A Darker and Edgier version of Christmas in a work, for added irony.
Christmas being the biggest celebration of love, family, and happiness, it can further increase a single character's personal misery if he experiences totally opposite emotions.
In extreme cases, this can mean death, torture, rape, and more death. In shows with more everyday themes, it might be loneliness, failed relationships, and depression.
Sometimes this doesn't just affect one person but everyone. British Soap operas in particular have a reputation for making Christmas a time of death, divorce, infidelity, and violence, which explains why some of them have their own sections below. At least one person will end up dying, getting knocked down, or crying all alone on the happiest day of the year and almost always with a carol or jolly Christmas song over these images just to hammer it home. Maybe somebody's house will go down in flames. Maybe somebody's Genre Blind enough to actually get married - in which case, they're likely to immediately get jilted, lose their beloved in an accident, or be subject to an extramarital affair. That's the Spirit of Christmas for you.
Foils, Keets and other comic relief characters can rest well knowing that they're not guaranteed to suffer, and generally aren't killed off at this time of year. Given that they're kept within reach to offer at least some levity in an otherwise grim story, they have favourable odds to celebrate Christmas as it should be, but there's still a chance of them getting traumatised in time for Christmas dinner. Or during Christmas dinner.
In Doylist terms, this isn't necessarily done just to be depressing and cynical for the sake of it: it's also done so audience members whose own Christmases are miserable in unremarkable ways can have the satisfaction of knowing that someone else's Christmas is even worse than theirs. Having to be hospitable to relatives you resent, graciously receiving presents you neither need nor want, and the inevitable mountain of leftover turkey or ham will feel like lenience by the closing credits.
Snow Means Death is a frequently used motif in such settings. Bad Santa and An Ass-Kicking Christmas are more humorous/badass takes on the concept. The Christmas section of Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday has some of the most brutal examples. To fit the theme, the score for tense or scary moments may involve Chaos of the Bells. Crappy Holidays is a downplayed version; characters aren't in any danger but aren't having any fun either. Can overlap with Christmas in the Big House. See also Anti-Christmas Song and Did I Mention It's Christmas?.
Examples:
- In 7 Seeds, the final events of the Ryugu Shelter, meaning Maria locking herself and the other infected Arcia X people into a freezer to prevent them from spreading, as well as Saruwatari and Mark committing suicide took place on Christmas.
- In Angel Beats!, it was implied that Otonashi's sister died on Christmas Eve.
- A few Brave Series entries feature this to an extent, as the times they aired meant that they were approaching their Grand Finale by the holidays, so sometimes they included plot developments leading up to them.
- Averted in Brave Exkaiser's Christmas Episode, where it seems like typical Exkaiser fare, but holiday themed. However, the raffle tickets Kouta's mom wins lead to the Hoshikawa family vacationing to Egypt, which is where the show's final arc is set into motion.
- The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird's Christmas Episode features Draias and his minions holding the world for ransom by infecting millions with a disease. It actually seems like it might work for a while. Additionally, it also marks the point where Inspector Satsuda finds out the Amanos are working with Fighbird and co.. The show's final arc kicks off on the next episode.
- Brave Police J-Decker very briefly features some Christmas celebrations before the Fahrzeugs' master plan takes centre stage.
- Brave Command Dagwon has the the Dagwon team fight take on Mado Warugaia and later Genocide in an all-or-nothing battle around Christmas, with Mado on the verge of destroying the earth with a Gravity Beam followed by Genocide attempting the same with a Colony Drop.
- GaoGaiGar plays a little with the trope, showing Mamoru celebrating Christmas with his parents like a normal kid… then he says goodbye to his parents before leaving to join GGG in fighting the Primevals at Jupiter. The resulting battle sees the loss of Leo Shishioh, all but one of the Mic Sounders series, and (seemingly) the J-Ark and its crew.
- The eleventh episode of the anime series of Devilman Lady takes place on Christmas and it is just as dark and bitter as the rest of the series.
- In ef - a fairy tale of the two., first the earthquake on Christmas, that killed hundreds of people in the town, including the families of Yuu and Yuuko. Then, years later, Yuuko got raped by her stepbrother on a Christmas night for the first time. And then, more years later, she died in a car crash on a third Christmas.
- World War III breaks out from Christmas to New Year's Eve in Future War 198X after A Nuclear Error on Christmas Eve.
- The Apocalypse Virus was unleashed on Tokyo on December 24, 2029, in Guilty Crown. The event came to be known as "Lost Christmas."
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, "Christmas Eve": Hayate watches as her entire adopted family gets murdered right before her eyes and so is overwhelmed by the power of the Book of Darkness. The Power of Friendship later prevails happily, but still.
- Mokku of the Oak Tree: The two final episodes of the series are set on Christmas, and Pinocchio has to struggle against some Knight Templar soldiers that want to destroy him and ventures to an Eldritch Location in order to find the cure to save Gina from dying of an illness. And then getting a Disney Death when the soldiers come back and shoot him down near a Christmas tree to the horror of Geppetto and the others.
- In Psycho-Pass, Makishima Shougo murders Akane's friend Yuki on December 24, 2112.
- Space Battleship Yamato 2202 has the Human and Gamilan Colonists of Planet 11 celebrating Christmas Eve, only for a recently-arrived Gatlantean Fleet to start attacking the planet; killing the majority of the Colonists before sending down Killer Robots to wipe out the few remaining survivors before assembling their fleet around Planet 11s' Artificial Sun as a space cannon in an attempt to destroy Earth with.
- In Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl, Mai is run over and killed by a car on Christmas Eve as she ran into the street to save Sakuta.
- In Star Of The Giants, Hyoma had been focusing too hard on his baseball career and was only aware that it was the Christmas season only for his Christmas party to end up as a complete disaster as nobody came and he unleashes an emotional temper tantrum and trashes his own party.
- Sword Art Online has the episode "Red-Nosed Reindeer", which culminates in Kirito breaking down over Sachi's pre-recorded message after having let Sachi and his other comrades die at the hands of high-level monsters.
- In Tiger & Bunny, Barnaby returns from a fun outing where he went ice-skating with his family's trusted housekeeper, opens the door to the drawing-room of their home...and happens upon the dead bodies of both his parents, a burning Christmas tree, and the murderer himself. The house ends up a pile of smouldering rubble while Barnaby himself ends up with his memories of the murderer's true identity wiped from his mind, thus allowing the perpetrator to pose as his Parental Substitute and mentor for the next 20 years.
- In Toradora!, Taiga and Minori, both in love with Ryuuji, pushed him away from themselves wanting him to be happy with the other girl. Cue to upbeat Christmas song.
- Yes, Batman gets his own folder. Christmas is NEVER a happy time for Batman. Not only is it an emotional time for him since the loss of his parents, but supervillains LOVE to stir up crap during Christmas time (especially guys like The Joker, Mister Freeze, and the Calendar Man). Here's a few examples of Batman stories set in Christmas time, both in comics and other media:
- The Long Halloween: Both The Joker on a crime spree and the Holiday killer are active during Christmas in this story.
- Two years later we have the same thing, except replace Joker with Scarecrow and the Holiday Killer with the Hangman. And the energy Bruce devotes in trying to stop both in turn heavily strains his relationship with Selina Kyle when he winds up standing her up on Christmas Eve.
- Batman: Noël, Yet Another Christmas Carol, where Bruce is Scrooge dealing with the Joker.
- The Holiday Special of The Batman Adventures, a Mister Freeze story.
- Detective Comics #826, in which Tim Drake ends up accidentally driving around Christmastime Gotham with The Joker.
- Legends Of the Dark Knight #79
- "A Slaying Song Tonight" in the anthology book Batman: Black and White opens with a splash panel of a skinny, wild-eyed Santa Claus hiding a machine gun in his sack, going on to reveal that this is a hitman who plans to get near his target by taking the place of a rent-a-Santa hired to put in an appearance for the target's daughter.
- The very second episode of Batman: The Animated Series, Christmas With the Joker, and the later episode Holiday Knights.
- Batman Returns opens with Penguin being dumped in the river on Christmas. The film's present-day is set during Christmas time as well.
- Batman The Animated Series for the Game Boy sees the third level take place during Christmas, right as Poison Ivy takes a pre-Two-Face Harvey Dent hostage while Batman gets tangled up with Catwoman when he crosses her path during a robbery.
- The Christmas episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold reveals that Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered on Christmas, while Bruce was sulking over not getting the toy he wanted.
- ...though a later episode then Retcons that to show that he perked up a moment later so that he could have a last happy family moment before his parents were murdered. Wait, is that better?
- Batman: Arkham Origins is set during Christmas in Batman's second year as a crimefighter. There are 8 assassins in town, he's dealing with 2 mob bosses, the hopelessly corrupt police force want him dead, the Mad Hatter makes his first appearance, Anarky wants to destroy the city, there are two prison riots, and the Joker is behind it all For the Evulz. This Christmas is downright brutal.
- The Long Halloween: Both The Joker on a crime spree and the Holiday killer are active during Christmas in this story.
- Parodied/subverted in one well-known short story. Superman chooses to spend that Christmas giving presents to poor children and helping out around the community. Batman catches him as he's leaving and tells him off, stating that Supes' time would be better spent making sure supervillains don't cause problems. Superman hesitantly agrees and heads back to the Fortress Of Solitude, only to decide to at least drop off the presents he already picked up. He opens the door to the family's house and finds Batman in Santa Claus garb, having lied to Superman in order to give out presents and take the credit for himself. Cue Superman decking Batman in front of a couple of terrified children.
- Guy Lefranc, a Tintin Expy, bring us its darkest story with Black Christmas. The premise is set in France during Christmas Eve and is about a mining accident that lead to the death of many miners. While Lefranc saved some survivors, the story is filled Heroic Sacrifice, Hope Spot, graphic deaths. Lefranc unwittingly learned that the accident was born out of many broken lives following World War II while underlining how horrible mining conditions were in the '50s.
- The Flash: An issue of The Flash (1987) has his arch-enemy Abra Kadabra manipulating things so Wally has a particularly sour Christmas where he's forced to spend the day chasing after some drug peddlers, and by the end of it he winds up getting sued.
- An issue of Hitman (1993) has Tommy and Natt hunting a radioactive homicidal maniac in a Santa suit at Christmas. That's Gotham. And the narration is verse in the meter of "The Night Before Christmas".
- "Helliday," issue #29 of The Powerpuff Girls, depicts a Christmas-like holiday that Him is orchestrating. Buttercup is the only person not buying into it.
- Santa Vs. Zombies is about Santa Claus getting caught in a zombie outbreak on Christmas Eve.
- The Warrior Christmas Special
features The Ultimate Warrior doing several unspeakable things to Santa. WARNING: Not for the faint of heart.
- Zombies Christmas Carol is A Christmas Carol in the middle of a zombie apocalypse caused by Scrooge himself. Lines from the original story are distorted and played with at times, and the setting isn't exactly cheery.
