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Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Christmas Cullari.

And I'm Sled Voccola.

And this week, we're gonna trip the tree and talk about a subject near and dear to our hearts, Christmas Horror. It's a fun topic for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is because I feel like almost everyone, especially listeners of this show, have probably seen a Christmas Horror movie. There's everything from a Christmas Carol to a Nightmare Before Christmas, to Black Christmas. And I think I'd even include the original Grinch TV special because the Grinch is a monster and the narrator is none other than Mr. Boris Karloff himself. Although, Ed, did you know it is not Boris Karloff who sings You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch?

I did not know that. Who did?

For whatever reason, this guy didn't get credited at the end of the show, so everyone assumed it was Karloff, but it's actually a guy with the incredible name Thorol Ravenscroft.

Yeah, it probably wasn't in the credits and they were like, come on guys, no jokes, take that shit out.

Thorol Ravenscroft, yeah, is like the ultimate, he just sounds like a warlock or something who got hired somehow to sing that song. But not only does the subgenre have a rich and interesting history, but there is a long storied pagan history of Christmas itself, as well as various monsters and creatures that surround the holidays, which is mostly what we're gonna be drilling down on in this episode. Plus, Ed and I actually worked on a Christmas horror TV show back in 2016 called 12 Deadly Days for YouTube and Blumhouse. And as our Christmas gift to you, our co-writers from that show, Pat Casey and Josh Miller, also the writers of Universal's 2022 Christmas hit Violent Night are going to join us. So Ed, are you ready to slay?

Is this because my name's Sled?

Who are we?

Now it is time for.

So before we face the creature sliding its way down our chimney, a little housekeeping to get this place in order. I just like to say, from me to you, first, just thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for listening, for being a fan, for being a friend, for sending this episode out to everybody that you know, for telling people that this is the place to be. And thanks to you guys, we have already cleared our social goals from last week before we even recorded this week's episode. So hopefully we can keep that growth up over the holidays and we can get a whole bunch more listeners addicted to this show while they hide from their families in the bathroom. And in keeping with that idea, it is the holiday season. So we want to wish you and yours all the best. Take a little time for yourselves if you can, make that extra hot cocoa, hang up a couple of lights and put up some decorations if you haven't already. Because no matter what you celebrate, and if this episode proves nothing else, humans have been making time to hunker down and celebrate during this time of year for centuries. It's an important part of writing out the short cold days with your mental health and heart intact. So thank you all so much again for riding with us this year. We'll be back with one more episode next week, and then we're gonna take a short breather to prep season two. Ed, anything you'd like to say?

Yeah, I'll just second everything Chris said. It's been actually a very tiring experience making the show, but it's very rewarding. It's been a lot of fun talking to people, and people seem excited about it, and it seems like they're making it a weekly part of their routine, and that's been very, very cool. So it's kind of worth missing sleep, doing our other jobs and this and everything. And I'm excited for this episode. It's really great to have some guests on to be included in the discussion with me and you. It was really, really fun. I hope everybody enjoys what's coming up.

All right, with that, let's get into the app. So today we're talking Christmas horror. We're gonna start with a look at the pagan traditions that gave rise to the holiday, then discuss some insane Christmas monsters that make Krampus look like a crampussy, and wrap up by talking about some of our favorite Christmas horror movies. And to top it all off, we're joined by two of our favorite writers and chroniclers of Christmas chaos, Josh Miller and Pat Casey. You might know them as the writers of last year's Violent Night, or you might know them as the writers of the Sonic movies, or if you're really cool, you might know them as the creators of Golan the Insatiable or Hey Stop Stabbing Me, but whatever you know them as, Pat and Josh, welcome.

Hello. This is the voice of Josh.

This is the voice of Pat. Oh, glad to be here, guys.

You guys have very good podcast voice. Ed and I, I feel like our voice kind of sounds the same sometimes and people will be like, that was a really funny joke, Chris, and Ed said it or something, but you guys, everybody will know the difference.

People do it to us who've known us for like years and we'll be on a Zoom so they can see us and one of us will make a point in a meeting. And then later on, like as like a compliment, they'll be like, I'll say something. And they'll be like, yeah. I mean, I agree with what Pat said, so.

And we don't look anything alike. I mean, like this is not a video podcast, but Josh is short and clean cut and I'm like a giant Sasquatch.

I do love that even if this was a video podcast, you're both sitting in chairs. So like your height would be pretty indecipherable, but yeah, one is clean cut and the other one is a non-Tanuk.

We do have similarly sized heads. So sitting down, you maybe can't tell.

We wear large hats.

That's how writing partnerships are formed. You have to get in a line by head size and whoever's next to you.

And that's how ours happened at least.

I would say these guys actually met in middle school, so they grew into their very different looks together.

It's true.

Yeah, I didn't have the beard back then.

Oh yeah, you guys are from the Midwest, right?

Minneapolis or outside of Minneapolis, right? Bloomington, Minnesota.

In the burbs.

Oh shit, that's sick. That's how you make sickos, like you guys make all this fucked up shit you write by having a pretty nice childhood.

I realized that a long time ago that if you grow up in New York, you make Scorsese or Spike Lee movies, which are fucked up in their own way. But if you grow up in the suburbs, that's how you become like Tim Burton or Sam Raimi.

Yeah, a screaming ball of madness and energy.

Speaking of screaming ball of madness and energy, Violent Night, what a fucking fun movie, guys.

Thank you.

Holy smokes. I think that's an apt description of it, too, what we had just the lead into that.

That was an idea we had initially back in our suburbs in Minnesota.

Yeah, I was going to say, to kick things off, I want to talk a little bit about Violent Night because for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's a perfect introduction to your guys' sensibilities and tone. It's funny, it's inventive, it's sweet, violent, crazy, a screaming ball of energy or whatever we just called it, and I know it has a pretty unique origin story. How did the movie come to be?

Back in Bloomington, Minnesota, we had this local cable TV show when we were teenagers, that we obviously were not getting paid for. It was at this station run by one adult and all teen volunteers. He just let us do the craziest stuff. In one year for our Christmas episode, we did a bit where we, the teenage stars of the show, were taken hostage by other versions of us who were recurring criminal characters we'd done before. And then Santa lands on the roof to deliver presents and ends up doing a diehard, like through the building over the course of this hour long live TV episode.

Oh my gosh.

And we always thought it was so funny.

Weirdest thing is the movie was actually getting made. I mean, I like dug those out. One of our friends has like the actual episode tapes. I only have copies of the like pre taped sketch stuff. So it's kind of like only parts of the story. But I was shocked that we had zero Christmas puns in it. Like no wacky one liners for Santa to say.

Your head wasn't big enough yet.

I guess not. Yeah.

So we always had this idea that every once in a while would be like, yeah, maybe we could do that. But I feel like we never even really seriously considered it at all because we thought it was just too stupid. But as it turns out, it was just stupid enough that we brought it up. We had a meeting with our agents around the time Sonic was coming out about like, what should we go out and pitch? And we had a whole list of ideas. And then almost as the meeting was over, we were like, oh, and we have a one more, it's called a Die Hard Santa, is what we were calling it at the time. And everyone was like, yes. And like within days, basically, we'd had a meeting with David Leitch and he loved it. And then everything moved very quickly on it. And we wound up with a movie that's shockingly, like exactly what we pitched.

Yeah, that almost never happens. So we've at least been around long enough to fully appreciate how crazy it was that the idea made it kind of unscathed from our brains onto the screen.

Because everyone who jumped on board really got it. Like it was a fairly clear vision. So everyone was like, yes, you know, and everybody was adding to it instead of being like, no, it should be something totally different, which we were definitely like, this could easily go horribly awry, but it didn't.

