Black Christmas and the Horror of Christmas
The moral case for hating Christmas and everything it's about.
Author’s Note: This is usually something that gets watched in the evening on Christmas Day. The idea being that you “kill off” Christmas for the year and go into the New Year fresh. At least that’s the theory. But obviously it’s coming out before Christmas in this series. Still, after this it’s back to regular scheduling in the new year. With one final exception tomorrow.
Christmas is a horrible time.
There's so much anxiety and frustration around the time when you have such terrible weather to deal with. You're forced to buy presents for people you don't like and would prefer to avoid if you could. All because people picked some time of the year to do it. Everyone else is doing it and so you look bad if you don't do it. People look at you with resentment and anger if you don't have happy feelings about Christmas. Which just makes the idea of celebrating it all the more frustrating. It's hard to think of a more annoying time than Christmas for many people. You just wish it would all go away and you could destroy it if you could. After all, why should anyone else feel happy and joyful at Christmas when you can't or don't want to?
People have a lot of reasons for feeling this way at Christmas. Maybe you don't have a family to celebrate with on Christmas. Or maybe you do but your family aren't the nicest people in the world, either to you or other people. It could be that you had a bad experience or multiple bad experiences at Christmas when you were a child. Things like you didn't get the presents you wanted year after year. Either because your family couldn't afford to give them to you or because they didn't want to. They could feel like you don't deserve it for something you did either at Christmas previously or some other time of the year. You could also have a problem with Christmas because of actual trauma you felt because of Christmas. The tree could've fallen on you or your house burned down at Christmas or something like that.
Experiences like that can definitely make you hate Christmas and everything associated with Christmas. Yet because so many other people don't hate Christmas and have such a wonderful time, you're forced to go through it year after year pretty much everywhere you go. Even if you try and avoid it by staying home and not participating, some people will try and cheer you up and make you feel better by attempting to force Christmas on you in one way or another. It's enough to make someone go crazy.
Black Christmas is very much about how absolutely terrible Christmas is for some people. Kelli Presley, as played brilliantly by Katie Cassidy, and her sorority sisters at Delta Alpha Kappa house are not exactly in the Christmas spirit. Most of them don't have anyone to celebrate with beyond each other. Or at the very least they would rather hang out at their sorority house than go home for Christmas. What's worse is that the house they live in used to be the house of Billy Lenz. Someone who doesn't have the happiest memories of Christmas himself. Enough that he's decided that he would rather try and kill as many people as possible at Christmas. Starting with the women of Delta Alpha Kappa to try and ruin what is already a pretty terrible Christmas for everyone.
Because Christmas is a terrible time of year.
Do yourself a favour and explore the horror of Christmas by checking out Black Christmas as soon as you can.
You can watch Black Christmas on Apple TV as well as Amazon and AMC Plus.