- Citadel of the Heart, in a Mythology Gag to the aforementioned example from Sword Art Online, depicts a flashback of such events dating back to December 24th, 1954 in the fic Sword Art Online: Special Edition. The circumstances, however, are vastly different from the canon Twisted Christmas. Grandis, one of the Ultimorian Deities, is captured and given some strange microchip into his system, which promptly awakens him and causes him to go berserk, eventually going from his near undead looking Phase 1 form to his Humongous Mecha Phase 4 form, in an attempt to escape from the experimentation done to him by his Arch-Enemy Dr. Devoniak. While Dr. Devoniak manages to subdue Grandis with the laboratory's own machines, eventually breaking his will to struggle further to escape, Grandis, in an increasingly sobbing tone, cries himself to sleep as narcotics take effect, quoting "Frosty the Snowman" in doing so.note
- In Eleutherophobia: Ghost in the Shell, Tom recalls a Christmas Eve (which was also the first night of Hanukkah) when his Yeerk used his bare hands to snap a child's neck for singing "O Come Emmanuel".
- Empath: The Luckiest Smurf plays with the trope two times:
- It takes "Haunted Smurfs" (a semi-dark 1980s cartoon show episode) and turns it into "A Haunted Christmas", with the Smurf Village tragedy of losing the storehouse to a fire happening sometime prior to Christmas, which makes things pretty dismal for Smurfette since this would be her first Christmas with the Smurfs. Fortunately, as the story unfolds, things turn out for the better and the trope is ultimately averted... although in the Framing Story's end Smurfette mysteriously disappears when the lights in the dining hall go out.
- "A Wild Winter Solstice" sets itself up for a possible Twisted Winter Solstice, as Empath during his first visit to the Smurf Village is lost and injured somewhere in the Smurf Forest and is being taken care of by Wild Smurf, whom Empath first encounters but keeps his existence a secret for years, while the Smurfs search the forest for days in the hopes of finding him. Again, things work themselves out in the end and the trope is ultimately averted.
- Played straight in a mini-story where an elderly Tapper passes away around Christmas and the Smurfs have a memorial service for him.
- Eugenesis is an insanely dark story, where the plot just happens to start just before Christmas Day. A massive amount of death and carnage occur on the actual day, and the story continues on in increasingly bleakness right through to the new year.
- Harry Potter and the Endless Night has a Mall Santa on Christmas Eve having been transformed into a Vampire that goes about devouring the Mall-goers to transform them into Ghouls. Draco; who was working as one of the Mall Elves springs into action to help escort the survivors out of the mall and away from the massacre while Integra and Harry show up with the rest of the Hellsing Organization to contain the outbreak and deal with the Ghouls. Alucard finally shows up after Draco and Dobby finished ragdolling the Vampire Santa around before killing him. However, it's revealed that among the victims that were turned into Ghouls were Hermione's parents as their now-orphaned daughter was found with a hollow look in her eyes after seeing her parents killed.
- Simple Gifts: Watson becomes sick just before Christmas, and on Christmas Eve itself, his illness reaches a crisis that comes far nearer to killing him than anyone expected. That night Holmes also figures out why Watson has been so depressed and withdrawn lately: he's suffering from the deaths of most of his friends in the military and he's too afraid of experiencing that loss again to make new ones.
- At the beginning of An American Tail, the Mousekewitzes spend Hanukkah 1885 watching their village being destroyed in a pogrom
by Cossack cats.
- A lighthearted example happens in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Jack Skellington and the well-meaning citizens of Halloweentown volunteer their services at Christmastime, but since their idea of a fun holiday varies wildly from that of Santa and his helpers and they don't know what the holiday is actually about, the end result involves a skeletal impostor Santa, toys that frighten children, tentacled Christmas wreaths, and a giant, tree-eating snake, all of which ruin Christmas for everyone. It gets better once Santa is saved, but still.
- The Polar Express: While not in the movie proper, there's a boy named Billy who claims Christmas "doesn't work out" for him. It's implied to be because he's poor and can't afford to have a happy Christmas.
- 8 Women: In which a family gathers for the Christmas festivities, but their patriarch dies and they have to figure out who did it instead.
- Anna and the Apocalypse is a Zombie Apocalypse movie set during the Christmas season. It's also a musical.
- Babe, despite being a family film, doesn't show Christmas in a positive light. We see Farmer Hoggett take Ferdinand's girlfriend Rosanna to the chopping block to be their meal, half of the sheep be stolen by rustlers, and the bratty granddaughter reject a homemade dollhouse.
- Cash on Demand takes place on December 23, and features charming but ruthless criminal Colonel Gore Hepburn holding hostage the wife and son of bank manager Harry Fordyce to force Fordyce into helping him rob the bank.
- The Children: Beginning on Christmas Eve, children become infected and start killing their parents. Ending on New Year's Eve, it's revealed that the whole country seems to be affected.
- The Day of the Beast: This Spanish Horror Comedy classic depicts the misadventures of a priest who goes on an unhinged quest through a Wretched Hive Madrid in order to find and kill The Antichrist during his birth ceremony, which is presumed to be on the midnight before Christmas of '95.
- Ebenezer (1998) is one of the few A Christmas Carol adaptations to show Scrooge directly killing someone, and his character in general is extremely villainous.
- Christmas Blood: The movie is about a Serial Killer who dresses up as Santa Claus and murders people around Norway every Christmas Eve. After spending five years in jail, the killer busts out of prison and makes his way to a house where a bunch of young people are partying to hack them up.
- The Elf: The movie is about a young couple and their families trapped in a house on Christmas Eve with a killer elf doll targeting them.
- Eyes Wide Shut takes place over the holidays and involves Bill, the protagonist, becoming embroiled in a sex cult that may or may not be murderous and everywhere.
