Bah, Humbug: Holiday Specials for People Who Hate the Holidays

Are you a Christmas Person? Do you spend the last five months of every year in breathless anticipation, stockpiling decorations and preparing holiday playlists in October so you’ll have them on hand the moment the clock ticks past midnight after Thanksgiving Day?

Go away. This isn’t for you.

This one’s for the rest of us: the ones for whom Christmas is frustrating and fraught and painful. It’s for the people whose trees lurk in their living rooms like bailiffs, presents dwarfed by invisible baggage; for whom every cheery greeting and festive listicle reads like a recrimination for our failure to achieve the proper level of holiday spirit. This one’s for the humbugs sneaking extra shots of rum into their eggnog and praying for January.

These are holiday specials for people who hate the holidays: Christmas episodes that capture that signature holiday horror and existential guilt. The irreverent, the defiant, the cynical–and, once in a while, the perversely heartwarming.

 

Above: Batman: The Brave and the Bold: “Invasion of the Secret Santas”

 

What It’s About: Robot Red Tornado tries his best to understand the elusive Christmas spirit while helping Batman stop Toyman-lite villain Fun Haus from ruining Christmas with his army of killer toys.

Why It’s a Good Anti-Christmas Special: Batman Christmas specials are great for the holiday, because no matter how bad you are at Christmas, you can take comfort in the fact that you will never, ever, ever be as bad at Christmas as Batman. And nothing drives that point home like “Invasion of the Secret Santas,” which, in addition to a healthy display of Batman’s standard holiday cynicism, heavily implies that young Bruce’s ingratitude at receiving an heirloom nutcracker for Christmas instead of the Zorro action figure he wanted indirectly led to his parents’ murder. Chew on that one for a second, and then remember that this is a cartoon targeted at eight-year-olds.

But that’s about standard for a Batman Christmas – after all, this is a guy who once told Robin that he’d never watched It’s a Wonderful Life because he couldn’t get past the title. What makes “Invasion of the Secret Santas” extra special is the Red Tornado storyline, in which the heroic robot tries his best to internalize the Christmas spirit, described to him by a young neighbor as a special “tingling” feeling. Undeterred by a nightmarish backdrop of what I assume is pretty much Christmas as usual in Gotham, complete with evil toys, dismembered robot Santas, marauding supervillains, and Batman’s frequent flashbacks to childhood trauma, Tornado does his best to go through the motions of holiday cheer, decorating his house, donning Christmas sweaters, and giving gifts.

Finally, after the climactic battle with Fun Haus, Red Tornado feels a festive tingling he joyously recognizes as the Christmas spirit – but which is actually a result of overloaded circuits. Then he explodes. The whole thing is about as close a metaphor for my personal relationship to Christmas as I’ve ever seen.

 

Misfits: “Christmas Special”

 

What It’s About: Done with their stint of community service, the eponymous misfits struggle to make their way in the real world while coping with powers that are often more bothersome than useful. When they discover a man who’s buying up powers for cash, they jump at the opportunity — until, powerless, they have to take down a disgruntled priest pretending to be the Second Coming of Jesus.

Why It’s a Good Anti-Christmas Special: Deconstructing and inverting genre tropes is the signature Misfitsmove, and nowhere does it dive in more wholeheartedly than “Christmas Special.” Irreverent, hilarious, and sometimes outright horrifying, it crashes through just about every holiday-special standby. The good guys do win in the end — killing “Jesus” along the way — but there’s not a Christmas miracle to be found. And even the one scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a heartwarming holiday episode gets turned on its head in one of the most gorily absurd moments of the season.

And yet, “Christmas Special” stays just this side of cynicism. It may have no truck with Christmas miracles or the holiday spirit, but it’s got a lot of heart, mercifully unobscured by cheap seasonal sentimentality.

 

The Hogfather

 

What It’s About: Like most of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, Hogfather is a thinly veiled fantasy allegory for something from our world. In this case, Hogswatch is a stand-in for Christmas during which the mythical Hogfather rides through the skies on his sleigh, leaving sausages, meat pies, and other gifts for good children (provided that they’re sufficiently affluent).