No, it's a super fun tone that now I'm realizing, yeah, this came from the fucking heads of children basically, but it's a super fun tone where it's like, oh, is it gonna be just like fucking diehard? Is it gonna be too silly? And it's not, it somehow strikes this incredible balance, this like high wire act of having like diehard style stakes, but also like, we can have a Christmas pun, we can have a thing that's not gonna take you out of it, weirdly, because if you're in this wacky whirlpool, you're probably fine with it to begin with. My favorite line, which is actually not a Christmas pun in the movie, and it's not, it doesn't give anything away, is, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's Santa Claus being like, anyone know how to use these gizmos? Yeah. That like made me laugh out loud.

Yeah, when you determine Santa doesn't know how to use a gun.

Yeah. Well, I didn't, I didn't want to give that. I don't know if that gives anything away, but- I don't think so. But yeah, it was a really, it's really fun. That's really fun. And this movie features some of my favorite, I guess I would say like ungraceful tossing of things, these like henchmen people, like throw these cookie trays at one point, just fucking like, I'm done with this tray. And then Santa Claus throwing that gun. There's so much just tossing of shit without a care in the world that I loved. And now that is the weirdest thing to take away from any movie, but I was definitely something, I was like, oh, I just, I love any time someone just tosses something.

I'd love to see your like top 10 best careless tossing movies.

Well, if we start a Patreon, it'll be on there.

Ed, Ed watches a lot of like schlock with another one of his friends and the stuff they keep track of in those movies is like, like movies with wood paneled station wagons and movies with girls with blue eyes.

It's green eyes. It's green eyes.

Green eyes, sorry. Things that whatever pops out to their own twisted brains.

Pat's parents had a wood paneled mini van when we were kids.

That's what I drove through high school, that wood paneled mini van fell to me.

Oh my gosh. I'm surprised you made it to Hollywood with so many marriage proposals you probably got.

Well, wait, did the wood paneled van end up in any of the, because you guys made a feature length film every year from what, like ninth grade or something up through college?

Ninth grade through the end of college. I mean, I know it wound up in a zillion things.

It was in Murder Made Easy.

There is a minivan in Hey, Stop Stabbing Me, for those who've seen it. And that is Pat's parents' minivan, but it's the one that replaced the wood paneled minivan.

I see, I see. Well, Ed, keep an eye out. You never know when you might see some schlock with Pat's parents' minivan pop up in it.

I wanna add it to the bingo card for sure.

So how many drafts did it take you guys to find the right balance of Christmas to violence to sweetness, or did it just sort of, was it sort of baked into the concept itself?

It was baked in, and that was, again, we've been around enough that we can appreciate how easily that script came, because we've certainly had plenty, including things we're working on right now that feel like hard work, where you gotta bonk our heads together. But that one was also a special case where COVID had just started, and this was like late March, 2020, and yet people still thought there was gonna be a writer's strike on May 1st.

So it was like, they were like, we really need this before the strike starts. And we were like, okay, if we're gonna accomplish this, we're not gonna like send you an outline. We're not, there's gonna be no meetings. We have to just write this script.

No one can even check in, because it's one of those things where I feel like executives and producers don't fully understand. It's like, if you just check in and don't even say anything, that can still derail us for like a couple hours, just like thinking about it or talking about it.

Yeah, when they're like, how's it coming? It's like, oh, how do we respond to this? I read this email.

It's like, it's like we need those two hours that you would have distracted us. Yeah, so it all just kind of came. And again, it was it was such a clear idea from the get go. And, you know, there's always going to be hiccups where we're like, how do we connect these two dots? But the tone was there from the get go, thankfully. And the one thing our executive Matt Riley at Universal said to us before we were launched off for this uninterrupted writing was like, go crazy. And we're like, oh, all right.

Yeah, we were afraid he was going to say, like, make it PG-13 or like, what if it's just a mall Santa? But he was like, just like, go, go big with the violence. And we were like, OK, that was a good call.

Well, yeah, the movie is fantastic. I really encourage you if you get a chance to I guess it's it's probably hard to find in theaters this year. But if you can watch it with your family and friends in a room together, there's some moments where people will jump up and gasp and laugh and yell at the screen. And it's a very good time, especially with some spiked eggnog in hand.

So I will say on December of 2023, I can't speak for someone listening to this in five years. It's on Amazon Prime. So if you have Amazon Prime, you can watch Violent Night right now.

It is weirdly like one of my favorite things to hear is people saying that they're like mob. Like mom liked it because I think everyone everyone assumes it's going to be kind of a bad Santa style movie. And we love Bad Santa. But, you know, a movie that's sort of taken the piss out of Christmas. But we wanted it to be as equally schmaltzy in its Christmas movie elements as it was hardcore. And it's, you know, diehard John Wick style violence.

My mom was definitely afraid to watch it. She told me afterwards, but she was like, I actually liked it. Like the title and the poster. I do think some people think it's about a killer Santa, a Santa killing kid.

Yep. Absolutely. That's the marketing. Yeah.

But and it is extremely violent, but the violence is definitely of the sort of itchy and scratchy variety.

Yes.

Well, I mean, you get it pretty early on. I think you you do a smart thing of like introducing the audience to a really fun Santa Claus, like a really fun version of Santa Claus. And then you don't kind of waste any time in also showing the audience that like he's a fucking sweetheart. So it's like he's he's a fucking grump. It's like he's not like a violent maniac. He's he's kind of just a grump. And so you're like, I'm on board with that because I'm old enough to be a grump about everything. And so I'm like, I see myself on the screen. But then when shit kind of gets real, you're like, oh, this guy's a sweetheart. And so, yeah, it's not it's not what you guys think. Don't let the poster dissuade you people. Go watch this movie. It's got more elf vibes than Silent Night, Deadly Night vibes.

Oh, my God, there's a crossover I'd love to see, though. Violent Night and Elf, shared universe.

I hope you find your dad, buddy. And it's just like, it's just like my dad's held hostage.

Well, while Violent Night is the latest iteration, the bleeding edge of Christmas, maybe not Christmas horror, but Christmas action, Christmas excitement and weirdness, the combination of Christmas and strange tales goes back centuries, if not further. It's really no surprise if you think about it. Halloween comes late into the year when the nights are getting shorter and the air is getting colder. And we find the fall to be a season of death when leaves fall from the trees and we memorialize those that we've lost. But as the year stretches on, the nights only get longer and the nights only get colder. And until relatively recently, like the last hundred years or so, winter was really fucking scary. Before indoor heating and modern food shipping and preservation was common, you just straight up die if winter came and you weren't prepared. I was watching a video the other day and this stuff I don't even think about until something draws my attention to it. And I was watching this video the other day on YouTube, this channel called Townsends. And there's this guy who runs this little village somewhere in the Midwest, like it's the 1800s. And he did a piece on how much of the year was just spent preparing food for the winter. And like so much of people's lives was just, you had to know when to harvest everything and how to store vegetables and meats different ways. And like part of the reason people started making meat pies was because they were easier to store meat that way. And then just like essentially, you know, do the 1800s version of microwaving them during the long winter. He pointed out basically how much of a slog and how boring a lot of life was.

I guess winter is coming as part of the vernacular outside of Game of Thrones for pretty much anyone before 1850.

I mean, it certainly was in Minnesota even when we were growing up.

Not in those exact words, but I mean, I've always thought about that, just like living in Minnesota through the winters, the winters are so long and so miserable. And just thinking back on like the people who settled this land, you know, in like the 1800s and like, why, why would you stop here?

Yeah.

Like after the first winter, if you survived, why wouldn't you just be like, you know what? Maybe, maybe Missouri would be better, you know, just like head south, like 500 miles and see what you find.

I imagine. Yeah, it's people who got to New England. And then they were like, this is a fucking nightmare. And then they kept walking. And then they're like, by the time they get to Minnesota or whatever, like, I think it's like this just everywhere. I guess we'll just stop. Like, they're never going to find sun. Dry land is a myth.

I think there's a reason there's so many Scandinavians in Minnesota specifically, because they are the only ones who are like, yeah, yeah, we can do, we got this covered. This is like Norway.

