You know what this holiday season needed? A definitive ranking of every holiday beast and/or creature I could think of! Please keep in mind this is a subjective list, and please add any critters I missed in the comments.
But first, a pair of caveats!
Caveat #1: This is a list of creatures, not mythological figures. No witches, no ogresses, no Lads Yule or otherwise, and no elves—with one exception. Basically, if you have the consciousness and the motor skills to run Santa’s workshop if he gets kidnapped by a Heat Miser or somebody, you’re not on the list.
Caveat #2: To be very clear, when I use the phrase “mythological figure” or “creature of lore” or whatever, I am not, I repeat NOT, implying that these beings aren’t real. The only thing stopping me leaving food out for Santa and the reindeer is the reality of fauna in a pre-war New York apartment.
#23. Elf on the Shelf
He puts the C, the I, and A in Christmas! He’s at the bottom. He’s below the bottom. He’s the only Elf I’m including, and I’m only including him so I can put him at the bottom.
#22. Dominick the Christmas Donkey
I’ll admit I had never heard of Dominick until I moved to New York—Italian Christmas donkeys don’t come up much in Florida, it turns out. Dominick himself seems fine, and I love donkeys, but once heard, this song will never leave your mind. Thus, Dominick tumbles down the Sicilian hills to a low spot on the list.
#21. Julbokken
The Yule Goat was a goat figure made of the last bit of straw from the annual harvest, seen as magically potent as it represented the end of the harvest season. It maybe was also a spirit that watched over people to make sure they prepared for Yuletide correctly? At some point in the 19th Century, it became a real goat that delivered presents to children during the Christmas season, sometimes in a collab with Santa Claus. Since the 1960s, the Goat has become a straw figure, considered a tie to pagan roots by some people, a fun ornament for others, and, for many, a giant straw decoration that represents a great opportunity for holiday arson.
It lands here because it’s only been a true creature intermittently throughout its history.
#20. Santa’s Reindeer (With Two Notable Exceptions Whom You’ll Meet in a Moment)
Originally, there was one reindeer. Unnamed, but very cute, in a children’s book published in 1821. Two years later, Clement Clarke Moore wrote “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” and one deer became eight, with names. When L. Frank Baum published The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, he gave Santa a couple of different names, plus ten reindeer, who all had different names than the ones Moore gave them. And finally, when Rudolph showed up, first in Robert L. May’s book in 1939, and then a decade later in the Gene Autry song, the eight reindeer of the Moore poem are finally given personalities.
And those personalities suck.
Apparently the eight of them (and maybe the rest of the deer community) immediately become a seething mob when presented with any form of difference, and bully Rudolph mercilessly until he proves useful to their interests. This idea continues through the Max Fleischer cartoon (1948), and later the Rankin-Bass stop-motion (1964), which goes the extra mile of making Donner Rudolph’s dad, a classic middle-aged peaked-in-high school jock who’s still rambling on about past glory. Obviously he thinks his son is a freak, to the extent that his son choose probable death by snowbeast to living at home.
Sorry. I’m getting emotional about Rudolph again. The majority of the reindeer sit here, near the bottom of the list, because of their willingness to mock and shun anyone who challenges their boring-ass status quo. Do better, reindeer.
#19. The Live Deer in John Denver and The Muppets: A Christmas Together
We’ll meet an even better John Denver-themed Christmas creature in a few entries, but I need to point out that in the all-time classic John Denver and The Muppets: A Christmas Together, there’s a long and sappy song about Christmas and nature and ecology (that is, yes, long and sappy, but also if more people had listened back then, maybe our species would last longer than it’s going to…) and in the midst of all the Muppets there are a couple of real, live, extremely baffled deer, staring around wide-eyed at the set, flicking their adorable deer-ears. I forget about it every year, and every year I laugh anew.
#18. Jólakötturinn
If you don’t have new clothing by New Year’s, the Yule Cat might eat you. This might seem harsh, but apparently this was supposed to terrify children into doing their chores so they’d be given new clothes during the Yule Season which still…seems pretty harsh. Jólakötturinn lives with Gryla and her 13 Yule Lads, in what seems like an obvious idea for the greatest sitcom of all time.
The Yule Cat seems to have been a pretty obscure folkloric monster until being featured in Jóhannes úr Kötlum’s book Christmas is Coming, in 1932, and then he came roaring back into prominence in the 21st Century, when internet-addled people developed an insatiable need for Holiday Monsters. We’ll see a few more monsters further up the list.
#17. The Various Birds of the 12 days of Christmas
Why so many birds? Did this medieval lover get them in bulk? Did they inherit a warehouse full of birds to unload?
#16. The Bear from A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!
Colbert’s long-planned Christmas variety extravaganza is derailed by a bear that shows up outside his isolated cabin, so he does the whole show there instead with special guest who just happen to drop in. (It’s 2008, so the guests include Toby Keith and Feist!) As the special comes to a close, the bear returns.
