"Five Films To Keep Your Holiday Full of Frights"

[MsAmerica]

This was a headline in the New York Times.

I don't understand why people like horror in the first place, but I especially don't understand why someone would seek out horror especially at Christmastime.

Feel free to explain this oddity, because it baffles me.

Apologies if you know this already but the desire for a little rush of festive dopamine might stem from the idea of a ghost story around the fire at Christmas, MR James etc? Little bit of gothic is a long tradition (A Christmas Carol - spiritual poverty, eternal damnation, lifelong regret and abject existential dread Ho Ho Ho ).

I suspect (but do not know) that it harks back to the pagan elements of a winter festival, the shortest day, and, thematically, Christmas being a time of remembering those lost to us and the dying days of the year being a liminal space between one state and another. Personally I like a spooky Christmas ‘Inside Number 9,’ the Woman in Black, that sort of thing. Then you’ve got the Krampus which seems to be on a vast amount of Temu tat this year.

Perhaps the niche has got a bit bigger, the offering less subtle?

Some people like different things to you. Hope that helps clear it up!

www.smithsonianmag.com/history/plea-resurrect-christmas-tradition-telling-ghost-stories-180967553/

I heard a theory that a scare can be good for our bodies. We have specific hormones that help us to fight a predator or hunt an animal and we don't often utilise them.
Being scared or made to jump in a safe environment has its benefits and people are drawn to that.

Is that in today's NYT @MsAmerica ? I can't find it.

Well now I want to know what the 5 films are.

Same! 😁

What are the films please? I watch and read a lot of ghost stories over Christmas it’s a tradition for me.

Lots of people love a Christmas ghost story - why do you think A Christmas Carol was so enduring?

Apologies, @SocksAndTheCity. I'm usually very meticulous about including links, even though I know that the New York Times has a paywall after the first time or two. But in this odd case, I didn't think much of the movies so I don't recall, I didn't save the actual article, so I don't have key words to check - and when I did go back, even though that was the exact title, I looked online to find it for you, but can't. Sometimes they have different titles for the online version.

Sorry. It was probably a couple of days earlier maybe around December 14.

Excuse me, @PuppyMonkey, but it's not my impression that A Christmas Carol is enduring because it has ghosts. It's enduring because it has vivid characters and deals with universal themes, like regret and the hope of improving our lives. (Also, the book endures because it's so short that it gets taught in schools.)