  Horror/Scary
This week: Edited by: animatqua
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How about a helping of Horror for the Holidays?
Which holiday? Take your pick. This issue is going to be about some twisted ideas on holiday themes/characters. There will not be any picks because, frankly, after a lot of searching through the genre, awarded items, etc. I did not find items beyond the Halloween items (which are a given).
January
The New Year. What if: New Years day was designated the last day for the world? Y2K had actually happened?
Gift of the Magi. What if that `gift’ was a new form of deadly germ let loose on the earth?
Australia Day. This re-enacts the landing of the first shipment of prisoners at Sydney, Australia. Most of these prisoners were not criminals, but poor people or people the government didn’t like. What if they were all criminals---vicious criminals who set up an entire society based on honing their skills as criminals and preying on the rest of the world?
India’s Independence Day. How about instead of Gandhi’s influence on the people, the people were incited by people eating aliens? With India’s population and food problem…
Islam’s Day of the Prophet celebrating Muhammad’s birthday.*
February
Chinese New Year. See “New Year” above.
Candlemas. The turn of the Winter to the face of Spring. What if Winter never let go?
Waitangi Day. The Maori celebration of the treaty with Great Britain. The Maoris being very warlike, needed and wanted a strong central influence to end the wars. Waitangi Day celebrates a treaty that made this happen. The obvious what if---the treaty never took place?
Valentine’s Day. Oh, so obvious, also---what if your Valentine is a very baaaaaad person? Or, Valentine’s Day was Vampire’s Day?
Mardi Gras. Let the Voodoo begin!
Lent. What do the people have to repent?
March
Hina Matysuri, Japan’s day celebrating girls. Dolls are an intricate part of this celebration, and oh, what we can do with dolls! Think “Chuckie”.
Moomba. Australia’s time to have fun. What kind of fun? How about the effects of too much fun?
St. Patrick’s Day. What if the snakes were too much for Patrick? How about a good description of that?
St. Joseph’s Day (the carpenter who was the husband of Mary who bore Jesus). Now let’s see, who was that little wooden puppet (a blanket apology here for those who feel this is sacrilegious. Sometimes that’s what horror is about)?
Greek Independence Day. What if the Turkey gobbled Greece instead of the people of the U.S.A. gobbling turkey (a blanket apology for those who don’t like puns).
Purim. This is the Jewish celebration of Queen Esther’s intervention of the destruction of the Jews by a Persian named Haman. Ok. All of the contributions of the people of Jewish descent that did not happen because the people were wiped out. Could be very scary.
April
April Fools. Think of the nastiest trick that could be played.
Celebrating Buddha’s birthday.*
Passover. Jewish celebration of their escape from Egyptian bondage. What if the Red Sea never closed, and the waves just kept coming? Something like ”The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”? Or the plagues kept coming?
Easter. What else was in that tomb (again, blanket apology for those who feel this is sacrilegious)? What is the Easter bunny (think combining the popular Easter egg thing with bunnies etc. to the ancient celebration of fertility).
Arbor Day. What got planted? Or what kind of trees got planted? Revenge of the Tree People?
St. George’s Day, the slayer of dragons. Now I happen to like dragons, but I suppose they could be mean stinkers. How about St. George gets to be the dragon’s dinner and the dragons win the rest of their battles, too?
Anzac Day. The Australian day remembering all of the soldiers who died at Gallipoli. Sorry. I personally believe that was horror enough in and of itself.
May
May Day. The day for dancing around the May Pole, filled with fun, games, etc. Um humm. Anybody look into the original May Day? Folks in England were so afraid of it they banned the use of a May Pole for a long time. Or let’s go back to the “good old days” when this was combined with Beltane and Beltane fires. Did the sacrifices really walk between the Beltane fires?
Labor Day. For many people of the world May 1st is a celebration of Labor Day. Let’s see. Maybe a world where nobody works? Or somebody can't stop working?
Japan’s Children’s Day and Boy’s Day. Boy’s Day celebrates/encourages courage, strength, and determination. Courage, strength, and determination against what? ”Son of Godizilla?“ “Son of Mothra” maybe (again, blanket apology for those not old enough to remember the old Japanese horror films)?
`Innocents’, too, are valuable tools in horror, both for the surprise factor and the terror of something `loveable’ becoming something terrible.
Cinco de Mayo. The Mexican celebration of a battle against the French invaders. There is a war museum near the statue of General Zaragoza, hero of this battle. The museum itself is one of the forts that Zaragoza and his soldiers defended. There is a display of hundreds of toy soldiers set up to show what happened that day. Now the `modern day person transformed into the toy soldier’ thing has been done to death. Take one of the toy soldiers, however, and transform it into a modern person with a score to settle on the French in the area-----
Mother’s Day. Need we go into what horrors mothers can be?
Memorial Day. A soldier from the grave who never forgets, either?
Joan of Arc. Who made the fire burning her alive a very bad idea?
Dragon Boat Festival The People of Malaysia and Taiwan commemorate the time the people set out with many boats to rescue a beloved man, Chu Yuan, when he fell into the river. Chu Yuan’s body was never found. What if it was found---today?
Shabuot. The day the Jewish people celebrate Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. What if there was an eleventh Commandment naming the day and time for punishment for those who had broken the first ten---and it was today?
Kamehameha Day. A Hawaiian day celebrating the grandfather of Kamehameah V, the last king of Hawaii. What if Kamehameah `came back’ and married Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of the volcano---and they were both really ticked off with the foreign invaders?
Ramadan. Muslin days of fasting for their sins. A confusion of when Ramadan begins (because, like Passover, Easter, and several other holidays the time is based on a lunar calendar rather than the `modern’ calendar), and therefore the fasting never ends. Who is responsible for the confusion?
Midsummer’s Eve. Shakespeare had fun with this one, and so can horror. The Summer Solstice marks the longest day of the year (sorry, the day being lived again and again has already been done with ”Groundhog Day” and others) and the end of the reign of Light. This begins, of course, the reign of the Dark. There have been a lot of horror stories, particularly horror-epic stories (does ”Lord of the Rings”ring a bell?) on the Dark taking over the Light, but it’s a topic that can be explored from so many angles we don’t have room for them here.
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Ok. That’s six months worth of animatqua's twisted ideas. I used the holidays in the Child Craft series ”Holidays and Birthdays” book, so I have obviously missed a lot of the world wide holidays.
That’s where the first part of my challenge for this month comes in. First, find a holiday not listed. Give a brief description of the holiday and the culture celebrating it. Next, give a horror twist to the holiday.
The second part of my challenge is to do some more twisting/tweaking of the holidays already presented.
The third part of my challenge is to go into the next six months on the calendar (July through December), name the holiday and the culture celebrating it, then set out some horror ideas.
I will set up an item called “Twisted Holidays” and enter all of the ideas sent in. I will also send out a horror/scary merit badge for the top idea in each category. If you choose to do all three, please put the entry into an item form that I can award with an award icon if the ideas are outstanding.
Merry Monsters, Happy Horror, Creeping Cruds, and Winter Chills to you all! |
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Horror/Scary: November 30, 2005 Issue [#738]
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