#15. Assorted Victorian Birds (Dead) and Frogs (Murderous)
We wrote about these guys before, but you can find more over at the classic post from Hyperallergic. Back in the heady pre-Coca Cola Santa days of the 1800s, Christmas was CHAOS. The Victorians enjoyed all sorts of meaning-laden imagery that is incomprehensible to us now—including holiday cards featuring aggressive goats, angry frogs, tin soldiers bearing cryptic warnings, and, most popular of all, piles of bird corpses.
Maybe it’s because of St. Stephen’s Day? Maybe it’s a reminder of mortality in the midst of winter? Maybe the Victorians were all just Goth as hell? Whatever the reason, these deceased and knife-wielding creatures deserve a spot on the list.
#14. Mini-Moose, “The Most Horrible Xmas Ever”, Invader Zim
Mini-Moose only appears in Invader Zim’s amazing Christmas episode, so I’m counting him as a Christmas Creature. He’s this low because he’s only really in the special for nine seconds. He’s this high because he’s FUCKING ADORABLE, and I’m too Goth-adjacent to deny him.
#13 Assorted Nativity Animals
Most of these are just on this one line (there’s one who will appear a little higher up) because, like the many, many birds featured in “The 12 Days of Christmas”, they’re a package deal. They low, they moo, they coo, they provide wool, and presumably create a general sense of warmth for a pair of stressed-out refugees and their kid.
Sufjan Stevens, Christmas music interpreter, did an adorable cover of “The Friendly Beasts” a song about these creatures if you want to hear it.
#12. The Ill Reindeer, Christmas in Hollis by Run DMC
The first exception to my Santa’s Reindeer ranking! In 1987, Run DMC gifted us with one of the great classics of the Christmas canon, “Christmas in Hollis”, included in the inaugural album in the A Very Special Christmas series. The song is rad, obviously, but my personal favorite moment is the inclusion of the “ill reindeer”, seemingly the sole creature pulling Santa’s sleigh, portrayed in the video as a dog with antlers on his head à la the Grinch’s companion, Max. Reindeer or dog, he’s a very good boi.
#11. The Live Bear from John Denver: Rocky Mountain Christmas
Hail John Denver’s other appearance on this list. This bear, unlike Colbert’s Bear, is a real bear. In the mid-70s John Denver was at the height of his Rocky Mountain Christmas Special Powers. For some reason Denver decided that what the 1975 holiday season needed was a scene of him wrestling a bear cub. The cub quickly gains the upper paw. He lands this high up because he is NOT having this granola Christmas special, he’s out for blood, and it’s hilarious.
***
#11b. Runner Up: the butterfly that lands on Steve Martin’s nose during a banjo medley.
#10. The Bumble/The Abominable Snowbeast
The Bumble is legitimately terrifying. When he appears in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer the first time he even frightens Rudolph’s super butch dad, Donner; later, when he chases Rudolph and Hermy through the winter wastelands, it’s like something out of The Revenant. The only thing that finally saves our protagonists and reforms the Bumble is extensive oral surgery, proving once again that full dental coverage needs to be part of everyone’s healthcare package.
#9. Zero, Jack’s Faithful Companion in The Nightmare Before Christmas
He’s such a Good Boi not even death could stop his Good Boi-ness! He stays by The Pumpkin King’s side during the the latter’s mid-immortality crisis, he saves Christmas—sort of—with his glowing red nose, and after having been an ally in this misguided adventure, he’s also the one who reminds Jack both of his own unique talent, and of his debt to Sally.
Zero’s the best.
#8. The Lioness Shiegra, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
In L. Frank Baum’s super weird The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, and Rankin Bass’ Tolkienesque adaptation of it, Shiegra is a fierce lioness who finds an infant and sees an easy meal. Then the Great Ak, a freaking boss pagan deity, stops her and tells her to raise the baby instead. That baby is eventually named Claus, and grows up to be a toymaker who is granted immortality and gains mythic status as Santa Claus. So you can thank this lioness for suckling Santa as a baby and pre-saving Christmas, everyone.
#7. Santa’s Hideous Laughing Mechanical Reindeer, Santa Claus
OK I’m including these for my own amusement. The first time I ever watched this episode with friends, all of us screamed in genuine shock when the reindeer laughed, as do Mike and the Bots. These terrifying dead-eyed reindeer still stand as one of the most inexplicable and hilarious decisions I’ve ever seen in a holiday special.
#6. The Christmas Unicorn
The Christmas Unicorn is a magical addition to the Christmas canon, first appearing in a song of the same name by Sufjan Stevens, though I have to assume they have gained sentience and are currently running rampant somewhere in the United States as I type this. When Stevens did a small tour of Christmas shows in 2012 he dressed as the unicorn to close out the show, and if I ever get access to a TARDIS I’ll be attending as many of those shows as possible.
