The Santa Claus You Must Never See, If Yule Dare

The Shining Santa.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. So the song claims.  Family arguments. Memories of emotional loss. Fruitcake. Credit card debt. Office party inappropriateness.

Humor gets humanity through the worst of times. And at Christmastime, humor beget from horror seems to work even better. Given the nonfiction and historical nature of this website, it may seem unusual for such an offbeat posting, but the holiday season’s very mascot, Santa himself, in commanding a suspension of belief offers a brief chance to reach the far end of the spectrum.

After a year of Earth’s rapid destruction and more real-life horrors of a deadly serious nature, here is a photo essay culled from the Internet’s outer-net of fifty uniquely disturbing Santa Clauses from nearly two centuries, light in intent, dark in content.

It’s probably best that you never see Santa Claus in his many cruel incarnations here.

Yet if yule must, you will find him not to be merely creepy. He will be nightmarish, terrifying, heart-stopping, upsetting. At the very least – peculiar and inexplicable. Some of the damage these Santa Clauses have wreaked is made obvious by the faces of babes desperate to get out of their laps. Some of them are masked, others in all their fleshy, glorious gore.

In 1972, Joan Collins met a terrifying Santa and her karmic end.

Some of these Santa Clauses seem to evoke Hollywood films.

Perhaps the original and scariest Santa ever depicted in popular culture appeared in Killer “Santa on the Loose,” one of three episodes of the first Tales from The Crypt (1972).

It stars a svelte Joan Collins as a kittenish husband-murderer who gets a terrifying comeuppance from a homicidal St. Nick.

It’s not so much her demise that terrifies as her fear of the imminent karmic gift.

But the Santa Claus you must never see – right below – are all the more terrifying because they are real. Well, as real as you believe he is.

And if you think Santa Claus is bad, just wait four months when spring arrives – and so does the terrifying Easter Bunny.

Living-Mannequin-from-Hell Santa.

Simian Santa.

Sinister Santa.

Decrepit Santa.

Cadaver Santa.

Dangerous-Denture Santa.

Scarfaced Santa.

Descending Santa.

Inebriated Santa.

Burned-Catfaced Santa.

Benignly-Demonic Santa.

Cannibal Santa.

Sadistic Santa.

Suspicious Santa.

Menacing Santa.

Sub-Human Santa.

Automatonic Santa.

Hysteria-Provoking Santa.

Literally-Creepy Santa.

Surely-Stinky Santa.

Monstrously Unmoved Santa.

Seriously-Sinister Santa. 

Sentient Santa.

Digging-His-Nails-into-the-Child Santa.

Insensible Santa.

Eat-You-Alive Santa.

Satanic Santa.

Sonombula Santa.

A Depression Dame and Her Similar Santas.

Distractionary Santa.

Suspect Santa.

Teeth-Baring Santa.

Ominous Santa.

Tales-from-the-Crypt-Episode-with-Joan-Collins-Homicidal-Murderer Santa.

Sicko Santa.

Selfish Santa.

Childbearing Santa.

 

Old-School Soviet Santa.

Deer-Hunter Santa.

Scream Santa.

Scotch-Whiskey-Soaked old-school British Santa.

Snowman Santa.

Homicidal Santa.

Scrambled Santa.

Blood-Faced Santa.

Overtly Inappropriate Santa.

Spectre Santa.

Unibrow Santa and his Inexplicable Cohorts.

Gouged-Eye Santa.

Unintimidating-Fail Santa.


Categories: Christmas, Holidays, Humor

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