One year, however, something goes terribly, terribly wrong: The Hogfather goes missing, targeted by a brilliant assassin, and the Discworld’s affable Death steps in to take his place.

Why It’s a Good Anti-Christmas Special: Well, first of all, it’s pointedly not a Christmas story: It’s a Hogswatch story. Which is to say it’s a splendid and biting satire of the forced cheer, crass commercialism, and vast class divide of modern Christmas as well as a poignant and fascinating commentary on the nature of childhood and belief. In the tradition of all great Discworld stories, it’s also strange, scary, bizarre, occasionally baffling, and sidesplittingly funny–and a distinctly uncomfortable and solidly substantial take on the usual “comfort and joy” narrative.

 

“In Defense of Humbug,” by Jay Smooth

 

This isn’t actually a holiday special. It’s a video by hip hop DJ and video blogger Jay Smooth, best known for his viral hit “How to Tell People They Sound Racist.”

I try to like Christmas. I really do. I bargain and compromise, try to reclaim the holiday with my own cobbled-together traditions. I address holiday cards and curl ribbons. I cook cranberry sauce and fancy mashed potatoes, and wear goofy sweaters, and discreetly pour extra shots of rum into my eggnog. I force myself to smile, and when I can’t, I slip away as quietly as we can.

Because, you see, above gifts, above family, above food, above everything, there’s no holiday obligation stronger than the imperative to joy — and when you’re already having a hard time, it’s difficult not to hear every “Happy holidays!” as a reminder of another way you’ve failed to live up to the expectations of the season.

That’s what makes “In Defense of Humbug” such a rare and welcome kindness in a landscape saturated with wishes and expectations and obligations for cheer. I’ve been leaving it open on my browser all month and listening to it every few days – the holidays are a rough time of year for me, but hearing that I’m not the only one struggling to fit into the “Happy Holidays” box, and that that’s okay makes them a little easier.

 

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: “A Very Sunny Christmas”

 

What It’s About: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a show about horrible people being horrible. “A Very Sunny Christmas” is about horrible people being horrible on Christmas. Childhood memories are crushed, a selfishly motivated Christmas Carol-style intervention goes terribly awry, and Charlie rips out a mall Santa’s throat with his teeth. Finally, the gang gives up on capturing any kind of holiday spirit and takes solace in Mac and Charlie’s childhood Christmas tradition of throwing rocks at trains.

Why It’s a Good Anti-Christmas Special: “A Very Sunny Christmas” is dark even for me — and my favorite Christmas movie is Jacob’s Ladder. But if you’re looking for a Christmas special that dredges up the absolute petty worst of sitcom humanity and reinforces your hard-won holiday cynicism, this one delivers in spades. Everyone is almost incandescently awful, and even Mac and Charlie, whose motives are the closest to pure, are kneecapped over and over by disillusionment and their own immaturity.

 

Justice League: “Comfort and Joy”

 

What It’s About: The members of the Justice League split up to celebrate Christmas in their own ways: Superman takes Marian Manhunter home to Smallville for Christmas with the Kents, Flash teams up with the villain Ultrahumanite to track down a sold-out toy for some adorable orphans, and Green Lantern and Hawkgirl get in a bar fight in space.

Why It’s a Good Anti-Christmas Special: Okay, I lied. This one is just a straight-up Christmas special, and it’s full of heartwarming moments and Christmas carols and loving families and plucky orphans and fleeting redemption and all the usual eye-rollingly wholesome hogwash. But it plays it really straight, and it actually works. Of course Christmas at the Kent house is the most welcoming small-town family celebration ever, but not because of any special Christmas spirit — the Kents are just that sweet and sincere, because they’re the Kents. Of course Flash is able to talk the usually-arch Ultrahumanite into helping him save Christmas at an orphanage, because the Flash’s enthusiasm and compassion are just that contagious. I’ve written about this before, and I stand by it: “Comfort and Joy” is pretty much the only wholly sincere Christmas special that I wholly, sincerely love.

Plus, there’s a bar fight. In space.