Well, because I feel like if a place has, and I don't know enough about a Minnesota, but like most places have winter, you know, at least most places in the north have winter. So you're kind of looking for a place that like if winter is going to be unavoidable, you want a place that then has a good harvest season or good land. And so Minnesota probably has some of that.

If you like lakes, is that the state with all the lakes?

It is the state with all the lakes.

Lots of ice fishing in the winter.

That's the draw. They went to a bunch of places with like, I don't know, 8,000 lakes. And they were like, not enough. And then they found beautiful Minnesota and stopped.

Just right Goldilocks style.

Quota has been filled.

But like, yeah, I mean, I guess maybe seasonal depression wasn't as much of a thing back then because you were so survival focused. But I can't imagine like it gets dark at 4 p.m. and you've got nothing to distract you except like thinking about death, thinking about your loved ones dying, thinking about your pets dying, like just survival.

Gather around with the whole family and watch the candle.

Especially, yeah, you see those kind of like little house on the prairie people, just the one family and their shack seems horrible, like the Viking style where, you know, you did all your prep and then everyone just hangs out in the giant lodge house all winter, getting drunk. Yeah, that at least seems kind of fun.

Sharing one big bed.

Yeah, the Vikings invented the cuddle puddle during winter.

But yeah, I mean, is that the theory that like that's why Christmas happens when it does? It's like it's at the very darkest, longest nights of the year, and it's like everyone would just go insane from depression if we didn't also have like a fun festival of lights and festival of lights in Sonica, but we'll take any of this. It's at the same time of year.

That's true. They're all based on lies. Chris, tell us about these lies.

Yes. Well, there were there were a lot of lies. We're going to get into some of the lies. No, there were a lot of parties. There's two. There's really two main ways that humans dealt with all the darkness and all the cold. And the two main ways were celebrations and stories, and they go as far back as Neolithic times, which is the time where we switched from hunting and gathering to agriculture. And so back in Neolithic times, astronomical events were used to guide activities, fun activities such as the mating of animals, the sowing of crops and the monitoring of reserves of food. And I think about this too. Back in those days, you had two modes to experience time, like night and day and seasons. That's really before clocks and like shit that people had to do. That's all you really had. We're just these like long chunks of time where you needed to know what to plant and when to harvest. So during the winter solstice, which is the period of time, the winter solstice itself is the shortest day of the year. But during the time around that, a lot of these celebrations started to pop up. And I think it was a mixture of they were depressed and they needed to celebrate, but they were also economically and physically dependent on monitoring the progress of these seasons. And when I was researching, a lot of cultures that you don't necessarily think of as having a midwinter celebration have midwinter celebrations. The Iranians celebrate Yalda night right around the winter solstice. Maggi is celebrated in January on the Hindu calendar. And I found, so I'm not a Judaic scholar and I was having a little trouble understanding where all of this came from.

And we are anticipating several emails about pronunciation, so just know that upfront.

I found the Judaic legend from the Talmud that none other than Adam, as in like the Adam and Eve Adam, was actually the first guy to establish the tradition of fasting before the winter solstice. And I'm going to read this whole quote because it's so goddamn dramatic. So this is from the Talmud.

Sorry, it's just, where did this fucking quote come from? A quote from Adam. Let's see who got this.

When the first man saw that the day was continuously shortening, he said, Woe is me, because I have sinned, the world darkens around me and returns to formlessness and void. This is the death to which heaven has sentenced me. So he decided to spend eight days in fasting and prayer. And when he saw the winter solstice and saw that the day was continuously lengthening, he said, It is the order of the world. He went and feasted for eight days. And the following year, he feasted for both.

It's just like, I'm never doing that again.

So this following year, he feasted before and after. Like, are we supposed to be fasting for Christmas? Because I have not, I have nothing.

Is the implication there that he like caused the days to get longer because he fasted?

Or that's how I took it. Yeah.

And he liked doing it. So he kept doing.

No, I think Chris, you're saying he didn't ever again, right? Because I took that as what you said, Josh, which is like by happenstance, they started getting longer on day eight. And he's like, I did this. But then you said the next year it came around and he's like, fuck, I'm going to eat both times.

Well, no, no, no. So I think I actually may have misspoke. He fasted.

Oh, now you made us all look like idiots.

No, no, no, no. Listen, listen, listen, listen. He fasted when he saw the death to which heaven had sentenced him when the nights were getting longer and the days were getting shorter. And then when the days started lengthening again, he went and feasted for eight days, not fasted for eight days.

So no, no, we understood that.

But then the following year, next year, he feasted twice, I thought was the rest of that quote.

That's what I heard.

Yes. No, no, the following year he feasted for both is the quote that that I had. So I guess the following year he just decided he knew that it would happen. So he feasted when it got dark and feasted when it got light.

That's classic, Adam. I mean, that's that that everything this fucking tree of knowledge.

You know, what was Eve up to at this point? What did she do that? And was doing.

But I guess I still don't understand is the implication that he by fasting cosmically changed how light and day works or is this like that episode of Next Gen where Q became human and like freaking out when he fell asleep until they pointed out like, no, you just fell asleep and then you wake up and he's like, this happens to you every night.

Yeah, I think Q, if I'm not mistaken from some roundtable, I think Q is based on Adam. So that I mean, he is based on God.

No, Adam was based on God.

The implication is that God of the Bible was a Q.

I mean, I guess it gets you probably right. It's kind of like Jehovah is spelled with a Y.

I hope your listeners are not religious. They're going to be horrified by our ignorance.

Dude, every week we do or say something that people are horrified by our ignorance. It's not a big deal at this point.

Yeah, no, I think I didn't go to Sunday school. I'm sorry.

I went to a Monday school. It was the worst.

Part of the reason this was I couldn't quite track this down is because because it's made up. This story isn't part of the Torah. It's part of the Talmud, which is a different set of stories. I was a little bit confused about where I came from, but even if you went to Sunday school, I don't think you learned this Adam story. I think this is a very, this is like bonus content, I think, for the Bible.

It was for Patreons.

I'm pretty sure every time someone has talked about bonus content from the Bible, it's always pretty bad.

In my elementary school, they just taught us the, you know, ants and grasshopper Aesop fable. That was our winter moral lesson.

Well, what was the like, was it Book of Thomas or whatever? The one that's just like the years that like are cut out in the Bible?

The so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas is an apocryphal document that narrates episodes from Jesus' youth from the age of 5 to 12, with the exception of the temple narrative. Based on Luke Chapter 2 verses 41 through 52, the episodes are not found in the New Testament.

What secrets are held in there? That sounds like a Dan Brown novel.

Yeah, I think there was a lot of puzzles. I don't know. A lot of stuff they had to cover up.

Can we go back? So Chris, you're saying that like, yeah, that we have these sort of winter solstice celebrations in all sorts of civilizations for various reasons. Like, do they have, maybe I'm putting you on the spot and you don't know the answer to this. Like, are there similar winter solstice celebrations in the Southern hemisphere that happened during our summer? Like amongst African civilizations in Australia?

Yeah, in Australia.

That's a good question. I didn't actually see any of those. There might be. Though, I mean, the one that surprised me the most was Maggi on the Hindu calendar, because I feel like, I mean, I guess that's not really Southern hemisphere, but I think of that as like a warmer climate. But yeah, I don't know about the Southern hemisphere. I'm sure there are some.

It still does get colder at the solstice. I mean, we live in a warm climate here in LA, and it is, this is the legit, the coldest part of the year. You know, it's like, it's warm when you're in the sun in the middle of the day, but as soon as the sun drops behind a hill at like 330, it's freaking freezing.

Yeah, it falls like 20 degrees. It's nuts. It's also the most depressing time of the year here. It really is. It's an ugly city when the sun's not on it, and whether it's raining or just nighttime, and then so you're like, we get more ugly city now than any other time of year.

Christmas being a depressing time, yeah, it's like partially it's just the long nights, but partially it's caused by Christmas, if Christmas is bumming you out or stressing you out. They didn't have to deal with that before they had started Christmas.