I’m including them here because Stevens put a fair amount of effort into the worldbuilding, claiming that the unicorn is both a “mystical apostasy”, and “a horse with a fantasy twist”; they are “hysterically American”, and “can curse you with [their] kiss”. The character is the apotheosis of the musician’s long-running holiday project, where he interpreted songs and wrote originals to interrogate the nature of the holiday and the interplay between religious traditions and secular ones, how capitalism and chronic depression played into the whole thing, and finally whether the holiday was worth salvaging at all. (It gave us this song, so I vote yes.) At a certain point “The Christmas Unicorn” finds its final form by merging into a cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and I’ve never loved anything more in my life.
#5. Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey
Look, if you’re going to keep going back to the barrel of stop-motion-animatable Christmas characters, eventually you’re gonna scrape the bottom. And thus we come to Rankin Bass’ Nestor: The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey. Like Rudolph, Nestor has a unique physical characteristic that others mock. Unlike Rudolph, Nestor spends part of his special sleeping beside the frozen corpse of his mother.
He is haunted by her memory, as each time he allows his ears to droop and trips over them, he hears her mournful voice sighing: “Ears, Nestor!” Did I mention that she only froze to death after they were kicked out of the stable because of his giant ears?
I love this Christmas special more than my own life.
Later, Nestor redeems himself by, you guessed it, being the only donkey who sucks enough to be affordable when a certain very pregnant young woman needs a ride to Bethlehem.
#4. Mari Lwyd
Do you want to have a holiday that’s METAL AS HELL? Say hello to Mari Lwyd, a skeletal zombie horse who will try to sing his way into your house on New Year’s Eve.
In the wassailing tradition, a group of men go from house to house, engaging in song battles to convince people to let them in for a drink. In the extremely cool Welsh iteration, a person carries a horse skull mounted on a stick, festooned with bells and ribbons (plus a long draped sheet to cover the person piloting the skull) while the rest of the group take on roles as Punch and Judy, assorted merrymakers, or “The Leader” (ie: the one who keeps the skeletal horse under control). The homeowners are supposed to sing verses about why the horse can’t come in until everyone agrees the horse has won, and then the group continues to sing and entertain and/or terrify the household while they all drink together.
Why the hell does Wales get to have this while the US has the Elf on the Shelf is what I want to know.
#3. Max, How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Max is the Grinch’s only friend—put-upon, abused, and unceasingly, heartbreakingly loyal. And the Grinch treats him like crap, which scandalized Child Leah far more than his reprehensible treatment of the Whos. People fairly talk about the scene of the heart growing three sizes, but for me it’s the scene right after that, when he realizes what he’s done he locks eyes with Max, who seems to know that he’s changed. The two of them become a team for the first time, and that’s what gets me every time I watch it.
#2. Krampus
I think it’s safe to assume most people know Krampus by now. He’s a literal Christmas demon, which, those are the coolest words I’ll ever type. He’s probably pagan, possibly linked to St. Nicholas as an act of Christianization, sometimes half-goat, sometimes all-demon. Traditionally he travels with St. Nick to punish bad children as his holier half reward the good ones with oranges and nuts. Towns across Northern Europe hold Krampusnacht events on December 5th, with people dressing as the demon and running amok, before the dawn of the gentler Feast of St. Nicholas on the 6th. As much as I completely disagree with the idea of frightening children into obedience, I have to admit that Krampus is cool as hell, and deserves a spot close to the top of the list.
Also you know who hated Krampus? The Nazis hated Krampus.
Krampus rules.
#1. Rudolph
When I started this list I imagined that as I wrote some obscure Creature would work their way further and further up the rankings, until I ended up with some Icelandic nightmare towering over all challengers. But in the end we come back to Rudolph. Of course we come back to Rudolph. Though he came later to the Christmas game, not appearing until 1939, even though he’s commercial down to the marrow in his antlers, being, first, a glorified advertisement for Montgomery Ward, and, ten years later, a crossover novelty song for a country music singer. Rudolph transcends his origins, because that’s the entire point of Rudolph. He’s a freak, bullied and outcast, a Cervidae de Bergerac mocked for nose.
The Fleischer cartoon I mentioned above makes him a literal child, a young deer still living at home with his mom and hanging a stocking up for Santa. When Rankin Bass got their mitts on him, they turned the “freak” dial all the way up to STATELESS PARIAH and cast him out into the snowy wastes.
But what does he do? After an attempt at conformity he allies with a queer-coded elf, announces that “you can’t fire me I QUIT” in song format, and not only, ultimately, saves Christmas, but also an entire island of fellow freaks, and, arguably, Santa’s fucking soul.
Rudolph is Number One, on this list and in my heart.
