Halloween and Christmas

2022-09-01

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Earlier this evening, I was listening to the Stage 1 music from the NES game "Ghosts 'n Goblins". The game is a run-and-gun platformer with a classic horror theme, and music is often used in Halloween-related gaming videos online. While listening to the tune tonight, however, I suddenly had the feeling that it could well have been an 8-bit rendition of classical Christmas music.

The thought struck me as odd. The music of Ghosts 'n Goblins is intentionally filled with suspense and foreboding, a far cry from the saccharine jingles we usually associate with Christmas today. However, the music reminded me of a YouTube video from last year^ that discussed the eerie, otherwordly magic of traditional interpretations of Christmas.

Christmas in modern life, especially in America, is a heavily-commercialized shopping extravaganza. People are encouraged to eat way too much food, buy way too many presents, and attend way too many parties. Christmas stories are sanitized, simplified, stereotyped, and even parodied for the sake of drawing in more readers and viewers. The mysteries of the season are given sub-par and ethos-killing answers--for the price of a book or movie ticket, of course.

I think the problem in America is that spooky, mysterious stories are now saved for Halloween. The season of jack-o'-lanterns, ghoulish costumes, and witches' cauldrons now gets all the scary stories. The public have seemed to settled on the idea that Halloween will contain the frightening aspects of any holiday, while every other day--including Christmas--will be sweet to the point of being cloying.

Autumn and winter are unnerving times of the year, and it's no wonder to me why they're both associated with the supernatural so strongly. I wish that element of strangeness was still present in our modern observance of Christmas.

^ Why Are Christmas Movies So Bad? (HTTPS)

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[Last updated: 2022-11-09]