Yes. Well, of all the winter celebrations, there's two that are particularly relevant to, I think, modern Christmas for various reasons, Yule and Saturnalia. According to an article on history.com, the Norse celebrated Yule from December 21st, which is the winter solstice, through January. And in recognition of the return of the son, fathers and sons, this is the most Norse celebration I've ever heard, fathers and sons would bring home large logs, which they would then set on fire, which gave birth to the Yule log tradition that we still celebrate today. Although as an aside, you guys maybe can fill me in on this a little bit, but like, I know Yule log is a Christmas term, but I've never really associated it with, like it's a Christmas term that doesn't really mean anything to me. Do people have a Yule log still that they burn or is it just sort of a vague?

I never knew anyone who did it as part of like, a celebration was more you would just buy those, you know, Insta log things to make your fire lazy to start.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, it's like this idea that this was a Yule tradition for the Vikings to be like, to have a fire. They were having a fire anyway. I like to imagine they were going out for the Yule log. You get one particularly big one and just be like, this one's special.

I like to imagine that they were all going out in the woods and coming back like Schwarzenegger at the beginning of Commando where he's just carrying an entire tree basically.

And then on the non-Yule, you're just like burning some other logs. It's like, why is this one not as good as the Yule log? It's like, this one is bullshit. It's nothing. We burn it for warmth. The Yule log we burn for celebration and also warm, but identical.

Everyone step away from the Yule log. That is not for warmth. That is for constant viewing and contemplation log. Fucking get away from it.

It is. These logs must have been huge. I mean, when they say log, they must have been entire trees because they would feast until the log burned out, which sometimes would take up to 12 days. And they also watched all the sparks coming off the log because they believe that each spark represented a new pig or calf that would be born during the coming year.

It's like how angels get their wings.

Yeah.

Which is just like, there's no way that's possible. There's too many bells going off. And so too many sparks. It's just not enough pigs fucking for this to work out.

I think Pat mentioned this earlier, but part of the reason this was such a party time of year was because this was also the year that they slaughtered a ton of cattle so they wouldn't have to feed them during the winter so they had more available meat than ever. And most of the wine or beer that was made during the year was finally fermented. And this was the time where they would crack the kegs and drink. So these parties got wild for days. And they were Vikings already. So this was like the wildest of the wild.

And Christmas is the time of year is when you traditionally fatten up a tradition we continue to observe to this very day.

Yeah, exactly. True. Well, I also think it's funny that like the Yule celebration was so fucking good that like in our present day, we still talk about it, which to me is like if 600 years or whatever from now, there's some religious celebration.

We're still talking about Fire Festival too.

Well, when people like still reference a kegerator or families like decorate a frat house together in like honor of our of those crazy parties back then. So I feel like the Yule party must have been doing something right.

Well, also it's two things. One, it's interesting that Yule still exists in any capacity in the English language. Well, it wasn't even fucking from the English language, but exists in our current, you know, holiday time period to the point where it's weird that none of us mentioned it. There's like channels, right? You can watch a Yule log, like 24 hours of a Yule log burning or whatever.

I don't know if Chris is going to get to it. I mean, I think a lot of modern Christmas was, you know, cannibalized from other European things like Yule.

Oh, 100%.

And like the Vikings invaded England and a lot of like English culture kind of is really just like Viking culture reinterpreted to fit into Christianity, right?

Well, I guess that's the point I was getting at for part two of that thought, which was not even cannibal, but like how castrated in many ways, this represented a fucking rager. And now it's like Bing Crosby playing over a fireplace for 24 hours on like channel three after 10 p.m. or whatever, like just completely de-clawed what the Yule log tradition was. And I guess that's what so many of these things when they've been folded into the Christmas tradition has been like, we took the fangs out of all.

Yeah, we're just lame version now.

I mean, there's also a Yule log like cake, right? Where it's like a big chocolate, like a roll up cake, like it's a giant, like.

Oh, like a Lincoln log cake. I've heard of it as a Lincoln log in my secular community.

No, my family makes log.

They make log right after a cup of coffee. We all make log.

Does it roll down? Does it roll down stairs? Does it travel in pairs?

It's colored marshmallows wrapped in melted chocolate and sometimes with walnuts. You mix it all together in a bowl and then you roll it in wax paper into a log shape and then freeze it and then you cut it into slices. The only thing I'll say is the original recipe were called Christmas window cookies because when you slice them, they look like stained glass. My family just calls it log, but maybe other people also call it log.

Well, let's hope because you're going to sound like a crazy if they don't.

I think there's any number of vaguely log shaped Christmas trees.

Yeah, I just looked it up, Pat. The quote unquote yule log that looks like a big Swiss roll is actually French and is also called a bouche de Noelle.

At least it has Noelle in it.

Now I want one right now.

So should we all take a fucking bouche Noelle break?

We just go to 7-Eleven and get some like Swiss rolls or ho-hos close enough.

So yes, there was definitely some Christian cannibalization of these different time-honored pagan traditions. And the place where we really feel that is the stuff that the Christians took from Saturnalia, which was a proto-Christmas celebration that took shape in Rome. And in Rome, this yearly celebration of Saturnalia was thrown to honor the pagan god of agriculture and time, Saturn, which I think is fitting because agriculture and time would really feel one in the same to ancient people who were just using time to harvest.

Yeah, interestingly enough, sorry, Chris, interestingly enough, also a time period where they just added months for important people. Like the fucking calendar was such a mess for like a thousand years. You'd think it would be as simple as like, snow is here, it's this. But no, they were like, oh, we got this guy, Augustine. He gets his own fucking month. We got, you know what I mean? And it's like throwing shit in.

They weren't renaming previous months. They just added an extra month into the calendar.

Just popping in, I think. I mean, I'll look it up. I'll add a trivia bot if I'm wrong.

You think like, if we're going to give, you know, Augustus a month, we got to like, somebody else is getting the heave ho rather than like.

I think, no, I think it was like landlord based. I think it was like, we can literally get more money if there's more days in the calendar.

Or did the year just get longer and got like totally like, de-pegged from like the actual coming of seasons? I can see like just a government bureaucratic thing where that happens. The people are pointing out like, but we need the calendar to know when to harvest. It's like, ah, you'll figure it out.

Dude, if you're a real fucking farmer, you'll just feel it, dude. Don't even, don't like, don't worry about it. Now, anyway, back to our 39 day months. There's 17 of them.

Almost everything Ed said was wrong in different ways, but he was right that the calendar was an absolute mess until around the 1580s. By the time Caesar declared himself emperor, the Roman calendar was over three months off compared to the seasonal year. In an effort to correct this, one year had an extra 144 days, and was dubbed the Year of Confusion. With it came many arguments about whether additional rent, loan and tax payments would be due. Eventually we would land on the 12 sweet months we got now, but people looking for rent, loan and tax payments would stay the same, like Ed said, wild.

Well, Saturnalia began as a single day, but by the late Roman Republic, somewhere around 133 to 131 BC, it had expanded to a week-long festival that started around December 17th. The whole social order would get turned upside down, businesses and schools got closed, and this, this I think is kind of fucked up. Enslaved people for that week, or I saw some sources that said this would go as long as a month, enslaved people would get treated like equals. So that's, I feel like great for the slaves, but it has to be super awkward when Saturnalia is over and like this buddy of yours who you've been treating like a person goes back to like being your slave. I don't, I feel like that must have been a lot of fun.

It's a little bit like the writer's assistant writing an episode not to compare that to slavery in any, in any fucking culture.

We continue to have the tradition of like, you know, you give, you know, Boxing Day and or giving just bonuses to your gardener and whatever. Something that you never do, you don't do for their birthdays or anything, only Christmas bonuses. I mean, that's a little different than you're sort of not a slave temporarily.

Your freedom, temporary freedom. So once Pope Julius I decided on December 23.

Hey, that sounds a lot like July, doesn't it? So I'm talking about people just handing out fucking months, dude.

