#christmadness

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It may have taken me longer than usual to assemble this year’s selection of frightfully festive fun, but I think the sheer volume of material I dug up was worth it. After all, why should I just focus on the Phantasm ornament or the “Krampus in the Corner” when there’s so much more out there? I’m really excited about this this first one. Remember the restored Santa Claus Conquers The Martians pressbook article from a few years back? Well, the full Santa Claus Conquers The Martians pressbook is now online and has oddities like a coloring sheet and guidelines for the “Martian Santa Soda!”

If you crave recipes for creepy Christmas fare, fear not! Home For Halloween has recipes for “Halloween Hot Cocoa,” “Night Owl’s Favorite Gingerbread” and “Bloody Winter Fudge.” I also found recipes for “Grinch Kabobs,” Krampus-approved “Coal Cookies” and the amazing “Jack Skellington Cheese Ball.” Speaking of food, remember Haunted Hotsauce? Now they’re called “Halloween Hotsauce” and have some “Krampus Hot Sauce” that’s perfect for kicking up savory holiday meals.

But that’s not the only thing I can vaguely connect to that particular pressbook! How about some free music? There’s “Robotic Christmas Tree” by the Amoeba People, “Christmas in Space” by Loop Line and “Is it Christmas on Venus?” by the Blue Giant Zeta Puppies.

Sam Haynes added some new tracks to The Gift of Christmas Fear and he’s not the only musician offering full albums of spooky and disturbing holiday hits! The Havana Snowbirds have A Very Creepy Christmas, Pumpkin Buzzard is offering Happy Holidays and Insect Posse takes us Home For The Holidays. Although you can download Venus de Vilo’s “Santa’s Slay,” “Mistletoetag” and “The Nightmare Before Christmassacre” for free on SoundCloud, buying them as an album on Bandcamp will let you snag some other ghastly gifts.

While we’re on the subject of downloading individual tracks: YYAAMM has “Grüße an Krampus!!” (it means “Greetings to Krampus!!”), Kieran Strange wishes us a “Merry Undead Christmas,” Vagabondage is having a “Zombie Xmas,” which is not to be confused with David Watson’s “Zombie Christmas,” Mike Pritchard is annoyed how “Christmas Threw Up on Halloween,” Kevin Schatz pleads “Santa Save Halloween,” and Spiral pays tribute to a specific kind of greeting card called “KrampusKarten.” Similarly, Angellis Taliuu offers “We Wish You A Zombie Christmas,” Cthulhu Martini tells the tale of “Silent Night Deadly Night,” Tom Smith lightens the mood with “A Pirate Christmas,” World of Fright notes how “It’s Bloody Christmas,” Silver Louzy pits “Xmas Vs. Halloween,” the Dollyrots belt out “I Saw Mommy Biting Santa Claus” while Josef Nadek is sharing both “H.P. Lovecraft’s Yule Horror” and “A Yule-rite, older than man and fated to survive him.”

But what about those who desire some spoken word material? Will Hessler’s hilariously profane “Christmas Begins At Target 8​:​30 Halloween Night” might be more satisfying than music. The Wicked Library has several Christmas specials featuring tales of terror available for download. If you prefer streaming stories, Mike Arnzen’s short “Little Stocking Stuffers” is contrasted nicely by Astro Al’s lengthy “Merry Black Mass” and “A Victorian Christmas Ghost Story.”

Since reading ghost stories is a Christmas tradition in England, you can curl up with William Meikle’s “The Yule Log,” followed by E. F. Benson’s “Between the Lights” “The Other Bed” also has a mild Christmas connection.

While we’re on Google Books, let’s look at the lyrics to “Pumpkin Bells,” learn how to make crêpe paper moss that’s perfect for a fake swamp or Christmas party (seriously) and behold the insanity of “Nutcracker Kills The Squirrel.”

Now comes the time for my annual trip to Amazon. While there I came across a horror-centric audio version of A Christmas Carol and a Christmas sound effects album which blatantly reuses altered tracks from a scary sounds album. You can listen for yourself if you don’t believe me! There’s also books like Santa’s Claws, Happy Halloween, Li’L Santa, The Fright Before Christmas, The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year, Haunted Christmas: Yuletide Ghosts and Other Spooky Holiday Happenings and The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas: Roots and Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil. The amount of Krampus merchandise has exploded over the last few years. There’s masks, leggings, figurines, candy canes, drinking glasses and even a Krampus tree topper!

