At the start of Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) leaves the cinema after having just seen The Greatest Show on Earth — his first ever moviegoing experience. On the way home, a stream of New Jersey suburban homes teem with the brilliance of Christmas lights. Except one, at the end of a cul-de-sac, which stands out for everything it does not have on display. A gaping black hole amidst the deliberately tacky red and green. Suddenly, it’s clear: this is a Jewish family. Christmas means nothing to them except as an excuse to flock to the theater where they can be unbothered, while the Gentile masses hunker at home to eagerly await the arrival of Santa Claus.

Like Sammy, I grew up as an eager, Jewish cinephile, absorbing any and all media that I could get my hands on. Part of my obsession with film grew out of feeling like a holiday outsider: I’d look at the other houses and see a cornucopia of markers of a “mainstream” world I knew nothing about. That status inspired me to camp out at the cinema on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, celebrating at the altar of cinema while others were opening presents.

Joy and terror are perfect bedfellows, as it turns out.

It also meant that I avoided Christmas films well into adulthood. Because I was a scaredy-cat too, I avoided horror until I realized I was closing myself off from a huge section of an art form I loved. Bereft of reverence for the holidays, and freshly brave about seeing bloodshed on screen, I targeted both at the same time (much to the derision of my Christmas-obsessed wife). I soon cultivated an appreciation for the Christmas Slasher, the Christmas Bloodbath, the Christmas Schlock. What I soon discovered is that holiday-themed horror is not only great fun, but the best form of Christmas movie. Screw your overly warm-hearted romances and miracles. I’d rather see a deranged maniac in a Santa suit make wrapping paper out of horny teenagers’ flesh.

As it turns out, joy and terror are perfect bedfellows; The arc of horror bends back far enough that it eventually touches elation. Unsurprisingly, many Christmas horror films trade on the wholesomeness of the holiday season. Take Black Christmas, considered by many to be the first slasher. Bob Clark’s sorority-set, slow-creeping death knell asks: what if you couldn’t go home for Christmas?

Much has been made of the strange fact that Clark is now responsible for, arguably, the most famous kid’s Christmas film of all time, A Christmas Story, as well as the most famous Christmas horror film. The juxtaposition only underscores how close the extremes of Christmas emotions really are. Simultaneously, its depiction of an almost wordless killer whose identity is never revealed, has endured as one of the finest examples of pure evil ever put on screen, regardless of seasonality.

Clark’s film derives its terror mainly from its closed quarters and from exceptional sound design: the creaking of floors, the incessant ring of a telephone, the demonic whispers of an off-screen killer, and the deployment of plastic wrap as a murder weapon. Underneath all of that, this mid-70s slasher offers a profound commentary on a woman’s right to choose; as much as its horror, its feminist underpinnings has led to not one but two remakes. Glen Morgan’s 2006 version is distinctly post-9/11, packed with Rob Zombie levels of gore; Sophie Takai’s 2019 version delivers an unfairly maligned reflection of the #MeToo movement.

If you like your Christmas horror a little less respectable, you may be more easily seduced by the axe-wielding, Santa-suit wearing characters of Christmas Evil and Silent Night, Deadly Night. Both offer a rejoinder to 1980s Reaganesque conservatism, but the latter in particular proved so appalling to Gene Siskel that he decided to publicly call out its director Charles E. Sellier Jr. on his show At The Movies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his derision generated the opposite effect: Silent Night, Deadly Night became a box office success and since developed its reputation as one of the season’s cult staples. It also inspired four sequels and a 2025 remake.

In the original, Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) grows up experiencing such unrelenting trauma — starting with witnessing a Santa-suit-clad killer murder his parents — that he now re-enacts it himself by “punishing” anyone he decides is disrespecting the holiday. Arriving during the heyday of slasher movies, that mostly translates to victims who are sexually promiscuous couples. The original film seems expressly engineered to offend Christian Evangelists; Mike P. Nelson’s remake has Billy mowing down Nazis at a Christmas-themed ball for White Supremacists.

Whether it’s because of the inherently pleasing contrast between splattered blood and pure snow or the comic irony of re-imagining holiday hallmarks (such as ornaments and wind-up toys) as instruments of death, many of these films mischievously translate classic Christmas phrases to give them an ominous edge. Better Watch Out is a bizarro Home Alone riff about a psychopathic, misogynistic sixteen-year-old. It’s not difficult to guess what classic film It’s a Wonderful Knife references. Await Further Instructions, Santa’s Slay, Silent Night, Bloody Night, Santa Jaws, Home for the Holidays … I could go on. All these titles invoke a twisted play on the very thing you’ve been told to trust.

Conversely, Don’t Open Till Christmas reversed the Silent Night, Deadly Night formula to tell the story of a killer who targets Santas. Are any of these films “good” by the standards of their respective genres? The weighted scale of their gimmicks makes it tough to say, but either way, there aren’t many traditional films where Santa possesses an unquenchable bloodlust or is somehow sexually devious.

For more extreme examples, there’s Fabrice A. Zaphiratos’ Blood Beat, a no-budget, locally-made Wisconsin nightmare that defies categorization, combining mystical samurais, telekinesis, and the sexual arousal of death. Yet it mines a traditional sensation, capturing the complicated anxiety that can come from spending too much time around family. If you’re a glutton for punishment, there’s also the incomprehensibly violent, maximalist torture porn of Inside. Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s French extremity masterpiece qualifies as one of the bloodiest films of all time, ignoring the impulse for subtlety to deliver an explosion of blood and dismemberment.

For more options, there’s Krampus, Gremlins, Rare Exports and The Mean One, which embrace the opportunity to defy holiday canon. Of course, the season offers plenty of natural opportunities for horror, as each bend in the snow-covered road offers new danger or uncertainty. Perhaps silken wrapping paper under the tree conceals some unlucky caroler’s calamitous fate. Or, being around family for long stretches of time may feel like a fate worse than death. No matter your particular fear, there’s almost certainly a piece of blood-soaked cinematic trash out there that taps uncomfortably into it. After all, I didn’t grow up revering Santa Claus, but I love these films. And if there’s anything they have taught me, it’s that one of Christmas’ most enduring qualities is that there’s a perfect gift out there for every single person.