Well, as a side note, though, I can't believe I'd never thought of this until I was researching this. But so there's there's a whole debate over when Jesus was actually born because Pope Julius just decided on December 25th his birthday. But part of the reason a lot of people think that Jesus was actually born in the spring is because of the whole thing with the shepherds, which because like in December they wouldn't have been doing any shepherding. Shepherding like was a springtime thing.

Yeah, but you know what? They had to they had to adjust it because we don't we no longer have Shep Lye 43rd when he was born.

And what would their sheep be doing during the winter? Like don't they still have to go out and I guess they're eating like like straw that had been saved up or something.

Well, and they a lot of them from the other research that I was doing, it sounds like a lot of them got killed around the winter time.

That's ridiculous. Never kill a sheep. You could make clothes on it.

Keep some sheep to get more sheep later. Like you don't have sheep eggs.

Well, another thing that we've lost since the since the time of Christ. Sheep eggs. Sheep eggs.

They're delicious.

They were, so I hear.

Once Pope Julius decided on December 25th is Jesus's birthday, the celebration of what was called the Feast of the Nativity started to spread. And I thought this was interesting. It actually became popular in Egypt first in the mid 400s and then spread to England by the sixth century, where I assume it also continued to cannibalize yule traditions and ancient British traditions and kind of became what we think of as Christmas today because Saturnalia had a lot of what are the traditions of Christmas, including giving gifts, singing, lighting candles, feasting, drinking and merrymaking. So the Christians basically just let Saturnalia continue. They just changed the reason for doing it. You know, it was the same party. They just called it something else.

It's like when one business buys another business and then another business, you know, just put one name on both.

So they also, of course, scrubbed any human sacrifices that may have previously been associated with this time of year, of which I think there were a few.

The one thing they didn't cannibalize was cannibalism.

Yep. Ding, ding, ding. So not only does Christmas have its roots in these pagan midwinter celebrations, but many cultures incorporated a whole menagerie of weird gods and monsters that would get up to no good around this time of year. And obviously, probably everyone listening to this knows Krampus, so we're going to leave Krampus out of this discussion for now. I found some weird ones. First, I did just want to mention for Ed and I's Italian heritage, we do have to cover Italy's La Befana. She's the Christmas witch. She's not particularly frightening. She is an old woman, but she doesn't really do anything bad. She leaves coal for bad children, good children, get candy in their shoes. The worst she does, and Ed, I don't know if this ever happened to you, if you ever stayed up to try to spot La Befana, but if you stay up to spot her and you see her, she will whack you with her broom because she doesn't want to be seen.

I have never heard of this before.

Nope, well.

This is all new information.

You've never heard of La Befana?

I am not Italian.

Fucking law abuser, if you get my drift. No, I've never stayed up to find this crone you speak of, nor did I ever do the fucking fishes or anything. I'm not that type of Italian.

OK, well, maybe you'll get a visit from La Befana this year. She'll come sneak in.

She'll be mad at you for denying her.

It sounds like the set up for your horror movie.

Or it's our meat queue and the next year it's like, I'm dating her.

So she delivers coal to the bad. I mean, so she sounds like she's just Santa, basically.

She's basically just Santa. It sounds like in some places in Italy, every kid gets some coal because every, it's a recognition that every kid has been bad.

Very Catholic point of view here.

Yeah, exactly. That's baked in.

They get candy and coins and stuff, but La Befana leaves a lot of coal for a lot of people. In Germany nearby, kind of connected to some of the ancient Germanic and Yule traditions, things start to get a little bit rougher. The ancient Germans honored Odin during their celebrations, and during Yule, Odin was believed to lead what was called the Wild Hunt, which was a spectral procession of hunters and hounds that would race across the night sky, and it was said anyone who caught a glimpse of it was sure to have bad luck in the coming year, which is sort of like, there's some Santa things with Odin and some anti-Santa things.

It's just also so, it's such a dick fucking rule. You could just be looking up, it's so out of your control.

Oh, there's a couple dick rules throughout some of these legends, but Odin kind of looked like Santa. He was depicted as a wild bearded figure with a spear and a cloak riding on his eight-legged horse, Sleponir. So that's Santa-ish.

But with an eye patch, right? That's really what makes Odin different. He has an eye patch.

I believe so, yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure some crow, one of his own crows probably took his eye out or something. The guy was a crow. He had a crow-based economy.

Yeah, I think he had to do it for a reason.

He's had his own eye out, I think. Yeah, he traded it for ultimate wisdom or something.

He traded it for a horse with double legs.

He's like, oh, dude, I want that sweet eight-legged horse.

I found another source that said the ancient Germans were terrified of Odin because during this wild hunt, he would observe his people and decide who would prosper or perish, which sounds a lot like he knows if you are sleeping, he knows if you awake, he knows if you've been bad or good.

Nice and naughty sorting.

Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, some places...

He sorts the naughty six feet under, it sounds like, though.

Some people really make the case that Odin is heavily connected to the Santa Claus legend. Some other people were like, no, no, no, it's kind of blown out of proportion. I don't know, Pat and Josh, when you guys were... Well, I don't know if you really even researched anything for Violent Night, but have you ever come across any Santa Odin stories?

I'll tell you one I just ran across that's new this year and I feel like might be slightly ripping off Violent Night, to be quite frank. Because Violent Night, the fact that Santa, spoiler alert, used to be a Viking before he became the Immortal Santa. We just pulled that out of the air because we just felt like he just seems like a Viking and we sort of had this idea to do a whole Santa origin story, but never pursued it because we felt like it would just be too wildly expensive. But maybe we get to eventually make our big giant Viking epic if the Violent Night franchise proves successful enough. But this Christmas, one year after Violent Night came out, there is a new comic book from DC Comics that I just read, Batman Santa Silent Night, but night with a K obviously because Batman's involved. In which we learned that Santa is real and he was some sort of Norse demigod who was with Odin on the wild hunt and got left behind one Christmas. Since then, Santa exists and he fights supernatural monsters, but also delivers toys and just fully exists in the DC Universe as an immortal Viking warrior.

Dude, let's go fucking knock some doors down. Let's be like, we got to get to the bottom of this.

I mean, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Thank you DC Comics for just admitting that we're great.

Yeah, because the real reason we made Santa Viking had nothing to do with Santa mythology and it was more classic action movie thing where you find out, you know, the security guard at this mall used to be a green bray.

Yeah, he put that life behind him.

Yeah, I was like, what was Santa's badass backstory that no one knew about?

Right. Well, here's a Violent Night villain that perhaps Santa came across in the past. This lady gets starts to get really dark. In Austria and Bavaria...

God, that part of the world, they can't help themselves.

In Austria and Bavaria, they have Frau Perkta, the Alpine goddess. She was considered the guardian of the beasts and appears in one of two ways, either as a tall, beautiful woman with porcelain skin or in her guardian of the beasts form where she appears as a tall figure with the long neck of a giraffe, the face of a goat, a long tongue and crooked horns. She also has an abnormally large foot of a swan or a goose.

Just one foot?

Just one foot. I didn't write this all down, but in the research, apparently Grim of Grim's Fairy Tales recognized this as a pattern in multiple cultures' fairy tales that there would be these women who had one abnormally large foot. Some people have tied it to the idea of a spinster, a woman who would use her foot to pump the pedal of a sewing machine a lot or something.

That's misogynistic and historically inaccurate.

These geese feet ladies are all over the place, I guess, in folklore.

Do you think that when they disappeared, it also went the way of the cobbler? We don't really hear about cobblers that much anymore, but I imagine it's a booming business if every culture has these giant goose-footed people who, I guess, can't buy shoes off the rack, right? They all need custom jobs.

You need a specialty cobbler who can, yeah, individually.

Yeah. I'm a size four on my left. I'm a size 18 on my right.

Our goose-footed babe, Frau Perkda, she was considered an upholder of local taboos, like no spinning of thread during the holidays. She kept an eye on the children, and if the kids were good, they got a coin and a bucket or a shoe that they would put out. But if the kids were bad, Frau Perkda fucked you up. She would slit a child's throat, disembowel them and fill them with straw and pebbles. If they were bad.