- First Blood involves Rambo coming home from Vietnam looking for a friend, only to find that he died of Agent Orange following the war. When Rambo tries to go to a diner, Sheriff Will Teasle drives him away but Rambo tries to go back to town, only to be arrested. Rambo eventually snaps while at prison and goes on a one-man war against Teasle and the police. In the end, after Rambo severely wounds Teasle in a gunfight, Rambo is confronted by his former commander Col. Trautman and he is told to surrender. Rambo breaks down and cries as he tells Trautman about what happened in Vietnam and when he returned home, before surrendering to Trautman and put into state custody while Teasle is carried to the hospital. All of this happened on Christmas.
- The movie Gremlins is an example (the events happen at Christmas), and contains another one—one of the main characters tells how her father died on Christmas, trying to go down the chimney in a Santa suit. "And that's how I learned there was no Santa Claus." The MAD magazine satire of the movie adds another twist to this unfortunate fate: all the warranties of the gifts he was carrying had expired.
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: The film adaptation of the novel added a Death Eater attack on the Burrow during Christmas break, ending with the beloved Weasley family home in flames.
- Home Alone 2: Lost in New York: The In-Universe movie Angels with Even Filthier Souls is shown to take place at Christmastime, as implied by the Christmas tree in the background when Johnny interrogates and guns down Carlotta. Sadly, and apparently, not even the Christmas spirit will save her from Johnny's wrath and he even lampshades it with a Bond One-Liner.
Johnny: "Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal!" (fires another salvo from his gun) ''And a happy new year!"
- The film Krampus is about an evil deity, torturing a family whose son loses his faith in the holiday.
- Love Actually: While most of the plot lines, taking place during the Christmas season, end happily, a few of them start or end on a bittersweet note:
- Daniel's plotline opens on his wife's funeral and his struggles to bond with his stepson, Sam, at the start of the Christmas season.
- On Christmas Eve, Karen discovers the expensive necklace her husband secretly bought was meant not for her, but for his sexy young secretary. In the Flash Forward at the end, their marriage remains notably strained, though she smiles through it.
- Sarah attempts to start a relationship with her long-time crush on Christmas Eve, but is unable to due to his inability to put up with the many phone calls from her mentally-ill brother. Her storyline ends on a bittersweet note, as she spends Christmas with her brother in the psychiatric ward.
- Nutcracker Massacre: The film is about a bunch of people celebrating Christmas together under one roof... while a six-foot tall nutcracker kills them one by one.
- Scrooged, which is a modern take on A Christmas Carol. Frank's resentment of Christmas (and love of television) came as a result of his disinterested parents, especially his father who regarded anyone who didn't work (including his underage son) as lazy. To make things even bleaker, years later around Christmas Frank ended up choosing his career over the love of his life, which left him jaded until the Ghosts came.
- It wasn't much better for Elliot Loudermilk, who was fired on the spot for questioning Frank, had his wife leave him because of it, got robbed of both his money and his booze (which he sold his blood to pay for), and ended up buying a shotgun to shoot Frank with in revenge. It works out for him in the end. Frank (by now a reformed man) rehires him in a better position and enlists his help in performing a Hostile Show Takeover.
- Nuclear war docudrama Threads includes a grim parody of a Nativity scene. The main character, Ruth, who has recently given birth in a barn, spends Christmas Day huddled around a fire with other survivors, seemingly indifferent to her baby's cries. Not only that, the narration makes it clear that many children and elderly people will not make it through the first post-holocaust winter as they are more vulnerable to the effects of cold and radiation.
- Similarly, The War Game, the precursor to Threads, ends on the first Christmas after Canterbury and Rochester are nuked. The survivors' predicament is extremely depressing; among other things, a child with leukemia is only expected to live seven years longer, a pregnant woman is worried about suffering a Tragic Stillbirth, and a group of traumatized orphans don't want to be anything when they grow up.
- Das Boot: With the submarine passing the Biscay in a massively damaged state and barely afloat, after a mission that took much longer than planned, the commander decides on Christmas Eve to skip the celebrations until they are on dry land. They reach La Rochelle on Christmas Morning, meet up with another sub that gets crippled when running into a sea mine and subsequently sunk by an aerial bomb and enter the port just in time for a heavy bomber attack that destroys the entire harbour and kills most of the book's characters.
- A Certain Magical Index: The events of Genesis Testament Volumes 2 and 3 both take place on Christmas, focusing on separate events experienced by different characters, all of which aren't as festive as the holiday itself.
- GT2 has Touma slowly dying due to being infected with the St. Germain virus. During an attempt to find the cure, the Arc Villain causes several espers to unwittingly use magic, causing them to horrifically damage themselves as it's incompatible with their esper bodies.
- GT3 has Operation Handcuffs, an attempt to clean up the city's dark side which goes horribly wrong and results in a massacre of people both good and bad.
- Surely one of the most famous examples would be A Christmas Carol. A big part of the reason for Scrooge's hatred and resentment of Christmas is that his father often left him at school for the Christmas holidays, where he had to spend the festive season by himself. During the story, he sees some pretty horrifying sights, starting with the miserable, wailing spirit of his dead friend and ending with his own grave.
- Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections is an entire novel of this.
- The Crowner John Mysteries: Crowner's Quest starts with John being called away from a Christmas party being thrown by his to investigate an apparent suicide. So John spends Christmas Eve examining the body of an elderly priest hanging a stinking privy. This leads to a very bad Christmas and New Year for John.
- Galactic Milieu: In Magnificat the Remillard Dynasty attempt to magically torture their father in order to remove his split personality on Christmas Day, as since he won't be expecting it, it will be easier to get him into the room.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Harry and Hermione visit Harry's parents' graves in Godric's Hollow on Christmas Eve. They end up falling into a trap set by Voldemort, who suspected Harry might visit the gravesite. The duo gets attacked by Nagini, who was horrifically disguised in Bathilda Bagshot's corpse, and nearly captured by Voldemort. Harry's wand is also broken during the attack, leaving them with one less weapon and no leads on the horcruxes.
