THE MOST SADDIFUL TIME OF THE YEAR!

Tis the season for uplifting holiday movies that move you to feel the Christmas spirit. Films like It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th St. and A Christmas Story have rightly been deemed classics of feel-good holiday cheer. But what of the dark, depressing movies of the Winter Solstice season? How come nobody shows marathons of those flicks? Possibly because they aren't popular? Or because they don't exist? Well, don't exist no more, sad X-Mas movies! I have invented you, and now you, fair bloggy reader, get to read about them. Everybody wins! And loves Raymond!

PRANCER IN THE DARK: Prancer is slowly going blind, but needs to save money so that his son can pay for an operation once he begins to go blind. So he's forced to keep his job as third reindeer, despite the dangers he puts himself and Santa in. On Christmas Eve, the blindness kicks in and the sleigh crashes into a mountain, where they are not saved because none of them are Christie Brinkley.

FROSTY, THE SNOWMAN WHO FELL TO EARTH: Frosty has come to Earth to bring snow back to repopulate his planet. He opens FunValley Ski Resort in Montezuma and manufactures his own snow, but the fake snow renders the snowmen fakey as well, and the unseasonable Iowa weather melts him mid-December.

THE MISFIT TOYS: When the Misfit Doll files for divorce, she meets King Moonracer and Charlie-in-the-Box, who vie for her affection, and get sloppy drunk. All is well until they go on a hunt for wild Bumbles, and Misfit Doll learns that they are selling them to be used for reindeer food. She protests, but they do it anyway, and its' all very sad and Arthur Millery.

SANTA WITHOUT A CLAUS: The tormented upbringing of Santa Claus as an angst-ridden teen who races sleighs and gets in gang fights, falling for the future Mrs. Claus and befriending an elf named Plato. A toy monkey inspires him to give toys to all the children of the world, which is why for a time all Christmas presents were creepy monkey toys.

TOYS DON'T CRY: Hermey doesn't want to be a toymaker, he wants to be a dentist. When he finds a small town in Nebraska where he can pass for a dentist, he falls for one of the townspeople. But when his secret is revealed, the bigoted and psychotic townsfolk force Hermey to make them toy cigarettes and 40s of Old Style. This is the saddest Christmas movie of all.