That's much worse than a lump of coal, man. Much worse.

You also got the stuffing, whether you were a child or not, if you ate something on the night of her feast day, other than the traditional meal of fish and gruel. So if you dared try to eat human food, Frau Pärktö would cut you open and fill you with straw and pebbles. Which is brutal. There's getting whacked with a broom, getting coal, and then getting turned into a human scarecrow.

That escalated quickly. She's a beautiful goddess and this freaky crone with the freaky foot. Does she shift between the two shapes? Is that part of the thing, or is it too separate?

She shifts between the two shapes. The guardian of the beasts' angle, I'm not entirely sure how it connects to her tall, beautiful woman thing, but she's this mythological figure that is very much both and during the holiday season, I guess, is on the prowl.

She's the master of the beasts. What are the beasts? I'm into this.

I think she's just the guardian of the animals in the forest kind of a thing.

It's not like a bunch of freaky monsters.

It's like, no, no, no. I think it's just more like these.

Nor is she like the beast master where she just has like a little pack of different animals that follow her around to weasel sidekicks.

I mean, there could be all those things could be all the above. I'm sure she's like a beautiful lady for the good people and then maybe comes for the naughty list. People ask that, you know, that's how she, you know, like tricks you.

Since I assume Ed's going to end up dating all of these creatures, continuing our jokes. Meet a hot chick at a bar. Make sure to look at her feet in case one's like gigantic. And a goose foot.

Well, we don't know if the goose foot's always out unless she's, you know, in her naughty form. So it could, you could still easily get tricked. You can be like, what did I go home with? Oh, no. But that said, you know how you say mess with the bull, get the horns. Mess with the babe, get the foot in this lady's case. And get the goose foot. Also, fucking like she's got to know gruel is not awesome. Like gruel is one of the only two approved feasting meals.

Well, yeah, this is the traditional meal of this is fish and gruel, which is probably the worst thing to pair with gruel. Like bread and gruel. It's like, OK, I can dip the bread. Maybe it won't be so bad. Fish and gruel.

I mean, I'll just have the fish hold the gruel, you know.

That's well, I guess I guess we're also maybe because fish and grits is popular. And that seems like a thing you wouldn't think to put together. But I also don't maybe know what gruel is. I just think of it as like slop.

I mean, I'm just picturing grits, really.

Yeah. So that was proto fish and grits of the subgenre. It's like it's like in fucking sloppy Joe gruel. It's like my cousin Vinnie where it's like no self respected Southerner would make instant gruel. I guess based on your silence, maybe no one's seen that movie.

That's a great scene. That's a great thing. It is everywhere else in the universe.

Oh, man, I just Googled it. And this is a very disgusting sentence to me is that gruel is a thinner version of porridge. I'm thinner than porridge.

Nothing like some watery porridge, baby.

Oh, throw a couple of rotting fish in there from the ground cellar.

And it is more often drunk rather than eaten. Oh, my God. It's really is the like, oh, you're on the like the reason gruel is always used as like the nasty things orphans have to eat and stuff in fiction.

Yeah, because it's whatever little bit of food you have left. You've added water to to get more food.

So yeah, you'd only call something gruel as an insult, like how dare you serve me this gruel rather than like, hey, everyone, I made gruel for dinner tonight. Like I would you'd never call your own food gruel.

To me, it is, you know, grueling.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I didn't think about the language having that that version of it.

I don't think it does. I'm sure it's derived from some like German word that means something normal.

But rule is a German word, Josh.

Or it's directly directly relates to to this lady because it was like, oh, if we don't eat gruel for 33 days, this lady is going to turn us into straw men. So maybe it is like, oh, it's grueling. It's a task I have to do for a long time. Maybe it does come from this. And again, I'll never look it up.

I mean, I'm doing it right now.

You know, it's only a matter of time before some five star chefs start serving like deconstructed gruel at their restaurant or something.

Mission literate and six thousand dollars for it seems like gruel, the food and gruel, the word are not super connected differently.

And Scrooge ate gruel in a Christmas Carol does. But I think that was a sign that he was because he was rich, but that was a sign that he was such a miser even to himself.

Is my guess why Dickens chose that just like Warren Buffett only eats like a 99 cent cheeseburgers and Diet Coke?

Exactly.

So Frau Berkta was kind of the cruelest, meanest, nastiest Christmas monster. But I wanted to touch on Iceland's Christmas monsters as well, because they not only have a lot, but they're crazy. So Iceland has these two trolls who used to live in the mountains, and during Christmas they come down to the town. There's Grilla, who's an ogre with an appetite for the flesh of mischievous children, whom she cooks in a large pot if they're bad. And then there's her husband, Lepaludi, who's lazy, and mostly stays at home in their cave. So this is a real sort of like lion lioness, the female is out doing the hunting for the troll couple.

A real king of queens.

Yeah, a real king and queen. Now, Grilla and Lepaludi also bring the Yule Cat to Iceland, which is a huge and vicious cat who lurks about the snowy countryside during Christmas time and eats people. If you want to talk about unfair rules, you guys want to guess how the Yule Cat selects its victims?

It's not just based on naughtiness, like so many of these other things.

If you give it wet food or not, that's certainly why my cat would choose its victims.

The Yule Cat eats those who have not received any new clothes to wear before Christmas Eve.

Oh, it just punishes the poor?

It punishes the poor, apparently.

Just like our entire economic system.

Oh my God.

That cat's a true American.

The Yule Cat lurks about scarfing these people down, but the real reason I wanted to bring up the Icelandic legends are the Yule Lads. Have you guys ever heard of the Yule Lads?

They sound awesome. What was their hit again? What song were they?

I fucking love the Yule Lads. I didn't know about these guys until I was researching this show. The Yule Lads are the 13 sons of Grilla and Lepeludi. They're mischievous pranksters who steal from or harass people in town, and they all have very descriptive names that convey their favorite ways of harassing people. These guys, to me, they're like Cenobites if they were featured on like the Sleepy Time Tea Box or something. I'm not even going to attempt the Icelandic names, but in order of when they appear in town, here we go. You have Sheepcoat Clawed who harasses sheep but is impaired by his stiff peg legs. You have Gully Gawk.

Legs both.

Gully Gawk who hides in gullies waiting for an opportunity to sneak into the cow shed and steal milk. Then you have Stubby who shows up on December 14th. Stubby is abnormally short and steals pans to eat the crust left on them. Then. You have Spoon Licker who steals and licks wooden spoons, and it's noted he is extremely thin due to malnutrition.

Hold on, before I know you have more dames, but it sounds like every one of them are eligible victims of the Yule Cat. They all seem so broke.

I also feel like Stubby could share some of the pan crust with Spoon Licker. Then you have also Pot Scraper who steals leftovers from pots who also should be stealing with Spoon Licker.

You should just team up with the pan guy.

You could. Then you have Spoon Licker's brother, Bull Licker, who hides under beds waiting for someone to put down their Asker, which is a type of bowl with a lid, I guess, which he then steals.

Give me that. I mean, he hides under the bed looking to steal from bowls. I feel like this dude is, I mean, stealing bed pans and eating shit.

That would be a big oopsie for him if someone put down their bed pan instead of their Asker. If you haven't been harassed by any of these Spoon Lickers or Bowl Lickers by December 18th, you might meet Door Slammer, who you might be surprised to find out likes to slam doors, especially during the night and waking people up. Then you have Skier Gobbler, who has a great affinity for skier, which is like a thick yogurt.

Very uncreative names they're giving.

Really, truly some uncreative names. They don't get much better. You got Sausage Swiper, who hides in the raptors and snatches the sausages.

I like how they each have a signature hiding spot as well. They only eat one specific thing and they hide in one exact place.

Then there's probably the most illegal guy on this list, Window Peeper, a snoop who looks through windows in search of things to steal.

What does he eat?

I don't know. At this point, the sausages have been swiped, the skier has been gobbled, the bowls have been licked, the pots have been scraped.

