Have Yourself a Scary Little Christmas

You can't escape it now; the Christmas season is in full swing. Once December hits, it's tinsel and fruitcake and holly as far as the eye can see. This is shaping up to be a very different sort of season with a macabre twist, as though Halloween is not quite ready to retract its claws.

I took my dog for a walk on the weekend. We approached what looked like a bundle of rags on the sidewalk. It was actually a stuffed Santa body. Two blocks later we found the head.

That evening my youngest and I were looking at some icicles hanging from the shed. Beautiful, crystal clear, perfectly formed spears of ice. "They look like snowman teeth," she said. Forget sugar plums, what I had dancing in my head that night was visions of carnivorous snowmen with long, sharp, icicle teeth.

Over the past few days, the houses in our neighbourhood have been turning on their Christmas lights. Some are covered in multi-coloured gems, others have a pattern of blue and white, like houses of ice. One neighbour has only red lights, with orange candles in his window casting a glow like the fires of hell. It looks like Christmas at the House of Usher.

It's beginning to look a lot like a very creepy Christmas. I guess I can take some of the blame. My mind does wander to the gruesome and ghastly, though I usually get a reprieve around the holidays. These scary things are just in my imagination, I told myself.

Then the mailman arrived at our door. "There's a lot of blood in the snow next to your house there," he said. Our crazy dog, I explained. She likes to chew on chunks of ice and she cut her mouth. He nodded and walked back to his van, a little faster than usual.

Now the neighbours are giving me funny looks, and I'm resigned to having a very scary Christmas.