Christmas at the end of the world: the curious allure of festive apocalypse films and TV
Navigating the chaos of Christmas celebrations can feel a bit like fighting through the battle of Armageddon. Yet while it might be tempting to escape this with a hot chocolate and another viewing of Love Actually, Christmas films needn’t be jolly.
Each year brings its share of snowbound action films and bauble-laden slasher movies. But some filmmakers choose to take things a step further – to the apocalypse. If you find yourself longing for the end of civilisation as December 25 nears, fear not – film and TV have you covered.
This link isn’t as counterintuitive as it might seem. In the Christian church calendar, the lead up to Christmas is supposed to heighten anticipation for Christ’s return. The theme of apocalypse resonates through some of the best-known Christmas images: Sandro Botticelli’s famous Mystic Nativity(1500), for example, depicts the birth of Christ along with scenes from the Bible’s Book of Revelation. An inscription declares that the artist was living through “the second woe of the Apocalypse”.
My research has explored how and why popular culture might use Christmas when depicting “the end”. Like the Ghost of Christmas yet-to-come, I can therefore point you in the direction of some of the best festive end-times stories.
Some seasonal horror films use festive settings to add a lighter, playful touch. In the December zombie apocalypse Night of the Comet (1984), Christmas trees and Santa suits appear amid the chaos, while Scottish musical horror Anna and the Apocalypse (2017) creatively turns giant candy canes into weapons against the undead.
Others use the holiday to generate strong emotions. As the most widely celebrated cultural festival in the west, depictions of Christmas have an obvious emotional appeal. This is why the imminent destruction of Earth sees families recreate Christmas celebrations at all times of the year as they await the end, as in Last Night (1998) or the Netflix animation Carol and the End of the World (2023).
TV shows, from Fear the Walking Dead (2015) to the comedy The Last Man on Earth (2018), have depicted characters drawing strength from memories of festivities or attempting to recreate a post-apocalyptic Christmas.
This reflects religious studies researcher Christopher Deacy’s observation that even secular visions of Christmas often contain a sense of “eschatological hope” – the desire to enter a transformed, ideal and perfected world.
While in English the word “apocalypse” suggests catastrophe or extinction, in Greek the term signifies a “revelation” of reality on both a personal and cosmic level. A last Christmas, therefore, serves as revelatory for characters – as they realise what truly matters to them beyond their own needs, fulfilling one of the classic functions of an apocalyptic story.
Christmas after the bomb
Ancient depictions of the apocalypse, like the Book of Revelation, often sought to confront readers with the horrors awaiting those who did not repent. In apocalyptic media, Christmas can serve a similar, confrontational role. The 1939 animated, Oscar-nominated short Peace on Earth depicted humanity’s destruction through endless warfare, with animals rebuilding a new world after discovering the Bible and the hope of Christmas.
Hanna-Barbera’s 1955 remake, Good Will to Men (also Oscar-nominated), heightened the Dickensian festive imagery before delivering an even more devastating vision, as an elderly mouse graphically recounts humanity’s annihilation by the atomic bomb.
Although Christmas survived the fallout in this instance, in British productions it wasn’t so lucky. The haunting portrayal of the first Christmas after the bomb, in Peter Watkin’s 1965 docudrama The War Game, showed an unshaven and haggard vicar playing Silent Night on a gramophone to traumatised survivors. The carol’s lyrics about hopeful birth and childhood are undercut with narration revealing the fate of survivors – a mother who will give birth to a stillborn child, a child who will be bedbound until death, and other youngsters expressing their desire to die.
Even grimmer is the brief festive scene in the BBC’s notorious 1984 nuclear apocalypse film, Threads. A group of shattered survivors sit in silence around a fire, the only soundtrack a baby’s wails in a grim parody of the nativity scene. The on-screen caption identifies the date only as December 25, rather than as Christmas Day. The festival has ceased to exist here; it is a day of subsistence survival like every other.
Perhaps the bleakest depiction in recent years belongs to 2021 British black comedy Silent Night. When a group of British families gather in the country to celebrate Christmas, it slowly becomes apparent they are awaiting certain death at the hands of climate catastrophe on Boxing Day. Armed with government-issued suicide pills and a special “Exit” app, the cosy festive stylings of the majority of the film are replaced by toxic fogs, horrifying injuries and parents euthanising their own children.
These apocalyptic scenarios are what researchers have described as “avertive”. They portray a horrifying future to encourage viewers to fight against it, whether encouraging protest to nuclear proliferation or environmental destruction.
Although this sort of vision might not seem particularly festive, it has a deeper root in Christmas storytelling than we might think. After all, when Scrooge is shown Tiny Tim’s death in A Christmas Carol (1843), or George Bailey the corruption of Pottersville in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), it is precisely to avert those horrific visions from becoming a reality.
So why not wrap up in a warm blanket, grab a mulled wine, and settle down to consider the end of everything – and your role in it – this Christmas? On second thoughts, maybe Love Actually doesn’t sound so bad.
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Andrew Crome does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.