I love Christmas. Don't we all, deep down? Somewhere? Is there not buried somewhere in the muck of our stillborn souls a picture of city streets all aglow with twinkling holiday lights, the bustle of merry crowds giving gifts and tipping hats, the wafting of carols, dinners with loved ones, the smell of pine and apple pie, all filling our hearts with joy in a Winter wonderland of newfallen snow. Yes I'll admit it unashamed, I love Christmas. But like most of you I don't get any of those things so what I love most of all is putting on a Santa suit and murdering people
I don't like with a cattle prod. Vicariously in this movie of course.

I read somewhere it's a myth that more people kill themselves at Christmas than any other time, but every year it certainly puts me in mind of rigging up some sort of Rube Goldberg self termination device, triggered by one of those cymbal crashing toy monkeys or something. There really are three ghosts of Christmas, and they really do show up to rub it in. Halloween is supposed to be fucked up, Halloween celebrates fucked up, but Christmas it seems is lying to us, showing us something too fragile and innocent to exist in this world. The wonderful things we imagine turn to backlash.

And man does this movie lash back. How far we've come down this dark road since 1984 when people were actually shocked and offended by Silent Night Deadly Night, which this movie could be considered a loose remake of. This is just a beautiful old school no bullshit slasher guys. Every aspect of Christmas, from the whole sham of love and family to the crank religion it's born of, are stomped to death and set on fire. It's absolutely cathartic when Santa gets so fed up he lays down his axe, slips on the brass knuckles, and beats that smartass fake Santa guy until there's nothing left to beat.

I'm trying to get this out there as a modern holiday classic 'cause I feel like it's way underrated and underappreciated. Obviously no slasher movie is going to get any laurels from movie critics, but Santa can shove them feet first down a wood chipper as far as I'm concerned. It's the horror community I feel that is letting this movie down a little. Yeah it doesn't re-invent the wheel or anything, but a slasher doesn't need to. It just needs to kill a bunch of people in entertaining ways and not piss us off, both of which slasher movies pretty much quit doing for the entire decade of the aughts.

It goes beyond just that for bonus points though; loads of nice little touches like the subtly horrible plastic mask Santa wears and the priceless look on that old lady's face when Santa gives her a bloody handful of money after stabbing the preacher 800 times. No idea why Malcolm McDowall is a small town sheriff in Wisconsin, but okay I like that too. Black Christmas might be a better movie movie, but this is a better slasher, and a better big fat
fuck you to Christmas.

But again I think it's not really Christmas we hate, it's you. Sorry I mean them, it, the universal constants that ruin our ideal. So as we drag ourselves across the finish line of another shitty year let's try for just a moment to remember Christmas as she'd love to be, kiss our imaginary sweetheart by the fire, smell the ghost of cookies, and hear the phantom laughter once more.

These people are not your friends. Merry Christmas everybody.