Inevitably, the seasons turn, in the slow, majestic way they do. They nicely divide out our lives into climatic themes: eras of birth, growth, yielding to the quiet dark of winter. This is true, of course unless you live in California. In Southern California there really aren’t any seasons, just stretches of shorter and longer warm, sunny days. And in coastal Northern California cold Winter turns to warm Spring which turns to… chilly, foggy Summer.

So, as I sit here with a warm drink next to a blazing fireplace a week shy of the Summer Solstice, my thoughts naturally turned seasonal, but in a profoundly confused and backward way. As we’re antipodal the the Yuletide holiday on the calendar, I decided to list my favorite anti-Christmas movies.

The anti-Christmas movie does not just point up the absurdities of the Holiday season, it actively tries to deconstruct the reasons and traditions of Christmas. Most of the time this is done in a spirit of irony, pointing out the sillier parts of what is undeniably an over-the-top holiday. One could argue that sappy, formulaic star vehicles like Jingle All the Way or Deck the Halls or Christmas with the Kranks or The Santa Clause trilogy in their own way do more damage to the spirit of Christmas than films that actively make sport of it. The fake sincerity of the Christmas movie is generally more pernicious and damaging than the ironic mocking of the anti-Christmas movie: A form of complicit betrayal, a treason of the season, if you will.

The Hebrew Hammer (d. Jonathan Kesselman, 2003) The titular character, the defender of Jews everywhere, is a superhero in the Mystery Men tradition, thoroughly mortal and played with a streetwise flair by Adam Goldberg. The heavy of the piece is Damien Claus (Andy Dick), the evil son of Santa Claus, who kills his father and sets out to make Christmas the only December holiday. Central to his plan: making all Jewish children watch It’s a Wonderful Life. The Hammer eventually defeats Damien and saves Hanukkah by– and I’m quoting both Wikipedia and the film here– “using Judaism’s ultimate weapon (complaining and guilt).” This is a fun little film with a good heart and a message of tolerance, even as it rips non-stop on every ethnic stereotype you can imagine.

Santa’s Slay (d. David Steiman, 2005). I came across this one on Spike a few weeks ago– The opening scene was so stunning I had to see it all the way through. The Masons, a typical bickering middle-class family, are sitting down to Christmas dinner. Santa enters the house and proceeds to gruesomely slaughter everyone. Leading the cameo appearances as the Masons are James Caan, Fran Drescher and Chris Kattan. Santa is played by WWE wrestler Bill Goldberg. See a pattern here?

The premise of this film is that Santa is actually a demon who lost a bet with an angel and had to do 1000 years of community service as a good guy giving out presents. Now the bet is off and he goes on a killing rampage. He’s basically a lift of the evil Robot Santa from “Futurama:” according to the film, before Santa lost the bet and had to be nice, people spent Christmas hiding from him.

As weird and inspired as the opening sequence was, the film quickly goes downhill from there and becomes a holiday-themed gore-fest. Like The Hebrew Hammer this movie has a strange sort of Jewish bent to it, but unlike that film Santa’s Slay is not well-written enough to convey any sort of message, which makes it fairly worthless entertainment.

Bad Santa (d. Terry Zwigoff, 2005). A holiday movie with 170 occurrences of the F-word, its protagonist is Willy, a foul-mouthed, alcoholic safecracker who badly impersonates Santa in department stores so he and his elf-sized partner can rob it after hours. Billy Bob Thornton does an impressive job of portraying a worthless, shiftless bastard with absolutely no redeeming qualities and lots of repellent ones. I’ll venture an opinion about Thornton as Willy: I never thought he was quite right for the role. He’s too rangy and skinny, even though I can’t imagine anyone else doing a better job on the voiceovers. Apparently, Jack Nicholson was initially interested in playing Willy, but ultimately other commitments made him back out. A shame: he would have been just perfect.

Wonderfully, Bad Santa never even gets close to a cheery holiday-themed message: in the end, there is redemption for Willy, but without spoiling the ending let’s say it involves the Christmas sentiment of others, not the principal characters. It’s the perfect antidote to the holidays, and can be enjoyed year-round, even in the coldest Summer.

–Skot C.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 6:46 pm and is filed under General, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.