- In Heavy Object, the first chapter of Volume 17 has the protagonists and their unit dressing up in Christmas-colored uniforms and head to the North Pole to rescue a boat of sick children! Along the way they need to kill a lot of enemy soldiers, "accidentally" kill some soldiers on their side, use Elise's increasingly stripped body as a distraction, and ultimately deal with the nobles using said sick children as mules for contraband.
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas!: Played with. The Grinch, who hates Christmas, tries to make it a sad Christmas for the Whos below by stealing all their presents, decorations, and food. But the Whos, despite being robbed, are still happy because they can still sing and be together on Christmas. This causes the Grinch to understand the true meaning of Christmas and give everything back.
- In The First Circle takes place over an Extremely Short Timespan on Christmas and the days around it, but most of the characters can't see their family or enjoy themselves because they are in a prison (plus given the Soviet Union's dislike of Christianity, they wouldn't want anyone celebrating anyway).
- Subverted in the Mog story "Mog's Christmas Calamity", where Mog accidentally causes a house fire around Christmas, but the neighbours pitch in to repair the damage.
- Roys Bedoys: Downplayed in “Christmas is the Season of Giving, Roys Bedoys!”, where Wen mainly has a happy Christmas, but one downside is that she receives no presents (until her friends sacrifice part of their own presents).
- In John Corey Whaley's novel Where Things Come Back, Benton Sage commits his suicide on Christmas.
- Sufjan Stevens' song "That Was the Worst Christmas Ever", which is quite a Tear Jerker.
- Followed several years later by "Did I Make You Cry On Christmas Day? (Well, You Deserved It!)"
- The blink-182 song "I Won't Be Home for Christmas" is about a cynical man who hates being nice to people he can't stand. Over the course of the song, he attacks a group of carollers with a baseball bat and is arrested. The cherry on top is the line:
"Even though we didn't have a tree, Christmas came a night early because a guy named Bubba unwrapped my package."
- Billy Idol's song "Yellin' at the Xmas Tree"
- "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" surely qualifies, since the lyrics specifically mention that this unfortunate incident happened on Christmas Eve.
- In 2006, Twisted Sister released an album called "A Twisted Christmas," which consisted entirely of traditional Christmas carols through the lens of Heavy Metal.
- This is the entire premise of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's third Christmas album, "The Lost Christmas Eve." The story of the album is about a man who has despised Christmas ever since his beloved wife died in childbirth on Christmas Eve; he gave his mute son up for adoption and turned his back on the entire holiday. Naturally, events transpire to make him rethink his position.
- "Dead Winter Dead," by the related group Savatage, is a concept album about the horrific Bosnian War
. The story's climax happens one Christmas Eve when the old cellist who plays in the town square is killed by an artillery barrage.
- The Trope Namer may be Bob Rivers, a Seattle-based DJ who is famous for his black-humored Christmas parody albums named Twisted Christmas.
- The Arrogant Worms have an album called Christmas Turkey, which is loaded with similarly dark-humored mayhem.
- Karine Polwart's "Strange News" is about a real-life example when her cousin died on Christmas Day.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic did a couple of black-comedy Christmas songs:
- "Christmas At Ground Zero" from Polka Party!, in which nuclear war breaks out at Christmastime.
It's Christmas at Ground Zero
There's panic in the crowd
We can dodge debris while we trim the tree
Underneath a mushroom cloud - "The Night Santa Went Crazy" from Bad Hair Day, in which Santa Claus goes Ax-Crazy and starts killing everybody at the North Pole workshop.
The night Santa went crazy
The night St. Nicholas flipped
Broke his back for some milk and cookies
Sounds to me like he was tired of getting gypped
- "Christmas At Ground Zero" from Polka Party!, in which nuclear war breaks out at Christmastime.
- A real biggie is "The Cat Carol"
, where a cat is locked outside her house on Christmas Eve and nobody will let her in, during a blizzard. She saves a mouse by wrapping herself around him and although the mouse survives, the cat freezes to death. Santa then comes by and turns the cat's body into a constellation that shines only at Christmas. This is possibly a religious metaphor.
- There are several songs about being sick on Christmas:
- "Got a Cold in the Node for Christmas" by Gayla Peevey is about a girl who caught a cold on Christmas.
- "I Got a Cold for Christmas" is about a boy who caught a cold on Christmas.
- "I'm Giving You My Cold for Christmas" is about a man who's tired of having a cold on Christmas and seeks to deliberately infect his girlfriend so that they can commiserate.
- "It Sucks Being Sick at Christmas" is about a woman who's sick on Christmas.
- "Circle of Steel" by Gordon Lightfoot is about an unfit mother getting drunk while waiting for CPS to come take her child, contrasted with the cheerful Christmas imagery outside her dirty tenement.
'Deck the Halls' was the song that played in the flat next door where they shout all day.
She tips her gin bottle back 'till it's gone; the child is strong.
A week, a day, they will take it away, cause they know about all her bad habits. - Wall of Voodoo's "Shouldn't Have Given Him A Gun For Christmas", where the narrator's father gets in a drunken argument with a relative on Christmas and it drives him into an Axe-Crazy rampage with the titular gift.
- The song "Ais Gill"
by Dave Goulder is about the real-life collision between two trains that occurred on Christmas Eve 1910, as described in the Real Life section below.
- FWLR's "Deck the Halls (Time to Die)" starts off as the classic Christmas carol "Deck the Halls", but accompanied with a robotic voice to build up its unsettling feeling. Then, before the first drop, there's a panicked reaction of a human who realizes that the robots are becoming self-aware and are about to take over the world. The song's second verse is entirely sung by the robots, with lyrics including plans to Kill All Humans.
