6 Cheerful Christmas Traditions With Shockingly Dark Origins

Wenceslas's pagan-loving mother Dragomir/Drahomira quickly took over as regent, and decided that she could get used to this whole "ruling" thing. What she could do without, though, was this Christianity fad that was sweeping Europe, which caused a rift between her and Wenceslas's Christian grandmother Ludmilla, who prodded her grandson to take over Bohemia and rule in the name of Christ. Dragomir's response was to send a gift of strangle-happy assassins to her mother-in-law's castle.

Dalimilova Kronika

The horrific murder instead rallied people behind Wenceslas and his controversial Christian platform of "not strangling old women," allowing him to take over Bohemia. Years later, Wenceslas was invited to a feast by his younger brother Boleslaw. He accepted the invitation despite being tipped off that Boleslaw was planning to kill him, because Wenceslas believed that his own brother wouldn't really do that to him. Wenceslas ended up stabbed and dismembered in front of a church, all because he stupidly assumed that, deep down, everyone was as noble as he was. Although honestly, with names like "Dragomir" and "Boneslaw," he really should've seen it coming.

In a sense, it was like trick-or-treating, if the "trick" was a helping of horrific violence. Accounts exist of proto-carolers burglarizing homes and destroying livelihoods simply because they didn't have enough booze or money to go around. Even some of the songs sung around that time explicitly threatened home occupants, saying that if they failed to provide the goods, they could expect a curb-stomping by belligerent show-tune-singing furries.

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Everyone knows the story of Rudolph, the mutant reindeer whose bioluminescent red nose made him a social pariah until Santa Claus turned him into his high-beams, teaching kids everywhere that if they don't want to be bullied, they first need to be useful.

The origin of Rudolph is as depressingly cynical as its underlying message. During the 1930s, the now-defunct Chicago department chain Montgomery Ward used to give away free books to children around Christmas. But in 1939, they decided to cheap out and make their own book instead of buying them from publishers.

Montgomery Ward

The store's ad man, Robert L. May, was saddled with the task, and eventually came up with the first draft of the Rudolph story. He drew from his own experiences both as a frail, frequently bullied child, and as an unfulfilled adult who never felt that he was living up to his potential. Shortly after that, May's wife died of cancer.

Rankin/Bass Productions

May threw himself into his work, and the result was a bestselling children's book. Montgomery Ward ended up printing two million copies of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, for which May was paid a nice round sum of zero dollars (hey, you can't get rounder than a zero). This proved a problem, as it meant that he had no way to pay off his dead wife's towering hospital bills. So the CEO of the department store decided to give him the rights to Rudolph. Some say it was because he didn't see much potential for the character, but we say: Shut up, Grinch, and let us retain some faith in humanity.

However, in an ironic twist, it was predatory capitalism which gave birth to A Charlie Brown Christmas in the first place. After seeing the Peanuts gang on the cover of TIME magazine, Coca-Cola approached Charles Schulz in 1965 to commission a CBS Christmas special that would prominently feature Coke product placement within the Peanuts universe itself.

United Feature Syndicate

The original airing of the program reportedly featured conspicuous Coke cans everywhere, because Snoopy just couldn't get enough of that real cocaine flavor. However, after years of ratings success and changing attitudes toward product placement, CBS quietly edited out any evidence that A Charlie Brown Christmas was originally commissioned as a Coke commercial. Instead, they simply started cutting chunks of the program out to make room for more commercial breaks, most likely in an attempt to create a perpetual energy source from poor Charles Schulz spinning in his grave.

Santa Claus did not spring fully-formed from the hopeful minds of children. In fact, he was invented by rich New Yorkers who wanted to stop Americans from drinking around the holidays. As we mentioned earlier, Christmas used to be a rowdy bitch of a holiday when drunken wretches roamed the streets harassing rich people. Property damage was widespread, morality was drowned in gallons of wine, and violent hijinks ruled supreme. A truly old-fashioned Christmas looked less like Martha Stewart Living and more like a PG version of The Purge.

Dubardo

By the early 1800s in America, however, the rich elite started to think of ways to ruin the one night of mindless fun poor people got per year.

In New York City, a group of wealthy Dutch-Americans formed the "Saint Nicholas Society," and conspired to make Christmas safe for the rich. With the help of writers like Washington Irving and Clement Clarke Moore, the Society began "domesticating" the holiday by focusing it upon children. First, they brought over the Dutch story of Sinterklaas, a folkloric figure based on Saint Nicholas whose present-giving, anti-pimping platform made him the perfect symbol for family-friendly wholesomeness.

Sander van der Wel/Wiki Commons

Thanks to illustrations and poems published by the Society, Christmas became less of a cold, drunken orgy and more of a child's second birthday party.

We never thought of ourselves as traditionalists before, but this holiday season, maybe we'll give it a shot ...

We aren't finished spreading our yuletide sadness just yet. Be sure to check out 5 Christmas Movies You Never Realized Had Insane Messages and 6 Horrifying Implications Of Classic Christmas Movies.

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