Crabgrass by Tauhid Bondia for December 16, 2024

It apparently improved his eye sight, though.

So, the Christmastide is just one of those pill dispensers with the dates marked on the little boxes? Kind of like an Advent calendar, but round?

See what happens when you name your kid Clyde?

Did you even TRIED to change Clyde back to normal?

Overreach on this gloomy narrative.

Who knew Christmas lore could be so dark?

GASP!!

Now, say “Krampus” backwards, and then come talk to me!

We just watched “Red One” on Prime. Krampus is really something else!

First, I am not vex man but his wife. I feel compelled to defend the name of Clyde.. I’ve known a few Clydes. Nice people and a cool name that just kind of rolls off the tongue and requires very few facial muscles to say.

Santa should have banished him to the Dale. He could have made himself useful there.

No one foresaw Clyde’s dark turn, least of all Kris Kringle, who had loved him as only a brother could. It wasn’t rage or bitterness that pulled Clyde to the edge—it was jealousy, that quiet rot that burrows beneath the skin, unseen until it consumes everything. It drove him to do the unthinkable: to steal Christmastide, that sacred season of joy and wonder, and claim it as his own.

Christmastide was more than a celebration; it was a time when the world, weary and cracked by the passing year, found its balm in love, hope, and renewal. Christmastide was like a golden thread across the days, binding together families, strangers, and nations. “Love, is the greatest gift. It cannot be seized; it must be given.” But Clyde had grown blind to such truths, his heart darkened with longing—not for joy, but for power.

Kris saw it all too clearly. He stood before his brother, pleading, as the snow fell like whispers from heaven. “This is not the way, Clyde. Christmastide is not a thing to take, but a light to share.” Kris’s words were soft but desperate, the kind that breaks in the chest before leaving the lips. Yet Clyde, consumed by his ambition and fury, could not hear him.

And so it happened that Clyde fell into the abyss of his own making. The spirit of Krampus, ancient and watchful, claimed him there, twisting his soul into something monstrous—claws where hands had been, fire where love once burned. No longer Clyde, no longer brother, he became a shadow of Christmastide, a bringer of punishment where once there had been peace.

Kris had no choice but to act. The grief was a weight he could scarcely bear as he banished Clyde to the White Wastes, where time is still and no road leads home. It was a sentence that shattered Kris’s heart, for love, though it can endure all things, must sometimes bear the cruelest burdens.

And yet, even in that grief, Kris carried the light of Christmastide with him—a gift that cannot be stolen, for it lives in the giving.

That’s a pretty good origin story for Krampus

So many questions. What the heck is Santa doing out there anyway? Earlier he implied he is trying to avoid Krampus, so is he searching for something? Hunting something?

What the flim flam?!