Holidays are a happy time to spend with friends and family. Unless they are not. If holidays are the time you dread the most, and you are as anti-Christmas as the Grinch, that’s perfectly okay. No one needs to love the holiday season, and you most definitely don’t need to swoon over the Hallmark Christmas romances that come out in hordes this season. This holiday season, kick your boots off, get cosy on your sofa, and cherish some anti-holiday movies. Here’s everything you can watch to give the holiday season the middle finger.

1. Violent Night

If you thought Santa Claus was a sweet old grandpa with a white beard, Violent Night will prove you wrong. Violent Night is an action comedy where Santa Claus fights a group of mercenaries who have taken a wealthy family hostage.

2. The Nice Guys

A neo-noir action comedy starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe follows private detective Holland March and enforcer-for-hire Jackson Healy as they team up to investigate the disappearance of a teenage girl. The Nice Guys makes for a perfectly good anti-holiday movie.

3. Bad Santa

Bad Santa is the perfect watch for people who are done with Christmas and the holiday season but want to enjoy some raunchy jokes and a laughter riot. Willie T. Stoke and Marcus Skidmore are professional thieves. They work as a team of Santa and an elf every Christmas to rob department stores on Christmas Eve. But when Willie befriends a troubled kid, the duo runs into chaos.

4. The Nightmare Before Christmas

Jack Skellington, the King of ‘Halloween Town’, stumbles upon ‘Christmas Town’, and now he wants to bring the holiday home. In his effort to bring Christmas to ‘Halloween Town’, Jack causes a whole lot of confusion.

5. Black Christmas

Nothing says anti-holidays like a good old slasher film, and Black Christmas hits the right spot. A group of sorority sisters who stay back on campus for their winter break are stalked and killed by a stranger. A young pledge discovers that the killer is part of an underground college conspiracy and decides to stop being a hapless victim and mounts a fight against their stalker.

6. Gremlins

Nothing screams anti-holidays like Gremlins, the OG holiday entertainer. When Randall Peltzer gets a small, furry creature called mogwai as a Christmas gift for his son Billy, he never expects the havoc it would cause. When a young man accidentally breaks one of the rules of taking care of the mogwai, it unleashes a horde of mischievous gremlins who rampage around a small town killing people and causing destruction.

7. Die Hard

One of the best action movies to come out of Hollywood, Die Hard is the perfect watch for the holidays. On Christmas Eve, NYPD Detective John McClane arrives in LA hoping to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly. But when his wife and several other people are taken hostage during a Christmas party, McClane goes through all hoops to save them all.

8. Krampus

Horror is the theme of an anti-holiday watch party and Krampus ticks all the boxes. When Max’s dysfunctional family dynamics get too much to handle, he exclaims his hatred for both his family and Christmas. When Max’s letter to Santa is torn and thrown out the window, it summons Krampus, an ancient demon who punishes people who have lost the Christmas spirit.

9. Better Watch Out

Another movie to say a big fuck you to the holidays, Better Watch Out is a Christmas psychological thriller. This movie won’t just be the perfect anti-holiday pick, but also one that makes you question your faith in people. Seventeen-year-old Ashley is babysitting 12-year-old Luke Lerner when someone invades the house. But soon, Ashley finds out it is more than a normal home invasion.

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