It’s that time of year again. We all get presents, eat a lot of candy and drink extra sugary Starbucks drinks. Most people might make a tradition out of the family friendly holiday specials that air this time of year. I prefer the more twisted ones. They’re not only more realistic, they’re just more fun. Here are the top 10 twisted holiday specials. If they’re not in annual rotation on TV, you can at least find them on DVD or online.  

The Simpsons: Roasting On An Open Fire 

First season episodes of The Simpsons aren’t nearly as funny as the show became, so they probably had funnier Christmas episodes. Still, 20 years later, you’ve got to give credit to the one that started it all. In its day, Bart lying about his age to get a tattoo and Homer taking the Christmas fund to the track was pretty twisted. Bart’s lyrics to “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” in the end credits are classic too.  

Yule Log

You all know this one. Just a video of a fireplace with Christmas music playing. We’ve seen video screensavers before, but this takes it to a weirdly specific level. This log somehow represents Christmas? It’s incredibly boring yet somehow you just can’t look away.  

Dr. Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Yeah, the Grinch learns something in the end, but before he does, his plot is pretty twisted. Steal all the presents from happy Whos and thereby end Christmas. In a way, it’s even more twisted that it didn’t work. With all their presents and decorations gone, the Whos are so happy they can have Christmas anyway? Damn, that’s some powerful whocaine they’re snorting.  

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas

The It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia gang delivers a powerful holiday extravaganza. Backstory reveals the horrible traditions that explain why the gang got so messed up. They try to do A Christmas Carol on Frank. Not only is he impervious to human emotion, but we get to see him naked too. This is from the people who got addicted to crack so they could go on welfare and hit on babes at an abortion rally. We wouldn’t expect anything less than Christmas looting, Santa prostitutes, and Danny Devito’s ass.

Beavis and Butthead Do Christmas

The hour long Beavis and Butthead Christmas show has lots of awesomeness. The two story segments spoof A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life in the best, cynical way. Ghosts fail to teach Beavis that a life of watching holiday themed porn need to be changed. Butthead learns that life would be better if he’d never been born. The best, however, are the “Letters to Santa Butthead” segments in between in which the boys rail on viewers’ Christmas traditions.   

South Park: Mr. Hanky The Christmas Poo

Every South Park Christmas episode has been great, not the least of which was their original pre-series short The Spirit of Christmas. But there’s something about happy singing dancing sh*t. They manage to capture a sincere holiday spirit with an original character, never ignoring the fact that he’s poop and leaves a trail of feces wherever he happily bounces. Classic music including “Lonely Jew on Christmas” and “Kyle’s Mom is a Bitch” make this an all time holiday favorite.    

Star Wars Holiday Special

This is so twisted even George Lucas wants it buried. The man who put Jabba the Hutt back in “A New Hope” doesn’t even want to try to fix this. If you see a bootleg, you’ll marvel at how cheaply a TV knockoff of the biggest movie of the decade was made. Stock footage from the movie is intercut with videotape of Harrison Ford and Chewbacca in their cockpit. As they try to get Chewy back to his home planet in time for Christmas, they intercut weird modern dance and light show sequences. It’s not even weird in a good, compelling way. It’s shocking.  

A Very Brady Christmas

There’s something creepy about the Brady family anyway. Everyone getting along, learning lessons. Weird. Then you add the way everyone aged by the time they did this ‘70s reunion movie. But the kicker is that it ends with a mine collapse and Mike Brady’s trapped in the rubble. Will the rescue workers be able to dig him out in time for Christmas dinner? Now that’s just F’ed up.

Futurama Xmas

Their subsequent Christmas episode actually got banned by Fox, but their original introduction to the holidays in the year 3000 actually seems harder core. Technology run amuck created a Robot Santa to fulfill the mythology of delivering presents to the good little boys and girls. Unfortunately, his criteria for goodness was so strict that he marked everyone evil and terrorizes anyone caught outside at Xmas. Oh yeah, they’ve officially changed the name of the holiday to Xmas since that’s favored abbreviation.  

The Year Without A Santa Clause

What starts as a cute Rankin/Bass animated show about Santa needing a vacation gets pretty hardcore. In order to bring the Christmas spirit to the south, Mrs. Claus asks the Heat and Snow Misers to allow a Christmas snow. Heat Miser only agrees if he gets full control of the North Pole. That’s some Tom Clancy political sh*t. Vixen goes to the pound and the kids offer to make Santa’s presents so they can have Christmas. So sweat shop slave labor for the holidays, woo hoo!

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