It is Christmas Eve and a comfortable suburban household is bubbling over with holiday friction. Parents are trying to enforce a traditional, old-fashioned holiday, complete with classic family time, while cynical kids Jimbo (Sky Berdahl) and Stefa (Jenna von Oÿ) are having none of it, defiantly declaring that they don’t believe in Santa Claus. Seeking to snap his bored, rebellious children out of their holiday apathy, their father (E.G. Marshall) decides to spin a terrifying yarn about the fiercest, most dangerous entity in existence: The Grither.
Originating from a cursed, ice-locked ship in the deepest, coldest depths of the Arctic, the Grither is a grotesque monster with skin like a roadmap showing blue veins of fear and red veins of rage, basketball-sized hands and arms like boa constrictors. But the scariest rule of all? You must never speak its name. Every time someone utters the word Grither, its ears double in size, turning into wings that allow it to fly faster and home in on its prey.
As the parents casually drop the name and lead the kids in a chilling monster song, the wind howls, the lights flicker, and the line between a spooky parental scare-tactic and a bone-chilling reality begins to blur. By the time Uncle Michael (Mark Capri) arrives and the eerie phone calls start piling up, the children realize too late that some legends shouldn’t be invoked, leading to a devastating, pitch-black holiday climax where the monster makes its presence brutally known.
This episode was directed and written by Michael McDowell, best known for writing the screenplays for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as authoring the Blackwater book series. Airing right after Christmas in late December 1986, “Seasons of Belief” stands tall as one of the absolute best holiday-themed horror television episodes of the decade, subverting the traditional warmth of the season into a masterclass of psychological dread.