Don’t forget to support small businesses! Monolith Graphics has some beautiful new Christmas cards and Dead Rose Symphony has a new release called Christmas Mourning. Moving on to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s online store, we have a Cthulhu tree topper, Cthulhu ornament, a holiday gift bag, Christmas audio drama and various combo deals featuring other cool Christmas stuff.

Speaking of Lovecraft, why trim a tree when you can decorate a giant tentacle? You can even use some papercraft shrunken heads as ornaments. Don’t fret about making Christmas too scary for Santa, as that right jolly old elf has a section of his blog devoted to Halloween!

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Ho Ho Horror! I’m making like the above creepy Santa and have plenty of treats for you. The first of which is a stencil for making a type of elf known as a “Brownie.” Although it was originally intended for use on Halloween, you can also use it for Christmas without anyone complaining.

Speaking of elves, have you ever seen those pictures of the “Elf on the Shelf” decoration being up to no good? They’re a real scream! Both “Oh that evil elf on the shelf” and “Elf on a Shelf is Evil” on Pinterest collect all of my favorites.

Pinterest also shows you how to make snow monsters with glowing eyes. The Calvin and Hobbes Wiki has a great list of Calvin’s gruesome snow creations and Dinosaur Dracula has some great notes on making a snow monster. Dino Drac also shows us how to make a Panettone Cake Monster and set up a Christmas Tiki Hut. If you add such a hut to your Christmas bash, you can serve “Pirate Eggnong” and “Christmas Punch” and play Luau in December. But if all your holiday shopping as drained your cash reserves, the Crazed Mugs are here to help with their free download of “Mele Kalikimaka.”

Speaking of festive free downloads, I have loads of free music for you this year! There’s “Halloween for Christmas” by Frenchy and the Punk, Wolfmen of Mars’ “In The Bleak Midwinter,” Kirby Krackle’s surprisingly cheerful “I’m Stuck In A Human Centipede For Christmas,” Jonah Knight’s “Here Come The Yuletide Lads,” Stoveclock’s “Scary Christmas” and Psych Ward Psymphony’s twisted takes on “Jingle Bells” and “The Holly and the Ivy.” Pitchwafuzz’s “Scary Demon Pyrotechnic Christmas Nightmare” sets the stage for oddities like Fortunately Everything Dies’ “Santa’s Slay” and Sometimes the Cat’s “Santa Clause Conquers the Martians.” Those preferring audio drama downloads should enjoy The Confessions of Dorian Gray: Frostbite from Big Finish Productions.

Don’t let its presence among unreleased Trendmasters products fool you, the unpainted It Conquered The World Christmas ornament was just something an employee made for fun. Tom Taggart also has some creepy ornaments you might enjoy and Etsy has lots of Krampus goodies.

If you prefer to build your own decorations, then you’re in luck! VeggieMacabre has plans for a gingerbread house inspired by The Amityville Horror and Do It Yourself Nightmare Before Christmas Props has tons of activities for you. Papercraft fans will appreciate projects like the Krampus, Jack Skellington and the Evil Robot Santa from Futurama. Just like last year, Sonia Harris has created some printable superhero snowflakes. And just like last time, one character (Spider-Man) can be used for a creepy Christmas celebration. The snowflake itself isn’t shown, but you can access it by clicking the general snowflake example picture. Propnomicon has a great lead on a printable dance card from the Miskatonic Yuletide Ball and Wikipedia is offering some high quality scans of two posters for Santa Claus Conquers The Martians you can use to create some truly unique Christmas decor. You could also combine images from the film with printable photo ornaments.

Amazon has so many great horror Christmas goodies, like the Legendary Godzilla ornament, Scary Christmas sweatshirt and various Krampus sweaters. But I want to pay special attention to the music and books this year. Through Your Eyes On Christmas Eve is an amazing steampunk Christmas album from Abney Park while There Be Christmas Dragons from Heather Graham and the Slush Pile has plenty of humor mixed in. King Diamond likes adding elements of horror to Christmas music, as evidenced by “No Presents for Christmas” and Puppet Master. There’s also Merry Monster Christmas, A Scary Little Christmas, Dark Noel, Psychobilly Christmas, Eban Schletter’s Cosmic Christmas and Green Monkey Records Presents Merry Krampus.

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Season’s Bleedings! Like Santa Claus, I’m reaching into my bag of goodies to find the best horrorday treats for you all. And you don’t even have to leave me any cookies!

