Although it's been proven that the suicide rate does not reach an all time high during the holiday season, Christmas time can still be the most depressing time of the year for many. The commercialism, the stampedes of door busting shoppers trampling their fellow Christians underfoot, the knowledge that the majority of children in the U.S. will not receive the toys they've been brainwashed into believing they must have in order to be happy ever after because mommy and daddy are too poor to afford them.
Normally, the saccharine discharge of treacly Christmas cinema that trickles out of the open holiday sore this time of year is designed to present the unattainable version of Christmas: sugar frost snowfalls, sparkling magic, flawless family dinners where everyone loves one another and everyone comes bearing crisply packaged gifts with bright colorful bows. Then there's the real world, where annoyed shoppers blow their horns up our asses, soggy puddles of dirty snow clog the streets and the stores are clogged with pinch-faced, grabby bastards who are too busy screaming at the hapless clerk behind the counter to notice that Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" is having much the same effect as "Gloomy Sunday."
It was inevitable that Christmas Despair would finally work its way into movies and television. The fantasy can only sustain for so long. Eventually, the tinsel shine and flickering red and green lights illuminate the emptiness within, and we wonder if anyone else has ever considered drowning themselves in a vat of egg nog.
Oh come on, you didn't think I was going to write a happy article, did you?
The Most Depressing Christmas Scenes on Celluloid
How The Grinch Stole Christmas, 1966
Watching Mr. Grinch beat the shit out of his dog Max with a whip...and yanking his poor, skinny little limb to the breaking point, and cinching him into a rib-crushing corset and throwing big heavyass bags down on top of him...and poor little Max clearly loves his master for some inexplicable reason and does his very doggie best to serve him. Eventually, Max has his reward, feasting on the biggest, juiciest slab of rare roast beast, but geez! Michael Vick apparently saw this film at an impressionable age and got something very different out of it.
It's A Wonderful Life, 1946
It's Christmas Eve and George Bailey has had his wish granted by an angel second class: he's never been born, and now he gets to see what life would have been like without him. His mother doesn't know him, his wife doesn't want to know him and the local cemetery yields up a headstone with his kid brother's name on it:
Clarence: Your brother, Harry Bailey, broke through the ice and was drowned at the age of nine.
George Bailey: That's a lie! Harry Bailey went to war! He got the Congressional Medal of Honor! He saved the lives of every man on that transport!
Clarence: Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn't there to save them, because you weren't there to save Harry.
Nestor the Long Eared Christmas Donkey, 1977
This is basically Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for Christians. All of the other donkeys used to laugh and call him names, and then the Roman soldiers hauled them off to Gladiator games. Nestor's mom comes to Nestor's rescue after he is driven out into a Middle Eastern blizzard (wait, what?) and shields him from the subzero temps with her furry body. Nestor wakes up the next morning to find mom has frozen to death and he is now on his own. Later, Han Solo happens by and stuffs a semi-frozen Luke Skywalker into moms hollowed out corpse. No, not really. But one does get the feeling that Nestor ends up in therapy with Bambi and Simba at some point.
A Christmas Carol, 1951
Ebenezer Scrooge has his cruel words thrown back in his face by the Ghost of Christmas Present:
Spirit of Christmas Present: My time with you is at an end, Ebenezer Scrooge. Will you profit from what I've shown you of the good in most men's hearts?
Ebenezer: I don't know, how can I promise!
Spirit of Christmas Present: If it's too hard a lesson for you to learn, then learn this lesson!
[opens his robe, revealing two starving children]
Ebenezer: [shocked] Spirit, are these yours?
Spirit of Christmas Present: They are Man's. This boy is Ignorance, this girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all, beware this boy!
Ebenezer: But have they no refuge, no resource?
Spirit of Christmas Present: [quoting Scrooge] Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
Gremlins, 1984
The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.
M.A.S.H. - Death Takes A Holiday, 1980
It's Christmas in Korea and the crew of the 4077th faces a moral dilemma when a critically wounded soldier arrives. It's a foregone conclusion that he's going to die, but the surgeons are determined to stave off death until Christmas is over, so that the mans family will not have to remember Christmas Day as the day dad died.
The Twilight Zone - Night of the Meek, 1960
A drunken department store Santa gets fired for being shitfaced on the job and vents his frustration with his squalid, poverty riddled existence in the form of a wish: that the meek could inherit the earth for just one Christmas.
"This is Mr. Henry Corwin, normally unemployed, who once a year takes the lead role in the uniquely popular American institution, that of a department store Santa Claus in a road company version of 'The Night Before Christmas.' But in just a moment, Mr. Henry Corwin, ersatz Santa Claus, will enter a strange kind of North Pole, which is one part the wondrous spirit of Christmas and one part the magic that can only be found in - The Twilight Zone."
The Twilight Zone - The Star, 1985
A bunch of interstellar space guys discover a planet housing the ruins of an ancient alien race who lived in peace for a thousand years, spent all their time creating art and music and beauty and ultimately died when their planet supernova'd. The scientists question how God could allow such a beautiful species to die...until he does the math and realizes that the planet's demise was seen from earth as a bright star in the east, over the town of Bethlehem some 2,000 years earlier.
"...whatever destiny was theirs, they fulfilled it. Their time had come, and in their passing, they passed their light on to another world. A balance was struck, and perhaps one day, whenever we've fulfilled whatever destiny we have, maybe we too will light the way for another world."
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