Yeah, someone's run through your house and licked every single object you have at this point.

Yeah.

And any objects you still have, this guy's looking through the window to fucking steal them.

Then you've got Doorway Sniffer. Who has an abnormally large nose and a cute sense of smell which he uses to locate leaf bread. I don't know what leaf bread is, but I'm sure it's delicious.

Is it spelled like leaf the Icelander or leaf the thing on a tree?

L-E-A-F, leaf bread.

I feel like that's just what the hobbits were carrying with them on their long journey, you know?

But why is he in the doorway? Do you have to invite them in like vampires?

I don't know. Doorway Sniffer just sounds so, like that sounds, like window peeper, that sounds like something you'd get booked for. And then the most dangerous sounding guy on here, Meat Hook, who uses a hook to steal meat.

Yet again, he's just stealing food.

He's just stealing food. And then finally, on December 24th, the arrival of Candle Stealer, who follows children to steal their candles, supposedly. I'm sure that's what he tells everyone, catches him following children around.

I just wanted their candles.

So all I can say about the Yule Lads is that, A, I wish we had an American version of Yule Lads, and B, I think, Ed, you might have said this earlier, but I cannot wait for the Yule Lads to release their Christmas record.

Well, now they'll be updated and it'll be like Instapot Liquor and you know.

That's gonna be their hit song. It's gonna be like, girl, I'm gonna lick you was one. Never saw a bowl I didn't want to lick was another one.

Sniffing in my baby's doorway.

Yeah, yeah. I saw you through the window. Like all the songs are fucking fun as hell now. I thought you smelled like leaf bread and it's.

And they all have groupie.

Yeah, tons of them.

George Foreman, Grill Scrapers, The Hive.

It's funny just how many of these like Christmas monsters are like going after naughty children in particular. But it's like other holidays don't usually have this like judgementalness to it, do they?

Yeah, you know, like I've never seen the Tooth Fairy be like, what's this got a fucking cavity in it? You dumb piece of shit, no money for you. Like you're not penalized.

Tooth Fairy just wants to buy your teeth. It's a very straightforward transaction.

Here's my theory on this. I was thinking about this the other day. I think because as far back as Saturnalia, this was a very gift heavy holiday. And so I really think that some of the good and bad kids stuff is literally just ancient parents pretty quickly being like, this is a great way to get the kids to behave, to be like, listen, if you're good, you're going to get gifts.

Finally, some leverage.

Yeah, any parent I know who has an elf on a shelf says the same thing as they almost feel guilty. It's such a great like zero parenting scam to get your kids.

The elf on a shelf, like the one weird Christmas tradition that is not thousands of years old because it only just started a few years ago because none of us had that when we were kids.

Exactly. It is funny that like it's been sanitized though because there was a time where it was, you know, because even today I never got coal or anything, but like it used to be like, listen, someone's going to fucking disembowel you if you're not good this year.

Yeah, they really, I feel like it was probably enough to tell the kids they wouldn't get presents. I don't know who decided or who had, what kid was bad enough that mom was like, okay, you're not going to get presents and a long neck lady is going to come stuff you.

Yeah, look, imagine it's December, you're stuck in your Viking long house, you can't even like go outside to do anything and your kids are running around. Of course, some brilliant parent would come up with that.

Yeah, but like did any parent ever just give their kids olympic coal? Like back in the day, like now it would be real hard. You'd be like, I got to go out and get coal to like play this mean prank on my kid.

You got to reopen West Virginia's economy.

But it's like back in the day, you just had coal. You were like, I'm just going to get this coal and give it to a kid. But it also just seems so mean. Like did anyone ever do that?

You know, some asshole parent did somewhere. They took the time to like rap it and everything.

That's a great question for the listeners actually. That's a good discussion for Facebook this week. We want to know the shittiest parent that you've ever heard of who gave their kids something terrible on Christmas.

Or just have you ever received coal yourself? And don't fucking lie about it or else you're going to get more coal this year.

Yeah, because like our neighborhood growing up on Halloween, you know, there was like the house that gave you a toothbrush and condescending things like that.

Truly the coal of Halloween for sure.

Which, by the way, the only people looking out for us on a night were Chomping Candy. Only the only fucking white hat on the in the block. Oh, man.

All right, we'll wrap this up with a quick lightning round of I'm sure everybody listening to this or lots of people listening to this have their favorite Christmas horror movies or weird Christmas movies that they like to watch. Yes, Die Hard. I've seen a lot of talk of Eyes Wide Shut also counting as a Christmas movie. Go ahead, watch it with your family. I'm sure it's a great time. I just wanted to do a quick lightning round.

Kids love it.

Favorite Christmas horror movies. Pat and Josh, we'll start with you guys. Pat, how about you go first? Favorite Christmas horror movie.

I really liked, I mean, I hate to use the word favorite because I like a lot of things, but one that I think stands out and is great is Rare Exports.

Oh, yes. In keeping in theme with this episode, I feel like I'm just going to rattle off ones that feel sort of rooted in weird mythology, and that's Rare Exports, definitely. That's Finnish, too.

Santa Claus is truly like a creature along the lines of some of these other creatures we've talked about, like a horrible monster who punishes naughty children.

Part of what I love about Rare Exports too is that I won't spoil anything, but it really I kind of thought it was going to be one kind of movie, and it is just so much weirder.

Yeah.

Whatever you think it's going to be, it's not.

It starts like sort of an Amblin entertainment movie, and then sort of proceeds beyond that into weirdness or extra weirdness.

Yeah, it gets wild. Okay, Josh, how about you?

In keeping what I was just saying, like when I was thinking about coming on, I was reminded of a movie called Sint, S-I-N-T, which is a Dutch movie, a guy named Dick Moss who made Amsterdam, if you ever seen that 80s slasher and The Lift, which is like a killer elevator movie.

Okay.

But I feel like it came out, I don't know, like 10, 15 years ago. But that, I forget what the exact setup is, but it's like some, you know, planets are aligning things like Sinterklaas or whatever they call him there. It becomes like super deadly every now and then. And what's fun about it, it's not like an amazing movie, but it's got a few great sequences where like the cops are after him. But unlike our Violent Night Santa, like he's like a monster who's going around like murdering people. But there's like a scene where the cops are chasing him and they're in a cop car on the streets of whatever Dutch city they're in. And Sinterklaas, who's like that classic old timey looking version of Saint Nick, where he's got like a big staff and like a funny pope hat and is riding a horse. And he's like galloping across like the roofs of the buildings downtown. But it still kind of has almost this like Amblin-y thing where every now and you know what cut to people inside their apartments having Christmas, like hearing this. Then at one point I think like the horse fucking falls through the roof. I should watch it again.

Yeah, I love this log line. I've seen the poster. I've never seen the movie. But the log line is the legendary Saint Nicholas comes to life under a full moon and terrorizes Amsterdam by trying to kill as many Dutch children as possible at Christmas time.

Yeah, I was actually in the Netherlands when Sinterklaas Parade was happening, whatever it was.

Wait, does that have the Black Peter guys in it?

Yeah, it's got a lot of blackface.

And I was like, oh, I feel like Black Pete is being like phased out in the countries where he has typically been celebrated.

Yeah, like it kind of lasted until social media and the rest of the world was like, wait, what?

What are you doing? And they're like, no, it's cool. We're throwing candy. It's like, don't fucking distract me with candy.

It's not racist because it's a tradition.

Well, and then they were like, he's not he's not black. He's covered in soot. He's not Black Pete. He's sooty, but then everyone's still just like, no, this is not.

Yeah, that's almost worse.

When you look at the pictures online, it's like, OK, so if you're covered in soot, why did your lips become bright red as part of your makeup?

Yeah, we're not buying this, guys. Nice try. Ed, how about you? Favorite Christmas horror movie?

A movie that I really do like, but it's pretty light on Christmas is Black Christmas. It's a rad slasher movie.

Like the original Bob Clark one?

