The holidays can either be a heavenly experience or Hell on earth, depending on your point of view. If you’re in the former camp, you probably love meeting up with family for Thanksgiving and Christmas or seeing decorations line stores as well as your own house. If you’re the latter, you find yourself counting the days until the New Year’s Ball drops. Movies centered on the holidays is no different; Miracle on 34th Streetis a heartwarming tale about the power of belief, while National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacationperfectly captures the stress of being around one’s family during the holidays. It’s Calvin and Hobbes that perfectly captures the malaise around holidays with a single strip.
That strip, which made its debut in 1993, takes the form of a rather humorous poem that Calvin receives from Santa Claus. In this poem, Claus tells an overjoyed Calvin that he’s repealing his rules about who’s “naughty” and who’s “nice”, encouraging the spiky-haired youth to embrace his naughtier tendencies. However, that’s when the strip ends with a twist: it was all part of a dream, leading Calvin to lament, “I hate being good (or trying to fake it)/Six days until Christmas! I don’t think I’ll make it.” While Calvin and Hobbes was no stranger to depicting the holidays, this strip nails the unspoken pressure that the holiday season puts on kids.
‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Nails A Stressful Aspect of Christmas
Calvin and Hobbes walking in ‘Calvin and Hobbes’Image via Bill Watterson
Everyone’s heard the song “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” which paints Kris Kringle as an all-seeing force that knows when children are are naughty or nice. While this is more or less meant to get kids to behave, it underlines the pressure that’s being put on them at an early age. People are human; sometimes you’ll say or do something you don’t mean, but it doesn’t mean you have wicked intentions at heart. There’s also the fact that in an age of constant online surveillance, Santa’s observations come off as less benevolent and more creepy (no matter how many movies try to explain it.)
Calvin and Hobbes’ Santa strip hits hard for this exact reason, especially when you take Calvin’s characterization into consideration. Part of the draw of the series is Calvin’s boundless imagination, as his flights of fancy lend themselves well to the comic medium but also get him into trouble. For a kid who loves Christmas as much as he does, it must be tough to try and restrain himself. Therefore, the idea of Santa flipping the script so that “naughty” kids triumph would sound like a legit Christmas miracle to him. It’s rather fitting, as Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson seems to excel when he places the titular duo in a wintery setting.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Fandom Should You Join? Harry Potter · Lord of the Rings · Star Wars · Star Trek
Eight honest questions about how you actually are: what you put on when you need cheering up, how deep you go into the things you love, what you argue about, what you keep on your shelf. Answer them and we will tell you where you belong. Four of the biggest fandoms on earth are taking new members, and they could not be more different from one another.
⚡Harry Potter(Wizarding World)
💍Lord of the Rings(Middle-earth)
⚔️Star Wars(A Galaxy Far Away)
🖖Star Trek(The Final Frontier)
01
What do you put on when you need cheering up? Nobody is brave about this one.
02
How deep do you go into something you love? There is no shallow end here, only different deep ends.
03
What do you and your friends actually argue about? Every fandom has one argument it has been having for years.
04
How do you feel about a room full of strangers? Every one of these comes with a very big room.
05
Where would you rather spend a week? Pick on instinct rather than on budget.
06
What do you believe about people, mostly? All four of these stories have an answer, and they disagree.
07
What is actually on your shelf? Look over at it before you answer.
08
What do you actually want from a story? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your fandom.
Membership Confirmed Your Fandom Is…
Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely
different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you
would be having within a week.
Wizarding World · Books 1997 · Films 2001
Harry Potter
You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts
works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war
so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting
you.
You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within
about five minutes and has never stopped.
This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every
single person in your life would be.
The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you
do with things you love.
The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the
arguments are about to start all over again.
Middle-earth · Books 1954 · Films 2001
Lord of the Rings
You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where
somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth
rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.
You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something
enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it.
This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly
alarming, and it has good reasons for that.
Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all,
which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes.
Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make
that argument.
Star Wars · Lucasfilm · Since 1977
Star Wars
You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one
where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of
it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.
You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a
grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that.
Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly
1980 with no sign of resolution.
The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score
and the look of a used and dented galaxy.
You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good
time.
Star Trek · Paramount · Since 1966
Star Trek
You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the
argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in
space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.
You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major
franchise still willing to say the future might be better.
The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that
makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else.
Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is
appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar.
You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you
will always find somebody willing to have it.
Bill Watterson Excels When It Comes To Christmas-Themed ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Strips
A decade of Calvin and Hobbes strips reveals that some of the best ones are set around Christmastime or a wintery setting, and that’s thanks to the way that Bill Watterson approaches the holidays. Instead of the usual heartwarming stories, Calvin and Hobbes fans could see Calvin annoying his parents by waking up early on Christmas morning, or him and Hobbes dealing with an army of grotesque mutant snowmen. They could also expect the strip’s signature introspection and wit to be deployed, especially in one moment where Calvin’s dad criticizes a televised Christmas special for being about “cola, fast food, and beer.” Watterson expressed similar thoughts in the documentary Dear Mr. Watterson, where he spoke on the fact that he never chose to merchandise Calvin and Hobbes.
“My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of a certain friendship. Who would believe in the innocence of a little kid and his stuffed tiger if their popularity was used to sell over priced kick knacks nobody needs?”
The holidays can be extremely stressful, putting unneeded pressure on people to be around their families or to act a certain way. Calvin and Hobbes highlighted why this pressure is a bad thing, and is a balm to anyone who prefers saying “bah, humbug!” to “happy holidays.”
