Flutterby™! : The Holiday Spirit

In the spirit of the season, Sociological Images has a run-down on Krampus, Santa's evil sidekick. Wikipedia has a whole rundown of St. Nick's co-conspirators.

MeFi has a bunch of stuff on that definitive Christmas story, H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out Of Space, including Mark E. Smith reading it for the BBC, and the text of The Colour Out Of Space if you'd care to read it to your children yourself.

Not a man breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper darkness the watchers saw wriggling at that tree top height a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that come down on the apostles' heads at Pentecost. ...

So whether, like me, you're putting triple the effort to make sure there's "X", and lots of "mas", in Xmas, or whether you celebrate the birth of Jesus on an entirely different date, have a good afternoon.

And don't shoot your eye out, kid.