The Spirit of Christmas (1992)

I usually do not like South Park, but without this cartoon, South Park would not exist. It showed all of the qualities that made South Park so vulgar, dark, funny and snowy. It all began as a spoof of Frosty the Snowman in which, the snowman became a monster. It also showed people that the true meaning of Christmas was all about Jesus Christ's birth. It was well made when it comes to stop- motion. Never say bad words in front of Jesus. The quotes were well written, even on a pretty low budget. The satire about the holidays gave birth to all subsequent South Park media. Three years after the groundbreaking short, there was an even more controversial cartoon about Jesus vs Santa and characterized the characters even further. Two years later, South Park aired on TV. Two years later, a movie was released. Without the short, there would be no South Park whatsoever.

The 1992 short film "The Spirit of Christmas" is basically a South Park episode (with a slightly different animation style) packed into 4 minutes. The four boys accidentally create an evil snowman with tentacles who promptly kills one of them, then transforms into Santa and when the kids ask Santa for help, he kills the second. So the kids go see Jesus. And luckily, Jesus is not the evil snowman in disguise, but kills the villain.This was the first time Trey Parker and Matt Stone entered the very long-living world of South Park. The show is at its 18th season now already and this short film here was made 5 years before everything started (and 7 years before the movie). The characters have quite a few differences compared to what they were in another short film by Parker/Stone also called "The Spirit of Christmas" from 1995 and the show later one. Kenny gets actually killed here, a running gag for a very long time in the show, but he has Cartman's outfit and the clothes are different in general. Also, you can see the mouth of the character that looks like Kenny (but isn't). What is not different is the moral lesson at the end told by one of the boys. This idea was also taken up for the show and appears at the end of almost every episode.

This is pretty funny considering it looks and sounds terrible. It's really interesting to see how Trey Parker and Matt Stone started out with South Park, and they created a very demented and vulgar short film. Within this short, we see a switch of characters: the fat kid, better known as Cartman on the TV series, is named Kenny and is the first to get killed. The hood-wearing kid, who is known as Kenny on the TV series, is the second killed and is not given a name. And the other two (Stan and Kyle) also remain nameless in this short. You'll never look at snowmen wearing top hats the same ever again.

This first foray into South Park completely stunk. Perhaps it was tarnished because I saw the hilarious Jesus vs Santa Spirit of Christmas first. The only cool thing about this short was that Kenny and Cartman were switched. The fat Cartman we know and love was Kenny (he also didn't talk). I was shocked when Frosty smoked Cartman, he died and I heard "Ohmygod, they killed Kenny!". Neither Kenny nor Cartman spoke (that I remember), and I'm glad Matt and Trey made the changes that did to make Jesus vs Santa break that "sequel is worst than the original" rule in film.Miss this one, cause you ain't missing much.