- Dead Ringers: In a 2024 episode, Eddie and Clarrie of The Archers flee to Coronation Street after yet another attempt to make their show Darker and Edgier kicks in. They last until the locals describe their last Christmas, with all the requisite murder, abuse and violence before deciding not to stick around.
- Christmas Massacre has you playing as a psychotic man named Larry and going on a series of killing sprees around Christmas time.
- Clock Tower 3 has a young 12-year-old piano prodigy named May Burton, who was brutally murdered by Sledgehammer on the night of Christmas Eve while her father was gone to war, but was killed in an explosion. Little May's body was found on Christmas Morning. The game protagonist Alyssa defeated Sledgehammer and returned the locket to May's ghost, and had her play the special song on the piano for her father, which reunited father and daughter as they descended to heaven.
- Cold Call: It's Christmas Eve, and there's a monster loose in a house with the people previously inside having gone missing.
- The mission Suffer with Me in Call of Duty: Black Ops II occurs shortly before Christmas. Hudson dies, Alex Mason may also die, Woods is crippled, and David Mason is traumatized.
- Divine Gate has Blue Christmas, which was a massacre that occurred just two days before the holiday, and left 666 people dead, with a girl named Ruri being the Sole Survivor.
- D'LIRIUM begins with little Ponies celebrating New Year's Eve.note However, When the Clock Strikes Twelve all the protagonist's friends are killed and gutted, and the festive mansion is transformed into an Eldritch Location crawling with demons. Only the occasional holiday tree and present box, or a series of lights hanging limply from the ceiling juxtaposed against bloody sigils and mutilated bodies remind the player of what the holiday they were supposed to be celebrating was before it all went to hell. To hammer the point home, if you get a game over, you get a shot of the corpse of the player character hung from holiday lights.
- Friday Night Funkin' plays it for dark comedy: Daddy Dearest and Mommy Mearest battle the protagonist on the Mall Santa's throne while pointing a gun on him and the crowd only cares about the rap battle. The comedy becomes much darker when Monster takes over and makes a Christmas song about how he's going to cook the protagonist and his girlfriend for his holidays recipe.
- Santa Claus is one of the playable characters in the deceptively violent and gory Happy Wheels.
- Karen Sees: The game seems to be set around Christmastime. For one thing, there's a "Meet Santa" area on the second floor of The Mall. For another, an exterior screenshot shows Christmas trees in the mall parking lot.
- This tends to happen every Crimbo in Kingdom of Loathing due to Uncle Crimbo making some big mistakes and requiring help from adventurers to bail him and the holiday out. Highlights include the penguin mafia, hostile corporate takeovers, the Borg coming 'round to assimilate everyone only for it to backfire on Uncle Crimbo himself, becoming the Crimborg...
- Limbus Company:
- When the Sinners make their way to Calw in Canto III, they find that the residents of the town have been massacred and turned into gory Christmas displays, complete with lights, trees and Christmas music. This is just a part of Kromer's torment of Sinclair, as a reminder of the day she killed his family.
- The "Miracle in District 20" event has the Sinners fight against a bunch of Killer Rabbit gnomes who intend on using them as Human Resources to make their presents with.
- The Hollijolli Village invasion in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. The music is a twisted version of Christmas music to drive the point home.
- Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake takes place on Christmas. This is the game where Snake has to kill his best friend and estranged father in utterly cruel and unusual ways (Throwing the former into a minefield after beating him with his bare fists and the latter by setting him on fire) and ends up becoming a PTSD-ridden, alcoholic mess isolated in Alaska for six years before Metal Gear Solid rolled around.
- In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, this is revealed to be Mitch Conner's ultimate plan: By getting himself elected as Mayor through the drug epidemic he started, he wants to turn every day into Christmas in a town where things get weirder during the holidays. When the kids travel to a Bad Future in which he succeeded, the town is in utter chaos due to the adults being wasted on cat piss and the Woodland Critters murdering everyone they see.
- The festive time-themed Metro Square stage from the 2012 Twisted Metal game. During the pre-stage dialogues in Sweet Tooth's story mode for this level, Calypso invokes this trope with: "Do you like the holidays Sweet Tooth? I do. I, I love to see the people so happy. So excited. Because when they die violently, they're so surprised. Am I right? No one expects to die on Christmas".
- The first game took place on Christmas Eve as well.
- Zombie Claus is about trying to survive inside your home while being pursued by a zombie Santa Claus.
- Both of Kyle Hyde's adventures in Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and Last Window involve Christmas time. The first game involves a quick plot detour to help Melissa celebrate the Christmas she missed. The second games play it a little more with Kyle dealing with his misgivings about the holiday, due to his father being murdered around that time when he was a kid.
- Nameless has every route's end take place on Christmas, in an amusement park. And in every route, either Eri or one of the dolls disappears at the blink of an eye.
- The fourth case of the first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game features a murder happening in the middle of a lake in the foggy night between December 24 and 25. Phoenix takes the case and discovers that another murder happened 15 years ago on December 28.
- In Spirit Hunter: NG, the Momoi Department Store was burned down during the lead-up to Christmas, leading to multiple families dying while they were buying presents for their children and loved ones. The main soundtrack of the area is a dark and unsettling version of Jingle Bells
.
- DEATH BATTLE!: "Omni-Man VS Homelander" takes place during Christmas. Considering both Omni-Man and Homelander are Beware the Superman incarnate, and the fact that the conflict was caused by Homelander killing Debbie as a message for Omni-Man to stay out of his way, you can already tell this isn't going to be a pleasant holiday for either of them. Or at least not for Homelander, whom Omni-Man subjects to one of the cruelest and most gruesome deaths in series history.
