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  • Writer's pictureConfic Magazine
    • Dec 23, 2021
    • 7 min read

Making A List - Christmas in Confic

Updated: Jan 1, 2022

Culture & Community

By Lack of Lepers


A myrrh-y tour of Christmas-themed works across containment fiction. Euclid miss out if you want to, but yule be sorry; it's lit, fir sure.

 

While there are several holly-days to celebrate this most 001-derful time of year, our inaugural tour will be the Santa-mental world of Christmas; an elfie of the current works in this non-tag category. We presents to you a tree-mendous list in no order; this isn't a Best in Snow. This list won't include every Christmas work that icy out there. That might be Rudolph of me, and I hope not pole-arizing, but I do have the final sleigh here after all. Now grab some Big Egg-nog or a beer (it's the most wonderful time for a beer), gather in the family addendum, thaumiel your toes by the fire, Claus here we glow:



An emergency meeting about an "unidentified aircraft [that] had been observed entering the zone of exclusion" around the magnetic North Pole, where a beloved anomaly, its team, and their "Event 1225-Pinnacle" has long-been secured, contained, and protected.

Fun fact: This 2012 tale was posted on Halloween. The SCP slot it used was originally SCP-4040; this was changed during the 4000 contest to SCP-404040 to avoid unintentional cross-reference.



SCP-4040 was selected for this reason as a slot after the 4000 contest; it is now "At The Bottom Of A Bottomless Pit" by DrChandra.




Dr. Clef seems to be very involved in Christmas, whether a savior as in the last tale or, here, as a sort of grinch. Coincidentally, the character is featured in SCP-239, which tangentially gives an origin story for Santa Claus. This one is a light-hearted piece based on the children's book "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!". It features a nice aesthetic, a solid vocal performance, some classic SCPs, somehow throws in the word "sexy" several times, and best of all; it rhymes! I won't give away the story, but I can show you how it ends without ruining anything, or even subverting any expectations, as the tale involves Dr. Clef:


Image is public domain.


RPC-319 is a grandma who appears in several Christian homes around Christmas in a particular region of the world. This culminates on Christmas Eve, where RPC-319 will appear in only one of these homes and "vomit raw gingerbread dough into the family's oven or a similar apparatus." This one has anti-Santa properties and Krampus-esque qualities, similar to SCP-4999, but with a very different approach. The article has received commercial attention, including a reading by Eastside Show.


Fun fact: At one time, RPC-319 was in the site's top 10 listing, and has the tag to this day.



Guess who this SCP is; it's played pretty straight. Sub-designations include his toy bag, his sleigh, and his reindeer. SCP-2412-J attributes Rudolph's red nose to a genetic mutation and explains that [DATA REDACTED] will happen if he doesn't lead the sleigh.



SCP-3355: St. Nick, by djkaktus


Santa Claus is depicted as an anomalously sentient computational system that was initially designed to provide communications dissemination and the calculation of evacuation routes during local disasters and catastrophes. The computer was abandoned after the Cold War, but continued to function, finding a hobby of sorts by interfering with package delivery logistics. SCP-3355 is a very equitable character here, as it reroutes or duplicates gifts to underprivileged and low socio-economic homes, the shipping label reading as from "St. Nick". The message is bright in a very dark universe, and you'd have to be an absolute Scrooge to not want something of this positivity to be on the site, if you don't mind some Bad Santa style holiday profanity.



The world of the anomalous offers many ways to incorporate the folklore of Santa Claus and Christmas, and this one is pretty clever. SCP-4255 is given the secondary designation of a "Cracked-Veil Uncontained anomaly", and is allowed to proceed with its yearly Christmas operations with the help of memetic suppression and implantation of false memories on the parts of parents, who would certainly otherwise wonder where all the money for these random gifts came from. Santa is escorted (and/or surveilled) by two military aircrafts.


Fun fact: This was the first article of the author who recently wrote the hit SCP-6336.


SCP-1933: Baileys Santa, by Doctor Flibble


Santa as a perpetual and anomalously-dependent drunkard. Bailey's Irish Cream is his blood basically. He refuses to perform basic hygiene and has to be force-bathed by Foundation staff. Prior to containment, he was homeless and stole money from people to pay for his booze. This included, you guessed it, home break-ins, particularly on Christmas Eve. There is a really squeamish and early-SCP twist in here.


Fun fact: Earlier the same year (2013), Doctor Flibble wrote SCP-1325 - Easter Frog, which was also food-based and holiday-themed.


Santa's New Home, by MrWrong


Santa visits Site-19. D-Class get coals. He visits SCP-055 of all things...


Fun Fact: MrWrong wrote a SCP-001 proposal, "Wrong Proposal", which should be kept up forever if only for how it plays with the in-universe idea of the slot being occupied by false entries. The 001 entry is titled "The Consensus", which is similar in theme to another SCP-001 entry that features consensus, this one by the not-to-be-confused-with author WrongJohnSilver.



