Christmas Carnage Abounds In Kay Hanifen's 'Till The Yule Log Burns Out' Anthology

Lo, the holidays are upon us once again. Time to deck those halls and hang that mistletoe, pour the egg nog and bake plenty of cookies. In the last century, Christmas has evolved from a religious celebration into a free-for-all capitalist assault on the senses (and the wallet). But beyond the glittering decorations and bright lights, a certain horror lurks beneath the festive cheer. After all, one of the season’s foremost icons—Santa Claus—is, without the appropriate cultural context, oddly frightening: a child-watching old man who sneaks into people’s homes during the dead of night. Then there’s Krampus, Saint Nicholas’s wicked Germanic companion, sent to bedevil misbehaved children. With figures like these, is it any wonder Christmas causes so much stress?

In film, the Christmas/horror link has been explored numerous times, including the ‘...And All Through The House’ segment of the original 1972 Tales From the Crypt anthology, the classic Black Christmas (and its two lesser remakes), Silent Night, Deadly Night (and its string of lesser sequels), and the more recent releases Violent Night, Christmas Bloody Christmas, and Terrifier 3. In print, the popularity of Christmas horror has exploded in the last decade, particularly among smaller publishers (Grinning Skull Press’s annual Deathlehem series and the Yuletide-set A Salmonweird Sleighing by the late M.G. Mason are but two notable examples). Joining their ranks now is Till The Yule Log Burns Out; originally released in 2024, editor, writer, and rising indie force Kay Hanifen’s multi-author anthology is a cornucopia of Christmas carnage.

Held together by a twelve-part framing sequence, ‘Room at the Inn’, Till The Yule Log Burns Out focuses on the eleven members of the St. Wenceslas Episcopal Choir, whose journey to a Christmas Eve singing competition is cut short after their bus is waylaid in a snowdrift. Stumbling upon a nearby lodge run by an elderly innkeeper and his cantankerous cat Nicodemus, the choir members decide to make the best of the situation and open their Secret Santa gifts. But the presents aren’t the ones they expected; every gift has a link to a dark secret from the past that each member subsequently feels compelled to reveal, and those confessions serve as the stories comprising the book.

The volume’s first tale is Nick Aucoin’s humorous ‘Dear Santa’, about a little girl whose misaddressed holiday letter wreaks havoc on her family. Rebellious eleven-year-old Maven thinks Christmas magic is just kid stuff until she encounters the malevolent ‘Hellf on the Shelf’ in Zach Swasta’s wild romp, while Greta Bates’s ‘Hark!’ goes back in time to the beginnings of the 19th-century Spiritualist movement. Nick Aucoin’s second entry, the intense ‘Season’s Greetings’, turns a heartless hunter into the hunted after he accidentally kills one of Santa’s reindeer.

Hanifen herself offers the compilation’s goriest outing, ‘Night of the Schnabelperchten’, about a pair of unlikely heroines combating the pagan yuletide entity intent on purging the impure from their community. Two friends, a pile of firewood, and an axe lead to a gruesome accident and some ‘Smoldering Regrets’ in Julia C. Lewis’s somber story. And Nikki Kossaris delivers two tales to round the book out: ‘Santa Baby’, in which a woman is kidnapped by a bizarre secret society that forces its adherents to practice perfect Christmastime etiquette, and ‘The Final Countdown’, which exposes the chilling origins of the choir’s mysterious gifts and the burden placed on the member unwittingly tasked with assembling them.

Unlike most multi-author anthologies, Till The Yule Log Burns Out reads like a cohesive novel rather than a random collection of stories. Hanifen’s framing sequence deftly weaves each disparate yarn into a tightly-knit narrative, fleshing out what could’ve been forgettable stock characters into complex, realistic, and believable individuals. While vigilant readers may deduce The Innkeeper’s true identity before the climactic denouement, the reason for the choir’s appearance at his inn makes for a poignant finale.

All the included stories in Till The Yule Log Burns Out are worthy of praise, but three ultimately stand above the rest for their overall creativity, invention, and authorial craftsmanship.

A sarcastic comment to an old woman that the Christmas sweater she crafted was ‘Ugly’ sets off an unfortunate series of grisly events in Loki Dewitt’s creepy cautionary tale. A female sociopath’s marriage takes a violent turn one Christmas after she uncovers her husband’s continuing infidelity in M. Rook Grimsley’s morbidly entertaining ‘Blood and Cedar’.

But the star on the top of this anthology’s tree belongs to David Washburn’s exceptional ‘Cousins’; Bethany and Joshua are inseparable at their family’s annual Christmas celebrations, until the year Joshua lets one of his friends fall through the ice in a wintertime tragedy. Was his inaction accidental or intentional? And is the face of the drowned girl that Bethany sees in her room afterwards just a figment of her guilty conscience, or something more sinister seeking retribution for her relative’s misdeeds?

Filled with a candy box assortment of holiday monsters, cursed objects, and wrathful spirits, Till The Yule Log Burns Out will make the perfect stocking stuffer for the literate horror fan on your gift list. Just be sure those presents are the ones you bought, because the life you save may be your own.

I give Till The Yule Log Burns Out a solid 4 (Out of 5) on my Fang Scale. Let those slay bells ring!