- David Firth's original cartoon short made for Charlie Booker's Screenwipe Christmas Special was considered so violent offensive that he had to air another video instead. The short involved a crazed man digging up dead bodies to feed to his family. He shoots his wife and son when they are against this idea. He then beats his wife's body with a large log and saws through her head, among other things...
"Saws are too difficult to use. BE EASIER TO USE!"
- Stupid Kids: Boldogat és még boldogabbat (Merry and even more) has a Zombie Apocalypse of people who sold their souls to Facebook because it crashed.
- Sword Interval: The Heirophant killed Fall Barros' parents and embued her with his power just as they were about to leave for the holidays. While the Heirophant was responsible for her family's death, he did so under the orders of the Atlas Foundation who possessed his reliquary. And her unusual from her Healing Factor to her golden eyes, was because she was the next Harbinger with memories of normalcy also being doctored by Atlas.
- There's this spoof
"history" of Santa's dictatorial reign over an elf slave empire, originally concocted by high school history teacher Chris Butler to entertain his students during an annual goofy-lecture event.
- How to Survive Camping: The campgrounds are closed during winter, and for good reason, as ancient powers converge during that time. The creatures that appear during the season are even more threatening than usual, from a gigantic cat that will devour you if you haven't received new clothing, to a woman who will stuff your intestines with stones and straw for being "wicked" (which includes being messy around the house), to warriors in chainmail armor that will drag you to be drowned if you're not merry enough around Christmas.
- Her being both The Scrooge and The Grinch, The Nostalgia Chick's already dark comedy goes Nightmare Fuel around Christmas time.
- Demo Reel gives us this gem from "The Blair Witch Hangover":
Quinn: My God this is depressing. And I'm Irish! I'm going to have to put on Angela's Ashes just so I can remember what it's like to laugh again.
- Adventure Time: The two-part Christmas Episode "Holly Jolly Secrets" was a bit of a downer that revealed the Ice King's incredibly sad and grim back-story, but it ends on a high note when Finn and Jake end up re-inventing Christmas in their efforts to cheer up the Ice King and bond with him.
- In an American Dad! Christmas Episode, Stan mentions the so-called "Christmas Rapist" (though due to Political Overcorrectness he's been renamed "the Holiday Rapist").
- A later episode has Steve accidentally kill Santa, with Santa swearing revenge after being revived. They manage to take refuge in a mountain man's home and fend off his forces long enough for Christmas day to arrive, meaning Santa has to end his onslaught and leave. The next Christmas episode has the Smiths realize that fighting for their lives to survive Santa's wrath has become their Christmas tradition.
- Amphibia's Christmas Episode "Froggy Little Christmas" features King Andrias hijacking a giant Santa parade float robot with nanobots and controlling it in an attempt to kill Anne. Fortunately, Anne and her team manage to defeat it.
- Doug's Christmas Story, where after accidentally biting Beebe Bluff and injuring her leg, Porkchop is sent to trial and is almost put to sleep. The Wham Episode of the series.
- In Futurama, Christmas is a time of getting together... to take shelter from Robot Santa, a robot version of Santa Claus who was programmed with exceedingly high standards of "nice" and whose idea of punishing "naughty" people is to kill them, preferably with heavy artillery.
Amy: He knows when you are sleeping.
Prof. Farnsworth: He knows when you're on the can.
Leela: He'll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan!
Zoidberg: Ohhh!
Hermes: You'd better not breathe, you'd better not move.
Bender: You're better off dead, I'm tellin' you, dude.
Fry: SANTA CLAUS IS GUNNING YOU DOWN! - Moral Orel:
- The (intended) first season finale, ironically titled "The Best Christmas Ever" is about Orel's parents deciding to separate after Clay confronted Bloberta with the (completely true) accusation that Shapey wasn't his son. Ultimately they choose to stay together for appearance's sake, despite both of them being miserable. This was the show's first hint of its oncoming Cerebus Syndrome. The ending is Orel waiting for God to grant a Christmas Miracle (with two minutes left) while looking up at the sky. It's implied nothing happens.
- A year later was slightly better for Orel, in which he found a true father figure in Coach Daniel Stopframe, but he still had to deal with the fact that his father is an abusive jerk and that he'll be limping for the rest of his life because of his father's neglect. (Then again, those facts are true because Orel had a Twisted Easter weekend where his father shoots him and then was too drunk to get Orel medical treatment for an entire day, so it evens out.) It's arguably worse for Clay; he finally comes to terms with his bisexuality and confesses his love for Daniel, only for Daniel, who by this point also knows how abusive Clay is, to reject him, potentially ruining his marriage to Bloberta in the process. Ultimately, it doesn't end up spoiling Christmas for Orel, as he's seen in the Distant Finale celebrating it with his childhood sweetheart Christina, his son, and his newborn daughter.
- The Bad Future shown to Grouchy in The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol is that all his fellow Smurfs will be captured by Gargamel on Christmas Day.
- Why, Charlie Brown, Why? has a downplayed, realistic example: Janice has to spend Christmas in the hospital getting treatment for her leukemia. Meanwhile, at her house, presents brought by friends and well-wishers pile up for her, making her two sisters envious that they don't get nearly as many.
- A number of notable aviation incidents have occurred around Christmastime:
- On December 16, 1960, two airliners collided over New York
, killing 127 people on both planes and six people on the ground. There was one survivor from one of the planes – an eleven-year-old boy on his way to visit relatives for Christmas – but despite doctors' best efforts, he died the next day, bringing the death toll to 128, making it the worst air disaster in history at the time.
- Only four days before Christmas 1988, Pan Am Flight 103
crashed in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie after a bomb detonated in the cargo hold, killing all 259 onboard and 11 people on the ground.
