Posted on October 12, 2026

Who Keeps the Miracle Running? ‘Twas the Night and the Machinery of Christmas

Guest Post

Luna Gray

Kevin Johnson’s debut imagines a world where Santa is real, almost everyone agrees he’s good, and the cost of all that joy gets paid by somebody else.

Most Christmas horror starts by taking something comforting and corrupting it. Kevin Johnson’s ‘Twas the Night, out October 13 from William Morrow, does something stranger. He builds a world where Santa Claus is real, almost everybody knows it, and Christmas works exactly as advertised.

Then he asks who has to suffer to keep the miracle running.

A World That Already Agrees

The prologue doesn’t treat Santa as folklore up for debate. He’s a fact. He delivers presents to children all over the world, and only children. His existence is tied to peace, kindness, low crime and an end to war between nations.

That’s a lot of power to hand one being. The prologue also makes room for a fringe of skeptics who call Santa a conspiracy, propaganda, a form of population control. Nobody has definitive physical proof of him. The presents keep showing up anyway. The narrator closes by warning that doubting Santa is dangerous.

Johnson doesn’t have to invent a surveillance state. He just reads the song literally. Santa sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows if you’ve been bad or good. In this world that isn’t a nursery rhyme. It’s policy.

Posted on December 23, 2018

The Pro-Sex Slasher: Talking Black Christmas (1974)

Elizabeth Erwin

Holiday horror is a mixed bag. For every acknowledged gem (Rare Exports, Better Watch Out), there exist some seriously awful yuletide tales (Santa Claws, To All a Good Night). Occasionally though, a film will get it so right that it establishes a template for the films that followed. Such is the case with the cult classic Black Christmas (1974). Criminally overlooked, this film by Bob Clark is typically recognized for establishing some of the most well-known tropes of the slasher genre. But it is its transgressive female characters that really steal the show and leave us asking why these characterizations didn’t become the standard.

In this Horror Homeroom Conversation, we’re kicking it back to 1974 with the ultimate holiday horror film, Black Christmas, and considering how the depictions of women in horror might be different had this film had gone mainstream.

Posted on December 23, 2015

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984): Connecting Depravity with Childhood Trauma

Elizabeth Erwin

The corruption of childhood by adults, both neglectful and deranged, is a predictable staple of American horror films. Throw in a murderous Santa Claus and a whip-wielding nun and the moral depravity gets ratcheted up ten-fold. Such is the case in Charles E. Sellier, Jr.’s Silent Night, Deadly Night. Residing between ridiculously quotable dialogue and an endless array of sexual, albeit creative, violence is a pointed commentary on the connection between depravity and trauma. The film’s message is clear: it isn’t so much the creatures of myth (Santa, The Boogeyman) children ought to fear but the adults who surround them.

You know a horror film has ticked all the right boxes when the PTA petitions to have it banned. Such was the case in 1984 when Silent Night, Deadly Night opened and immediately raised the hackles of media watchdog groups. Despite its opening weekend grossing more than A Nightmare on Elm Street, TriStar Pictures pulled the plug on its media campaign and the film quickly faded from theatres.

In many respects, the controversy surrounding the 1984 release of the film as well as its advertisements showing an axe-hefting Santa Claus emerging from a chimney seems an echo of a simpler time. People still picketed theatres and film critics still had the power to shape public perception. Consider Leonard Maltin who gave Silent Night, Deadly Night zero stars and predicted the next thing filmgoers would be subjected to would be the Easter Bunny as a child molester. Also weighing in were the notable film critic duo of Siskel and Ebert. Their eviscerating review of the film, in which they called out by name—repeatedly—the people associated with the film, is the stuff of legend: