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Halloween is behind us, Thanksgiving right before us, and on the fairly close horizon is Christmas, bringing with it the featured films of the holidays, classic and not-so-classic. Many families and households have their own traditions about which films are to be watched during the holidays. My sweetie-wife and I don’t have a strong tradition on this matter, but we have a few that, either together or sometimes by myself, return again and again during December. None of them are quite what most people consume during the season.

Hogfather

The adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s satirical fantasy novel, the first of his Discworld series that I read, is one of our favorites. Death must replace the Hogfather, a Santa Claus analog, to avoid a terrible fate befalling the Discworld should Hogswatch — the analog of Christmas there — come without the beloved figure. Made into a two-part television miniseries, it is fairly faithful to the novel, though some of the wordplay works better in text than as dialog. Hogfather is a pleasant way to ease into the season.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

This Finnish fantasy film, grown from a pair of short films about Laplanders crating up wild Santa Clauses for export to malls around the globe, is a Christmas horror that is light on the violence and gore but heavy on the unsettling nature of the Santa Claus myth, with elements borrowed from the tales of the Krampus and the Finnish folklore of Joulupukki.

A Christmas Carol (2019)

While there have been nearly countless adaptations of the Dickens story none that I know of are anywhere near as dark as this one penned by Steven Knight and starring Guy Pearce as Scrooge. In this version it is strongly suggested that Scrooge is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, accounting in part, for his disdain for humanity. Here the spirits are truly terrifying. This is not something to be viewed by those with easily frightened sensibilities.

A Muppet Christmas Carol

Not one that my sweetie-wife watches, but a favorite of mine since I caught it in the theater on its initial release. Surprisingly faithful, even with Muppet singing and dancing, this film gave me my favorite Scrooge, the incomparable Michael Caine.

Wake in Fright (1971)

New to my rotation is Wake in Fright, a film adaptation of the novel by Kenneth Cook, a psychological thriller about a man stranded in the Australian Outback town Bundanyabba, “The Yabba,” and confronts both the darker nature of humanity and himself. The entire story unfolds during the man’s Christmas vacation from his job as a schoolteacher in an even more isolated Outback settlement than “The Yabba.” Because it is Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere, instead of snow and bitter cold, Wake in Fright is a story set in blinding daylight and the blistering heat of summer.

Not one of the movies or shows on this list is what you might call traditional Christmas fare, though A Muppet Christmas Carol comes closest, but I believe that they all have something to say about ourselves and this holiday.