- Air France Flight 8969
(as featured in Mayday), which was hijacked on Christmas Eve 1994 by terrorists who managed to kill three passengers before they were dispatched by French special forces in Marseilles.
- On December 20 1995, American Airlines Flight 965
, carrying a number of people travelling for the holidays, crashed into a mountain in Colombia, killing all but four of the 163 people onboard.
- On December 16, 1960, two airliners collided over New York
- Similarly, train accidents:
- In the early hours of Christmas Eve 1910, Hawes Junction station on the Settle to Carlisle line was a hive of activity. Several locomotives that were used to assist trains on the steep climbs were due to head back, two of them northbound. However, the signalman forgot about them, and likely had trouble seeing them with the driving rain. He cleared the line for an overnight express to Glasgow, and the two locomotives, on the same line, set off. The express, with clear signals, passed the station and caught up to them a mile further on. The front two coaches were crushed, and the gas lighting caught fire. Twelve passengers died.
- Around 10:20pm on Christmas Eve 1953, an overnight express from Wellington to Auckland in New Zealand fell into the Whangaehu River at Tangiwai
after the rail bridge collapsed. The crater lake on Mount Ruapehu had overflowed into the Whangaehu River and created a lahar, taking out one of the bridge supports moments before the train arrived. 151 people died in what remains New Zealand's deadliest rail disaster.
- And maritime disasters:
- The Penlee lifeboat disaster
, in which a merchant ship and the RNLI search-and-rescue boat sent to take her crew off were both wrecked with the loss of all hands
- On 20 December 1987, the ferry Doña Paz
, which was loaded with far more passengers than it was designed to carry, many of them visiting relatives for the holidays, collided with the ocean tanker Vector. Both ships caught fire and sank, with more than 4,300 casualties and only 25 survivors — the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history..
- The Penlee lifeboat disaster
- The Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.
- The Cyclone Tracy hit the Australian city of Darwin around 10 pm on Christmas Eve, 1974, and dissipated on Boxing Day.
- The storm Lothar that ravaged Europe on December 26th, 1999.
- Ronald Simmons's
killing spree, which lasted from December 22nd to the 28th.
- The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut (which claimed the lives of, among others, 20 grade-schoolers) ruined Christmas 2012 for the families of the victims, if not the entire town when it took place on December 14. USA Today ran a story noting that there were people who took down their decorations, finding them inappropriate.
- It was Christmas Eve 2002 when Scott Peterson called his mother-in-law to tell her that her daughter Laci was missing. 4 months later, what was left of Laci and the baby she was carrying washed up on a beach, and Scott was arrested, tried, and convicted of murder and is serving a life sentence in a California prison. Even if Scott had been innocent, one can reasonably assume that Christmas has been a very sad occasion for her family ever since.
- This trope was scarily employed by Canadian serial killers Karla Homolka and her then-husband Paul Bernardo. Not only did they end up ruining Christmas 1990, as well as every subsequent Christmas for Karla's own family by their role in her kid sister, Tammy's, death, note , but they also ruined every Father's Day beyond 1991 for the family of their second victim, Leslie Mahaffy, and every Easter since 1992 for the family of their final victim, Kristen French.
- In the Sendling Christmas Massacre of 1705
, almost three thousand Bavarian rebels tried to storm the city of Munich while it was occupied by Austrian troops, only to be betrayed, surrounded, forced to surrender, and massacred in the same night. Still widely known as the Sendlinger Mordweihnacht (Sendling Murder Christmas).
- Just three days before Christmas in 2014, the driver of a bin lorry in Glasgow blacked out and mounted the pavement, killing six people — including three members of the same family, one of whom was only 18.
- El Niño, a weather phenomenon which causes severe conditions worldwide, gets its name from the shortened form of El Niño de Navidad — a Spanish allusion to the newborn Christ — because it tends to be strongest around Christmastime.
- The rapid spread of the Omicron variant during the COVID-19 Pandemic coincided with the 2021 holiday season - twelve months after the start of the Alpha variant's surge.
- On December 25, 2007
, three young men visiting the San Francisco Zoo decided to taunt Tatiana the Siberian Tiger. In response, Tatiana jumped out of her enclosure and attacked, killing one of the young men and injuring the other two, before eventually being shot and killed by police. Coincidentally, on December 22nd the year before, the same tiger had attacked and severely wounded a zookeeper at the same zoo.
- In a magazine interview published between Christmas 1994 and New Year 1995, Marc Almond revealed that, about a year previously, he had nearly been murdered when a dispute over a drug deal led two people to try to throw him off a high balcony. The people in question were never charged in relation to the incident. Indeed, Almond chose not to press charges and instead checked into a rehabilitation clinic to be treated for multiple substance addictions dating back more than a decade.
- One of the first places conquered by Japan in 1941 was Hong Kong, at the time a British colony. It fell on Christmas Day.
- On 21 December 2023, a mass shooting happened at the Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, leaving 14 dead and another 25 injurednote before turning the gun on himself.
- There were two terrorist attacks on Christmas markets in Germany in a decade:
- The first one was in Berlin in 2016, which killed 12 people, with a 13th dying of his injuries in 2021, by a failed asylum seeker from Tunisia, who was killed in a shootout with police in Milan four days later, and
- A second one in the city of Magdeburg in 2024, which killed five people - including a nine-year-old boy. This one was by an Islamophobe from Saudi Arabia, who was arrested at the scene.
- Bethlehem - the birthplace of Christ - has not held most of its traditional Christmas festivities
in the wake of the Israel-Gaza war that broke in October '23, as it's seen as inappropriate to celebrate Christ's birth in the face of the brutal persecution and suffering of other children in the region.

