The X-Files: Merry melancholy Christmas in How the Ghosts Stole Christmas

When pinpointing the best Christmas episodes of television series, you can’t leave out How The Ghosts Stole Christmas, which aired during The X-Files’ sixth season.

There’s an old tradition of telling ghost stories during the holiday season, and The X-Files did the tradition proud with this one. In addition to the always awesome pairing of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, How The Ghosts Stole Christmas also featured two legendary actors: Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin.

The X-Files also featured a Christmas episode in the fifth season, a Scully-only story called Christmas Carol, but the series was always at its best when the two leads worked together.

It’s Christmas Eve, and in true The X-Files tradition, Mulder has dragged Scully out to investigate another strange and mysterious story that she doesn’t believe. She is impatient because she has some last-minute gift-wrapping to do before joining her family on Christmas Day, and he, of course, will be spending the holiday alone.

And why has Mulder dragged his reluctant partner out on Christmas Eve? It seems there is a large house said to be haunted by a couple who died in a lovers’ pact, in which the man shot his wife and himself. Legend has it that the dead couple return every year on Christmas Eve and that several other couples have died in the house in the same manner over the years since.

The two agents step into the house, are quickly separated, and soon meet the two ghostly inhabitants Lyda and Maurice (delightfully played by Tomlin and Asner), who basically try to turn Scully and Mulder against one another.

Scully is rattled and jittery throughout the episode, at first refusing to believe that Lyda and Maurice are ghosts (of course), then fainting when she is shown the holes where each was shot; Maurice in the head and Lyda in the abdomen.

There is a great exchange between the ghosts when Maurice asks his lover why they must do this little “dog and pony show” each year on Christmas and not Halloween. Lyda’s response is to scoff and say, “Now, who is filled with hopelessness and futility on Halloween?” To her, the melancholy sadness that lies in many people during the happiest season of all is the perfect time to entice them to kill one another! She says they need to show Scully and Mulder “just how lonely Christmas can be.”

How the Ghosts Stole Christmas is really a perfect holiday ghost story. It’s creepy; an atmospheric Christmas Eve storm brews outside, complete with crashing thunder and lightning. The lighting in the home is dim, and we get a sense of the loneliness Scully and Mulder each feel in their lives.

Eventually, they do end up shooting one another (well, not really…Lyda and Maurice trick each of them into believing it) and drag themselves up to the front door, leaving a gruesome trail of blood behind them. Mulder is the first to figure out that they have been tricked, pulls himself up, then encourages Scully to do the same.

As the clock strikes midnight, they shakily step out of the haunted house, and we are treated to a shot of Lyda and Maurice sitting in front of a fire while listening to Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (surely the saddest Christmas song of all if you read the original lyrics).

The episode ends with Scully showing up at Mulder’s door and the two exchanging Christmas gifts. It’s sort of a sweet and sentimental ending, one that reminds us of what Christmas should be: a time to spend with your family or friends, just enjoying their company, and possibly, a time to hang out with ghosts.

Do you like Christmas horror? In honor of Christmas in July, tell us what your favorite Christmas horror episodes are in the comments section.