Fans of H.P. Lovecraft should remember his wonderful Christmas poem “Christmastide,” which was surprisingly free of cosmic horrors and racism. What they might not realize is how they can read his other Christmas poem “Good Saint Nick” on Wikipedia! Not only that, but you can hear special readings of both poems at PoemHunter.com. Those seeking a Lovecraftian Yule celebration should also enjoy Propnomicon’s latest gift guide while others might prefer a Doctor Who gift guide.

Not only does Halloween Forum offer a spooky poem called “The Christmas Witch,” but it also has a tutorial for turning a motorized lawn reindeer into a fearsome wolf. Speaking of holiday hacks, Dave Lowe figured out a way to make a fake maple tree which oozes sap. I’m sure you could modify this to create a bleeding Christmas tree.

Sonia Harris’ free printable superhero snowflakes might seem out of place in this article at first glance. Until you realize how the one for the Punisher depicts skulls and knives. And let’s not forget Stolloween’s zombie snowflakes either!

Looking at Halloween New England’s gallery of spooky Christmas items inspired me to post My Ghoul Friday’s tutorial on making creepy ornaments, along with some papercraft coffins from Ravensblight which can be used to make ornaments.

Despite the name, Home For Halloween has lots of helpful instructions for festive decorations and snacks. Add a little holiday fear to your Christmas village with spooky trees or build prop versions of Jack Skellington and other characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas. You can also learn how to make freaky ornaments and candy cornaments. While you are there, you can also learn how to make “Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Cookies,” “Winter White Red Velvet Fudge (aka Bloody Fudge),” “Pumpkin Pie Cinnamon Rolls,” “Night Owl’s Favorite Gingerbread,” “Jack Skellington’s Sandy Claws Cookies” and some spooktacular hot cocoa.

So it turns out there are The Nightmare Before Christmas versions of Monopoly, Operation, Jenga and two versions of Yahtzee. At least the branded decanter, door knocker, tealight and ornaments make some thematic sense.

Amazon has plenty of other horror ornaments, along with a zombie Santa shirt, suicidal snowmen wrapping paper, and even…a bottle of Santa’s Flesh? There’s also plenty of frightfully festive books like O Little Town of Deathlehem : An Anthology of Holiday Horrors for Charity, Amityville Horror Christmas, Frosty Deadman and Monster Christmas.

If your reading habits are anything like mine, then those short previews on Amazon simply aren’t enough to satisfy your hunger. Wikisource has the surprisingly spooky “Christmas Eve” by Nikolai Gogol …in Russian. I imagine most of those reading this will have to settle for the English language synopsis. Thankfully there is another (and quite lengthy) Christmas tale available for free online: Santa and the Mars King by Lucrece Hudgins Beale. Don’t let the name fool you; this has nothing to do with Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. Although said movie would have been greatly improved if it had Halloween witches show up like they do in the story. You can read the full story (along with the original teaser released prior to the story’s publication) thanks to the Google Newspaper Archive. I also discovered how some versions of the story included free coloring sheets! Here are the sheets for chapters 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 18. The archive’s direct linking capabilities leave a lot to be desired, so you might have to scroll around a little to find the coloring parts.

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To borrow a phrase from Veronique Chevalier, Ghoultide Greetings and Hapless Horrordaze! I hope you enjoy the above image; it’s a painting called “In the Wild North” by Ivan Shishkin. I think it perfectly captures the duality of the season. If you look at it one way, it’s a beautiful winter’s night. But if you focus on the way the tree is slumped over, it can also seem very depressing. No matter how it makes you feel, I hope the following can bring you more cheer:

Our old pal the Krampus has gotten more and more popular in America as the years go by. Not only is there now a cocktail named after him, but there’s also clothing (including the traditional ugly sweater), stuffed dolls, a music album, a short film, greeting cards, stockings, gift wrap, ornaments, playing cards, various books and even a latex mask based on the horned terror.

In addition to the Krampus, other Christmas beasts have been discussed here before but somehow we missed discussing the Yule Lads (along with their flesh-eating Yule Cat) and the Joulupukki. Although both the Yule Lads and the Joulupukki were originally more monstrous in their early days, modern depictions show them as being Santa Claus clones (as you can see in those linked Wikipedia articles. How boring!

If you want to put the scares back into Christmas, you can make some spooky ornaments or “Rotoff the Deadnose Reindeer.” This article will also be useful for those trying to have a Scary Christmas. Alternately, you can turn this year’s Christmas decorations into next year’s Halloween decor with these handy links. If you’re not artistically talented, these printable pendants can be used as ornaments while these are a great way to spice up stockings.