Amazing! Co., an RPC group of interest that produces anomalous commercial products, is an obvious and accepting host for Christmas. The GoI has been described glowingly as "Wondertainment, the Factory, and dado rolled into one horrible capitalist group" (Dr Fern, SCF Discord). RPC-635 is an anomalous 12-inch vinyl record that induces sensory hallucinations and other cognitohazards, some fatal, in subjects who listen to it. The article is media-heavy with discombobulating and/or jarring mashups, volume-clips, and reversals of Christmas songs in .mp3 form.


Fun fact: This was an entry in RPC's Winter Contest, one of their first and started in December 2018.



A gated community unendingly decorated with Christmas lights, plays, holiday sweaters, and constructive, Christmas-themed acts of flash vandalism. SCP-784's evangelism for the Christmas Spirit puts nearby neighborhoods in jeopardy of conversion (maybe better termed "infection"). Personnel entering are required to be garbed in "traditional Christmas wear" and be versed in Christmas Carols... as a matter of their personal safety.


Fun fact: Snowshoe wrote another Christmas-themed work, a gory and gruesome tale titled Christmas Dinner.


SCP-6483: The Polar Express, by LORDXVNV, Ralliston


Perhaps the most jubilant CSS theme of these all, and the only article proper in the list that tries such a thing. Here, Santa is a reality bender who has only ever been interested… or able… to do Christmas stuff with the anomalous ability. He’s subjected to a Foundation psychologist, and made to work to raise Site morale by essentially hosting meals, which depresses him. Good job psychologist. He ends up being useful again as a cultural liaison to an alternate version of Antartica’s dominant culture.



The Gift Plane, by Dr Bierre


Our only entry from what could be classified as the "second-wave" containment fiction spaces of Backrooms and Liminal Archives (SCP/RPC/etc being first-wave). This level is made up of European architecture in the midst of Christmas time. Signage in this level refers to something called "The Great Gift". Gives the phrase "walking in a winter wonderland" some more meat on them bones.




SCP-4147 is a series of encyclopedias separated by language that each feature a blank page at the end. If anything is written on this page and fits the format that preceding entries are in, what is written will become incorporated into the superstition and folklore of the nation(s) whose language that encyclopedia is written in. In an addendum, we see an installation for "Santa Claus" and "Jolly Saint Nick" that features suspicious text not written in the same ink as the rest of the entry. I won't spoil why this is, but suffice it to say, the reason is as educational as it is terrifying — probably the most subtle and lasting moment of Christmas horror, certainly the one that most extends into everyday life.


Fun fact: This article is M hate T's one and only.



RPC-296 is a fake plastic Christmas tree that anomalously and spontaneously produces gifts at midnight. Most of these are toys, and seem to have some ties to the anomalous manufacturing company Amazing! Co.



Representing the INT branches is a German installation. This sets the horror inherent in Santa being omniscient and given total moral authority in the determination of wrong and right, or naughty and nice. Santa ends up being a really misanthropic person; he exhibits the irritation that any of us would at the demand of an all-nighter, and despises children. This one really resents Coca-Cola too. What‘s the true meaning of Christmas? Read to find out.


SCP-6251: A Lone Home, by Maxyfran73


I thought i knew where this was going and almost felt the pop culture reference was going to be played too straight. A nice twist and reinterpretation with some spooky stuff. The title is a nice little play as well.


Fun fact: This was published to the SCP Wiki the same day this article went up on Confic Magazine!


Bring Me Flesh, by PeppersGhost


PeppersGhost may be one of the most reliably-enjoyed SCP authors, and this Christmas tale fits right in to that expectation. The unearthly voice of this tale, added to by the alien use of parentheses, is the most disturbing kind of "Christmas giddy" possible. Festive CSS theme too.


Fun fact: Written on December 23, 2020 (a year ago to the day), this pays homage to a runner-up entry into the 4000 contest, which PeppersGhost won with "Taboo"; that entry being…


SCP-4666: The Yule Man, by HerculesRockefeller


I haven't saved the best for last per se, just the most known. SCP-4666 is based off of the Krampus, the horror equivalent of Santa Claus and the antipode of the holiday spirit and Yuletide itself, which has Germanic roots. It similarly takes the most obvious but most unsettling angle of the Saint Nicholas lore -- the pursual of children -- and runs with it. It's one of the more shocking and commercially successful articles in the last years, with numerous adaptations on YouTube. There is even a song about it by Edward Ikor (musical artist) on his 2021 album "Secure Contain Protect, Vol. 1 (Fictional Soundtrack)". Anyone who somehow hasn't read this article is in for a hell of a gift to unwrap.


Fun fact: While SCP-4666 finished the 4K contest in 17th place, it currently has the third-most upvotes of the articles produced during the contest, bested only by the winner ("Taboo") and the third place entry ("Someone to Watch Over Us" by CadaverCommander). SCP-4666 was HerculesRockefeller's second SCP, and they haven't posted anything since.


 

All of these listed are respectable solutions to the challenge of how to include Christmas and its traditions in a confic product. May we have more such entries well into the future, and celebrate them with more cheese than a holiday hors d'oeuvres platter. It’s just keter that way.


Merry Christmas from Confic Magazine to those who recognize it.



Edit (12/23/2021): Several typos fixed. I made a list, but didn’t check it twice.


Edit (1/1/2022): Added SCP-6251.



© Lack of Lepers

© Confic Magazine

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