’s most acute form with the Creepypasta, where horror stemming from childhood nostalgia are a dime a dozen. If there is a cute children’s TV show/game/movie/book, I can assure you, there is a Creepypasta of it.

I think the same thing applies to stuff like Christmas and Santa, when we grow up and become jaded with life, and we want to tear that down. We all find that the Christmas movies we grew up with are saccharine or sickly sweet. Sometimes you just want to cut out all that stupid enjoyment and have someone kill someone else.

Santa being the patron saint to children is kinda boring as a character in his own right, especially to adults who grew up and can’t relate to Santa anymore. Maybe they still feel betrayed by the fact Santa doesn’t exist, or just think he is too saccharine.So we as adults have something of a subconscious urge to fight against the lie, the betrayal by making Santa into something darker, something nastier because it feels more real. We want to expose the darkness behind the happiness, and that can be done through horror.

Santa, much like any mythological being, often has some unpleasant history behind it which can backup appeal of making him scary. The primary example of said darkness comes in the form of Krampus, a demon that punishes the bad children. He is the polar opposite to St Nicholas (the origin for Santa) who rewards good children with gifts.

By making Santa evil, the lines between St Nicholas and Krampus are blurred, often replaced, such as in Santa’s Slay where Santa literally is a demon released from his imprisonment of performing the St Nicholas role.

This dynamic is also found in Sint, where Saint Nicholas is a corrupt priest whose ghost kills people on the 5th of December during a full moon. While there isn’t the punishment aspect common in the Krampus overlap, he still takes on the form of a Christmas demon, the corruption of good in the church. Often for adults, that feels more honest about the world than the perpetually cheery Santa Claus. As we grow up, we realise just how cruel or scary the world can be, and there is a joy in tearing away the sentimentality to reveal the horrors that lurk underneath.

Subverting Santa is kinda boring

The issue I think I have with subverting Santa is that it’s pretty one note act. There is a hard limit one can have with the material, I suspect. There is only so much we can do with a killer dressed as everyone’s favourite saint to children.

There was a slight boon to subversion by making Santa a legit supernatural force that happens to be evil for some reason. In the case of Sint or Rare Exports. Santa is more akin to a grim fairy tale character, often thought of as nice, but in reality, might be scarier than you think. I think this method has more opportunities for creativity, however I suspect there is only so much one can do. How many times can one depict Santa as a monster or demon of some description?

I would encourage people to instead of subverting Santa to maybe try some other route when making their scary Christmas tale. Perhaps giving some love to Krampus, I hear he is going to become more popular in America. Other examples could be movies like You Better Watch Out, a comedy horror about a home invasion, or Black Christmas 1974 which has a killer stalking people on Christmas, but has nothing to do with Santa.

Let’s make Christmas scary again!

Conclusion

One can have a lot of fun by taking something innocent and flipping that on its head.We all love to see Santa doing something bad. But all too often with gimmicks in the narrative, it can be a bit shallow. It’s like those Creepypastas where a piece of children’s media has blood and gore in it and that’s the extent of the horror. You will rarely find media that will delve deep into the horror of childhood innocence, let alone ones that use Santa as the point of examination.

We also have to contend with the issue of exploitation. It is so easy to make the suffering of children or perverted innocence into a spectacle. It’s a problem I struggle with often when writing, although it is a personal problem for me. Horror is not a spectacle, it is a means of confronting the horror of the real world. I don’t have an answer for the question of how to subvert Christmas and Santa in a fresh and unseen way, all I can say is just be mindful of how you frame the horror.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and see you next year!

Thank you to Dale De Kock for your services in editing this document!