Yeah, and it's one of the most insane posters of all time, which I constantly lose out on bidding wars for. It's just a wreath with the woman with the fucking bag over her head in the center of it.

I do love that the same guy who directed that directed A Christmas Story.

A Christmas Story, absolutely.

Truly a master of Christmas.

But that wouldn't say it's my favorite Christmas horror movie. I think my favorite Christmas horror movie I mentioned earlier, weirdly, it was Silent Night, Deadly Night, which is a crazy.

Punish.

Yeah, it's a crazy punishment based Christmas movie about a kid who witnesses his family murdered by a guy dressed like Santa Claus. And now he has a fear of Santa Claus until he's put in a position to, I guess, kind of replicate that.

For his work, they make him dress up as Santa Claus.

Yeah.

And then he snaps.

He snaps. You shouldn't do it. That's why I don't believe in immersion therapy. But that said, I have a little fun history with that movie. So the guy that Chris mentioned earlier that I watched all the schlock with, we started on Silent Night, Deadly Night 2. We had not seen Silent Night, Deadly Night.

You kind of don't need to after you've seen two. It's all clips from the first one.

It was so confusing because it was like, what? The whole, almost the whole movie of Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 is just clips of Silent Night, Deadly Night 1 in their entirety with very, very little connective tissue. And so that movie, I bet you the cut of new material on Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 was like 18 minutes for real. There's nothing new.

Pretty brilliant. Do you guys know the Mickey Rooney thing from Silent Night, Deadly Night?

No.

Pat and I were just talking about this earlier. I mean, Pat, do you want to chime in?

So when Silent Night, Deadly Night came out, it was on track to be a big hit, actually.

I mean, it's still technically, you should look it up. Considering inflation, it made an insane amount of money very quickly.

Which is nuts because the movie's fucked up.

But it caused this huge uproar because it was about a killer Santa, that this was so offensive. There were all these protests and stuff in the media about how this was evil. And like Mickey Rooney was involved in these protests.

Yeah, he wrote like an op-ed for a newspaper or something.

Yeah, you know what we should have been protesting is Mickey Rooney's performance of Breakfast at Tiffany's. That should have been protested.

So they pulled Silent Night, Deadly Night out of theaters when it had really just started and was doing gangbusters and would have made a ton of money and instead it only made a little bit of money because this was, I mean, it was after Black Christmas, but the fact that this was about Santa, I guess, made it that much more offensive. And then Mickey Rooney ended up starring in Silent Night, Deadly Night 5. He was a huge hypocrite. That's the moral of the story.

I think possibly my favorite of the franchise.

I'm going to watch that tonight. I never got past two. The order in which I watched them was two, then one, and then no other ones.

Well, one, two, and three kind of feel sort of connected.

Because they're all just clips from number one.

And then starting with four, they get like very weird.

Yeah, it turns into an anthology. Like four is about like witches of some sort. And five, he's like, he makes like evil toys.

We all worked on a Christmas anthology, Christmas horror anthology.

We did.

Yeah, before we get out of here, we'll do a quick 12 Deadly Days shout out. The four of us all worked on YouTube and Blumhouse's series 12 Deadly Days back in 2016. It's out there on the Internet. If you like Christmas horror, it was a crazy experience. And we got a lot of cool horror people involved from Bill Mosley to John Hyams and Joe Lynch and Ed Sanchez, who directed the Blair Witch Project.

Ed Voccola was there.

Ed Voccola.

He was hard to get.

Yeah, it was far away. It was far away.

All the masters of Christmas were involved.

Well, I'm the only one born on Christmas Eve. That's what I brought to it.

Oh, wow. Pat's born close enough to Christmas for it to suck.

Yeah, I'm like six days from Christmas.

Yeah, Pat's still close enough to know maybe that one present life. I don't know.

But yeah, there's something in there for everyone. So if you like Christmas horror, subscribe to YouTube Premium. I'm not even sure. Honestly, it was for YouTube.

If you have YouTube TV as like a cable alternative, like YouTube TV also gives you access to all the 12 Deadly Days.

Oh, wow.

Fantastic.

Now, what's funny is it's like it was YouTube read at the time. Like it was them trying to make original content.

They named, I guess they were unaware of the RedTube, which is a website for something else.

Which I hope, I hope to God there's 12 Deadly Day porn spinoffs. Oh, I have a porn question for you guys. This is real. Hold on. This is real. I took a picture of it. So, sorry, everybody listening at home. No, no, no, no. I mean, if you want, whatever. But it's just saying is, I took a picture watching Violent Night last night in preparation. Like, make sure I have all my fucking tossed plates shit together. Now, Santa Claus' first fight, I guess it would be his second through the guy at the window, but when he's fighting the guy at the pool table and he's trying to find things in his bag to fight him with, he pulls out Die Hard on Blu-ray. But now I have a question about it. Just for the audience, I'm holding my phone up to the camera. This is the subtitle. So is it actually a porn spinoff called Die Hard On that he pulls out?

Well, for the people who aren't seeing this, yes, the subtitle automatically is Die Hard On as one word, Blu-ray, fuck.

So that's why I thought, but that still works as like, okay, I got a little Suzy doll. I got a Die Hard on Blu-ray. And so I didn't know if you were aware of this or if that was the original, if they just took it from the script, is what I'm getting.

I mean, I think if that's what it is on the Blu-ray, that's canon now.

Yeah, because they don't show it. It's a wrapped gift. So for all we know, it is a porn parody of Die Hard called Die Hard On. And someone requested that on Blu-ray for Christmas.

And they were good this year, so they were getting it.

Hell yeah. Well, not now, I guess. It was thrown at somebody. But I'm glad that organically, as it often does, porn came up and I was able to ask from the writers right here, get it on record.

So if anyone else notices this on their subtitles, and this has been a burning question, I'm sure no one else's mind except Ed's. We now have the correct answer from the writers themselves.

Which is they don't know.

Because they don't know. This has been fucking awesome, guys. I feel like, are we going to do Fear Tier? I don't know if Christmas Horror even has a Fear Tier.

I would say the Fear Tier for this would just be which of these creatures would you want to be on the naughty list the least, I guess, or most. You know what I mean?

That's good.

Wait, which is the one that slits you open and stuffs you full of pebbles and straw?

That's Frau Brechta.

Yeah, so I'm also going Frau Brechta.

Yeah, she's the real fucked up. Wait, is she also the one with the goose foot?

Yeah, she's got it all.

She's got bad news all around.

Oh my God, future ex Mrs. Voccola.

And I guess I would most want to be haunted by the Yule Boys because they seem pretty harmless and fun.

Yeah, they seem dope.

I think the Yule Boys I most want to take in and raise under a loving family. They're a bunch of orphans.

I mean, they act like they're stealing, but they're also just kind of doing your dishes for you, so that sounds dope.

Yeah, it has a real like Batman Begins, like the first time I met a man who stole to feed his family type of thing. My idea of theft.

You're like cleaning your dishes. It's like a symbiotic relationship, like those birds that eat the stuff out of a crocodile's teeth.

Yes.

I mean, look, I think of the Yule Lads, sausage swiper is probably my most feared. I don't want my sausage swiped.

I don't want someone sniffing at the bathroom door.

Can you imagine you're going to the bathroom in December 22nd and there's just a nose at the bottom, just looking for his leaf bread? Fucking disgusting.

Like a cartoon, red and stimpy nose that comes under the door and on its own moves around sniffing the air.

Oh, fuck, man. Doorway sniffers here.

Get out of here, you fucking creep.

Well, this has been awesome, guys. Thank you so much for doing this.

Yeah. Thanks again, guys. It's been a lot of fun.

Yeah, it was fun.

Happy holidays, everybody. Merry Christmas. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I for tonight was Sled Vocola.

This has been Scared All The Time. We will see you next week.

Scared All The Time is co-produced and written by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity, Tess Feifel.

Our theme is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is A*****. No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission.

Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions.

Tonight.

We are in this together.

Together.

Together.

===TRANSCRIPT END===