Did you ever stop and think about how frightening Christmas can be? I think I’d sort of forgotten myself.  

Then I happened upon several reels of parents scaring the daylights out of their kids. It got me thinking how Christmas can really be a time to freak kids out.

These particular videos are funny at first. You see a big room full of little kids, getting ready to open gifts.  Suddenly, someone dressed as the Grinch bursts in and starts running around the room, taking things from the kids, nabbing decorations and so forth.

Now, many of us grew up watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” and it was just a cartoon. But it was scary enough, wasn’t it? The live action movies made about the green monster are even worse.

So parents, probably after having a few bottles of holiday cheer, think they’ll get some belly laughs out of traumatizing their poor children. The kids in these videos are screaming, crying, hiding behind furniture and carrying on something awful. Some of them are trying to fight the Grinch.  What I noticed most of all, is that some of them were looking at their parents in horror as if to say “Why are you letting this happen?  You’re supposed to protect me!”

I laughed at first but after a minute, I was somewhat appalled.

It made me think of Christmas when I was growing up. Santa, in the early days, was scary too. I mean, mom and grandma would constantly tell us Santa was watching through the window and knew when we weren’t behaving. That’s enough to require therapy.  

I can vaguely remember being freaked out when we drove past Santa’s cottage uptown and he was standing at the door. I think I was scared until my older friend told me Santa had delivered just what was asked for after a visit to the little red house on the courthouse square. I must have mustered up enough courage to get my list stammered out, and I think I got most of the things I’d asked for that year.

The live nativity scene I wrote about a few weeks ago was scary, somewhat.  The people in that display looked stern and unpleasant, standing beside those huge animals that were snorting in the cold air.  They were probably pretty cold. But I remember thinking they looked a little scary – even though I also thought it was cool.  

And let’s face it: when your parents tell you Santa is going to wait until you’re asleep to visit, you think “Well, he must be watching me. In the dark. Sneaking around.” Then you think about him coming into your house in the middle of the night, and you’re not sure how he really got in because you don’t have a fireplace. 

I mean, honestly, we gotta think about these things and what they may be doing to kids. I think at least one of my kids got up in the night prior to Christmas and was a little concerned about the midnight visitor who might be dropping in in a few days.

We oughta be ashamed.

The last thing I remember that really frightened me was an old movie about the birth of Jesus.  Somewhere in that film, a freaky looking bald-headed man was portraying King Herod, and I remember dreaming about that guy for a few nights after that.  I mean, this guy had a long, gaunt looking face with goth-looking eye makeup and big ugly jewelry and all sorts of scary men standing around him. Plus, he was talking about killing all the first-born male children in the house. I mean, I was shaking in my boots.

On a more serious note, when you think about the real story of the birth of Jesus, it’s anything but the sweet little story many of us think about during the holidays. There was much, much more to the story.  

Yep, scary parts indeed.

So, maybe we need to be thinking a little more about how we are mortifying our kids at Christmas time. We might want to think of a softer approach to a lot of this stuff.

Coupons for therapy sessions don’t usually make a good stocking stuffer.