Enter Spookmas: The Hidden, Hybrid Holiday Season
The time has come to embrace the literal “Christmas Creep.”
I’ve resisted it for years, but it’s impossible to deny the changing world we live in today. The ice caps are melting, the ocean is like 80% plastic, and the season of traditionally-December celebration seems to kick off the moment Kmart packs up their back to school goods after Labor Day.
Modern commercialization has bled holiday into holiday into holiday, to the point where one festive season begins before the other even ends. When do you buy the tree? When do you stop eating pumpkins? When do you watch Nightmare Before Christmas?!
Face the facts: viewing the Fall holiday season as binary just doesn’t cut it anymore.
That’s where Spookmas comes into play: the festive, haunted holiday overlap when Halloween and Christmas become one and the same. Bizarrely enough, this may the be the only non-contiguous holiday on record: running permissibly from October 1 through October 31, then going on pause until Thanksgiving lapses and we dive head-first into the true Christmas season, this year from Friday, November 23 through December 31.
Wild. 70 days across three months when the Venn diagram between ghastly and yuletide is truly fair game.
But with great awareness comes even greater responsibility; hybrid holidays risk being interpreted as “cheat codes” that grant a precarious green-light to any celebration at any inconsiderate moment. So, before the Spookmas phenomenon cultivates any further in autumnal canon, it’s time to lay out some ground rules. And, most importantly, which movies best capture the spirit of Spookmas without treading into sacrilegious territory.
But first…
Some Light History
Now, it should be clarified that Spookmas existed long before getting a formal declaration on the Naturalish blog. The season has existed in its current state since probably the 1980's, when the “Christmas Creep” was coined for pulling the Winter holiday into early Autumn, conveniently around the same era when Black Friday first started appearing on the scene as well.
The festive seasons generally reserved for December started to inch earlier in the calendars, up even past the Thanksgiving barrier and into October territory.
And shockingly, this type of holiday crisscross goes back way earlier than the holidays themselves. The precursors to costumed Halloween trick-or-treating have roots dating back thousands of years, and those early “proto-holidays” don’t draw as strict a line between Halloween and Christmas as we’d tend to see today. From LiveScience’s guide to Halloween lore:
Those costumes are part of a long tradition of topsy-turvy fall festivals in which masks and strange costumes were key … The Roman holiday of Saturnalia, for example, involved masters serving their slaves. In medieval Europe, part of the Christmas celebration involved crowning a “boy bishop” from the choir, allowing the child to take on the role of a church elder for a day. Another ancient tradition, widespread across Europe, involved men putting on strange animal costumes to herald spring.
It’s not necessarily a coincidence that the origins of Halloween (Samhain) and Christmas (Saturnalia, debatably) come with a laundry list of overlapping traditions and motifs. And props to Buzzfeed for taking on these similarities with their listicle “16 Reasons Halloween And Christmas Are Basically The Same Holiday.” Truly journalistic genius.
Celebrating Today on the Silver Screen
Like all great holidays, I think it best to define Spookmas by the cinematic events that clarify the themes, characters, and narratives of the season. It’s a short list, but boy, is it a good one.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
I would dare to posit that Nb4C (as we die-hard fans call it) was the first modern Spookmas movie, debuting in October 1993 just as the hybrid holiday was finding its sea legs. Despite its clear evangelizing for the true meaning of Christmas, by golly, the film can’t be separated from its Halloween roots. As paraphrased by Cosmo, director Henry Selick voiced his opinion on this divisive issue:
It’s a movie about Halloween, and the people of Halloween, and how they react to something like Christmas.
Or, ya know, just put it in the Spookmas bin and get the best of both worlds.
Gremlins (1984)
Ah yes, another classic. Initially a June release in the summer of 1984, this was one of the first projects written by Chris Columbus, the genius who would continue onto such holiday masterpieces as Home Alone, Jingle All the Way, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
There’s no shortage of B-level Holiday horror mashups, but Gremlins seems to be alone in genuinely standing the test of time. While the film is set during the Christmas season, it’s narrative has little to do with any strong holiday themes — a tactic that frees the film to cross the seasonal threshold more fluidly. Actually that’s the very reason it was released in the summer, to appear more as a horror blockbuster and less as a seasonal gimmick.
The long-rumored third installment of the franchise can’t come soon enough.
Rare Exports (2010)
A more modern spin on the Spookmas trend, Rare Exports offers a twisted take on Scandinavian Christmas lore when Finnish researchers unearth a demonic Santa Claus with a thirst for blood. It’s best to defer to the New York Times for their colorful review:
Kids will love the diminutive, motherless hero and a plot that’s completely bonkers; adults will enjoy the exuberantly pagan images and deadpan humor. Tots, on the other hand, will probably never sit on Santa’s lap again.
Anna and the Apocalypse (2018)
I can’t speak to this one because it comes out in November of this year, but damn, Spookmas is hitting its stride. Anna seems to take on the modern tongue-in-cheek zombie satire — a la Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead — and adds a little festive flair.
Sign me up.
Krampus (2015)
On the topic of genre-benders, Krampus is certainly a doozy. Another dark-comedy that brings together the festive with the frightening, plus with Adam Scott and David Koechner adding some delightful charm.
The myth itself has origins dating back centuries in Norse and Pagan lore, and seems to always be found at that precarious link between Christmas and demonic punishment. Thanks to the modern film adaptation, it seems like Krampus is back in style.
Maybe the Harry Potter Movies?
Look, I’ll concede that it may have been a scheduling fluke that Freeform (formerly ABC Family) started airing Harry Potter marathons as part of their Christmas schedule, but the association clearly stuck and now it’s actually reasonable to count the franchise as a contender for Christmas canon.
And right, it’s not a Halloween franchise either, but the spookiness of the Wizarding World seems to be another unintended consequence that bridged the gap between the films and October traditions. Not to mention it was October 31, 1981 when Harry’s parents died, so again, the breadcrumbs all point to another Spookmas contender.
In short, whether you support the idea of a Spookmas season or whether you like your holidays clean, crisp, and without the blending of flavors, it’s hard to deny the growing trends that bring the two seasons together. Spookmas is hardly an excuse to creep Christmas earlier in the year, nor is it meant to overshadow Thanksgiving. Rather, it’s a phenomenon where festivities have been celebrated for so long that they’ve been given the chance to evolve and transform into something new. Huddle together with friends and family as you bake cookies and get scared out of your stockings.
Still, let’s be clear: You shouldn’t watch Love Actually in October. You wouldn’t listen to Monster Mash in December. As much as Spookmas shows potential for celebration, it’s also an exercise in restraint. Spook responsibly.
