You know you’re having a Lovecraftian Christmas when…

* You read At The Mountains of Madness to get “that snowy Christmas feeling”.

* You fasten your Christmas present parcels with tape printed to look like a tentacle.

* Roasting chestnuts by the fire reminds you of the cultists’ scene in “The Call of Cthulhu”.

* At parties you begin to gibber wildly that Santa is an anagram of Satan.

* Christmas carollers are met at your door by a wreath of mistletoe, ivy and holly twisted into a hideous pre-Christian mask.

* Scrooge seems like a rationalist atheist hero to you…

* Your oddly-shaped Christmas tree is delivered by an in-bred backwoods man, who warns you not to listen to the voices that may come from it.

* You think the Three Wise Men were named Alhazred, Atal, and Kuranes.

* “The Festival” seems like a description of an ideal Christmas with the family.

* You get the North Pole mixed up with the Plateau of Leng.