Are you one of those people that wants to support small businesses, but always seems to forget to do so around Christmas? Fear not! You can help the little guy by buying Christmas cards from Toxictoons and using the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s gift guide (along with their snazzy gift bags).

If you want more Lovecraftian Christmas goodies, there are Cthulhu-themed ornaments to be found online.

Don’t you just love it when your favorite websites do special Christmas-themed posts? The official Pumpkinrot blog has some beautifully dark holiday pictures, while Head Injury Theater and the Mad Martian have some hilarious goodies posted on their respective websites.

Remember how Winter’s Majesty was supposed to be the final installment of Nox Arcana’s winter trilogy? Well, it turns out that’s not quite true. Recently Nox Arcana announced plans to release a new Christmas EP every year, starting with Ebonshire.

Speaking of spooky Christmas music, you’re going to love the freebies I’ve gathered up this year! There’s the Inner Devil’s “Winter Forest,” the D-Grade Monsters’ “Merry Christmas,” Attrition’s “Silent night,” Justice Hardcore’s “Silent Night Deadly Night” and Haberdashery’s dark synthpop take on “O Come O Come Emmanuel.” There’s also “O Holey Knight” and “O Yog Sothoth” by Tom Smith and “Black Christmas” and “Silent Night, Deadly Night” by the Renfields. If you want full albums, Graveyard Calling has a free sampler called All I Want for Christmas Is​.​.​. BRAINS​!​!​! and there’s also this free, winter-themed dark ambient compilation album.

On top of that, Strange Jason tipped me off about Thee Icepicks’ “Christmassacre (ft. Wayne Werewolf and Keith Sawyer)” and Atomic Mystery Monster told me about Dulcet Jones’ “The Drums of December” and Priscilla Ahn’s dark take on “Deck The Halls.” And don’t forget about our podcast’s recent holiday episodes!

Speaking of sounds, Big Finish Productions has special previews of their Dark Shadows and The Confessions of Dorian Gray Christmas specials available on their Soundcloud page, along with a special message from the Sixth Doctor and Mel.

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Even More Christma(dnes)s

Here’s a rare holiday treat, the pressbook for the original version of Black Christmas. Even if you aren’t a fan of the film, you’re sure to love the promotional gimmicks.

Fans of our yearly Free RPG Day posts are sure to love this fan-made, Christmas-themed Dungeons and Dragons adventure.

If you need a quick and easy way to add a macabre touch to your Christmas tree, than Ravensblight has just the type of ornaments for you! If you don’t need any more ornaments, then perhaps this floating candelabra will be of more interest to you (especially if you color the white candles green and mix them with the red candles).

Are you one of the many people who were creeped out by the CGI characters in The Polar Express (the movie, not the book)? Some blame the “uncanny valley” effect, but this site has a more sinister explanation.

Longtime readers of the site know that telling ghost stories is a time-honored British tradition. So I’m getting in on the action by not only sharing an unusual ghost story involving (but not written by) Charles Dickens, buth also sharing scary stories like a zombie-themed take on “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and a short Christmas tale by Mike Arnzen.

I don’t care what the listing says, this is not a Krampus. Now the creatures depicted in these holiday wall clings are. The mock-ups of those clings in use kill me, though.

Speaking of the Krampus, Google Books has a NSFW preview of Krampus: The Yule Lord available. Those seeking other online Krampus resources will definitely find these links handy.

Those in need of some last minute Christmas cards are sure to appreciate these free zombie Christmas cards.

Speaking of zombies, zombie ornaments and zombie nutcrackers are growing in popularity. For those of us who feel zombies are overexposed, hanging up a picture of a Yule Squid is a great way to celebrate the horrordays without being too cliché.

Speaking of cephalopods, the band Supreme Fiction is offering free downloads of “All I Want for Christmas is Cthulhu” and “Christmas for Failures.” Those with a taste for steampunk will love these takes on “Ebenezor’s Carol” by The Men Who Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing and sci-fi fans are sure to enjoy Gulag Picture Radio’s “Xmas On The Moon.” And let’s not forget Tribal Gothic’s “Winter Solstice” is available for free as well! In addition to his free regular Christmas song downloads, Kevin MacLeod also has tracks like a dark take on “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and “Ice Demon” available. Don’t forget that Mr. Ho’s Orchestrotica has their version of “Arab Dance” from The Nutcracker available for free as well!