Christmas in July
In a recent post, Dwiz points out some of the problems with Christmas-themed adventures, especially in contrast to Halloween-themed ones. It’s a good post! Even when it’s attacking me, unknowingly yet unerringly.
Image by Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
First, I think it’s important to distinguish between Christmas-themed and Christmas-based adventures, which is a distinction Halloween doesn’t need to make. A Christmas-based adventure would indeed be boring, because most Christmas activities aren’t very game-y themselves. But the trappings of Christmas are still useful. So while a Halloween adventure already has “characters” (costumes) and “quests” (trick-or-treating) and “treasure” (candy) and “monsters” (scares) built-in, Christmas will require some interpolation.
Why Bother?
That said, there are good reasons to play with Christmas.
The first reason Christmas makes good adventures is one Dwiz already points out and elaborates on:
What are the core moods that describe Christmas? It’s 1) sentimental, 2) cozy, and 3) stressful. (emphasis mine)
Every Christmas adventure comes with a built-in deadline and any number of things that have to go right in order to pull it off. This makes the default Christmas story one of “saving Christmas.” It works well for one-shots and interludes.
Other than that, Christmas is notable for its pervasiveness. Every year, Christmas creeps earlier and earlier. It consumes radio stations and floods streaming services. Even Halloween displays are haunted by the looming specter of Christmas. Thanksgiving is a token acknowledgment, and Dec 24th birthdays never stood a chance. It demands pilgrimage and tribute and vacation days. Which means that everyone1 has some exposure to Christmas, even if they don’t want to. Everyone half-remembers the words to a few songs, maybe watched a Rankin/Bass special when a substitute teacher didn’t know what else to put on, probably likes opening gifts. And we can leverage that accessibility.
Finally, Christmas doesn’t make any sense. It’s ridiculous! It’s grown too big for anyone to own. It’s built on the bones of pagan traditions, encumbered by centuries of forgotten nationalism and heresy, hyper-accelerated by the mid-century capitalist marketing machine, and re-interpreted by every individual celebrant and conscientious non-celebrant. Everyone knows what Christmas is, but nobody can say what Christmas isn’t2 (which is why fights about Die Hard will never cease). Consequently, Christmas is the most accessible form of gonzo. What is the adventuring party but a band of misfit toys?
Advice
So this is my advice for Christmas stuff:
- Use the stress and deadlines and complex machinery of the holiday to your advantage. Think of Santa’s supply chain!
- Steal everything. Put ghosts in! Put knights in! Pyromancers! Mutants! Boars! Pickles! Rifles! Skeletons!
- Once you’ve got the trappings right, add more! After a critical mass of Christmas, nobody can prove that dogs, just plain dogs, aren’t inherently linked with Christmas traditions and nobody will really think to try. Maybe they even are.
Acknowledging my US-centric experiences here.↩︎
Is Hanukkah Christmas? Kwanzaa? Solstice? Obviously not, that’s a silly question. Why would you ask that? Because Christmas demands that we ask, because we can never be sure. And now, by the ritual of asking, the all are part of Christmas, or at least the broader “holiday season,” even though they bear no relation and this is completely unfair.↩︎