The Horror of the Eve: Christmas 2009

If I had to choose three images representing weird fiction's titans this holiday season, then it would definitely be these. In a disturbing, but perhaps appropriate twist of fate, it seems only right to give Poe some attention over Lovecraftian Christmas items as he closes out his bicentennial year. The stunning ornament above is an impressive tribute to the literary explorer, whose mind was bleak and warped enough to go beyond passe Gothic fiction, and into the territory of recognizable weird fiction, helping to launch a new sub-genre.



That's not to say Lovecraft should be ignored this Yuletide. Indeed, his online presence has only grown in artistic collisions of cosmic horrors with the biggest holiday in the Western world. The strange atmosphere of the season was famously picked up on by HPL himself in tales like "The Festival." Now, his admirers carry on the tradition by attempting to pinpoint the same sense of terrible wonderment by injecting this season with Lovecraft's creations. No longer confined to Cthulhu, images like "Old One's Christmas" by Deviantart.com's YikYik push the boundaries of Lovecraftian holiday horror. Meanwhile, CapnSkusting (another Deviantart denizen) features a near perfect amalgamation of Lovecraftian and traditional Christmas imagery in the tentacled being creeping up a Christmas tree.

In the end, the Frankenstein-like operations attempting to sew Christmas with weird motifs in a monstrous symphony of creation are almost natural. But whatever frightful things are lurking just outside your frosted window or inside the shadows of your festive mind, allow me to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a strangely spectacular holiday season!

-Grim Blogger