A knife-wielding Santa Claus holds a bloody head outside
Posted on 12/14/2005 2:01:57 AM PST by freepatriot32
NEW YORK - It's usually easy to tell where a person stands in the culture wars, but whose side is someone on when his Christmas decor is a blood-spattered Santa Claus holding a severed head?
Joel Krupnik and Mildred Castellanos decked the front of their Manhattan mansion this year with a scene that includes a knife-wielding 5-foot-tall St. Nick and a tree full of decapitated Barbie dolls. Hidden partly behind a tree, the merry old elf grasps a disembodied doll's head with fake blood streaming from its eye sockets.
No one answered the family's door to explain on Tuesday, but Krupnik told the New York Post it was a statement about the commercialization and secularization of Christmas.
"Christmas has religious origins," he said. "It's in the Bible. Santa is not in the Bible. He's not a religious symbol."
The family is far from the only one making an editorial comment this year on how Americans celebrate Christmas, although it may be the only one doing it by depicting Santa Claus as a killer.
Pope Benedict XVI complained this week that Christmas festivities have been "subjected to a sort of commercial pollution."
Christian conservatives have launched campaigns to reintroduce a religious component to Christmastime decor in schools and public squares, chiding even President Bush this year for sending out cards wishing supporters a happy "holiday season."
Fox News talk show host John Gibson wrote a book claiming there is a liberal plot to ban Christmas.
Still, more than a few people passing by the Krupnik and Castellanos brownstone on Tuesday were a little puzzled about the message behind the massacre.
Peter Nardoza, 81, of Manhattan, shook his head and chuckled.
"Sick, sick, sick," he said. "What kind of a world is this that we live in?"
Ronnie Santiago, a deliveryman on his route, speculated that something bad must have happened once to the homeowner at Christmas. A few spectators wondered whether the campy gore would bother children.
There were signs the macabre theme is a year-round thing. The facade of the building was covered with leering gargoyles. A statue of Death, hooded and grim-looking, stood outside.
A few people got it.
"This is brilliant," said Bucky Turco, 31, of Manhattan.
He said the display captured how he felt recently while watching someone costumed as SpongeBob SquarePants promote products at Rockefeller Center.
Walter Garofalo, a musician from Brooklyn who wandered by wearing a black bandanna covered in skulls, was awe-struck.
"I wonder if these people would let me use this as our next album cover," he said. "It's perfect!"
A knife-wielding Santa Claus holds a bloody head outside
How weird these New York Santas!
I was in Penn Station one time on a train trip during a layover. I noticed that Santa was scowling at people and looking at them very intently. A little later I noticed Santa was talking with two policemen. It occurred to me that Santa was actually working undercover with these officers. I think he may have been looking for thiefs. No wonder Santa was scowling, considering some of the people he was working with.
A few spectators wondered whether the campy gore would bother children.
----In a world like we live in why do people have to try to dash a childs hopes and ruin one last dream they might have.Small children (some) still believe in Santa and it just seems sad that people would want to associate horror with Christmas. JMHO, I know it's not worth much, but I have a 5 year old who still believes in the magic and she puts her cookies out every year for Santa.
I just saw this idiot family on FOX.
Theyre complaining that people who are offended are offending them! They are saying mean things!
I notice the dad didn't show up. Looked like he sent the mom and daughter. Wimp.
Joel and Mildred need immediate psychiatric care.
Only a couple of deranged minds would engage in this kind of atrocity.
These two crackpots demonstrate a visceral hatred of Christians, Christmas, and its sacred meaning to billions of people around the world.
There's a place for people like this: a padded cell, clad in straitjackets.
Better yet, Joel and Mildred, if you don't like the way I celebrate Christmas, then GTH out of my country.
they all struck me as selfcentered idiots
That's a good description.
Perhaps it's time for Child Protective Services to check out this family.
"Only a couple of deranged minds would engage in this kind of atrocity."
I can't imagine trying to explain this to a 4 year old.
In one of the first stories to report this gruesome perversion , the couple have been identified as non-practicing Jews. Now, why exactly are they protesting aboutthe commercialization of Christmas - which is celebrated both as a secular holiday and for the birth of the founder of a religion they neither care about nor understand? It sounds to me like a tasteless, ignorant, pathetic and desperate cry for attention. Despite their wealth, they must lead a pretty sterile and bleak existence. Pity them and their children.
I did not realize this, with this statement:
"Christmas has religious origins," he said. "It's in the Bible. Santa is not in the Bible. He's not a religious symbol."
I took at face value and while I do not dispute that Santa is not in the Bible, I also cannot find where one is to used the Bible as a weapon to harm innocents and there can be no other possible motivation than to harm little children.
If, during Ramadan, they'd put up an effigy identified as the Prophet Mohammad wearing a bomb belt with bloody doll body parts strung in the trees, Muslims would have burned down their house with them inside.
I wonder if they'd think it was funny if one of their neighbors celebrated Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur with a jolly Hitler effigy and Barbie dolls marching into cute little gas chambers. I don't know about that last one... they may not be practicing Jews, but they might consider that in bad taste, because, well, it would be their ox getting gored.
These people are rich secular New Yorkers who think it's funny to ridicule others not like them, and their neighbors are just like them. These are the type of people who were happy when Terry Schiavo starved to death. They think making fun of Christians is "brilliant".
It's the hip thing to do among this particular type of self-indulged, arrogant urban scum. Oh yeah, one other thing.
They're all Democrats. You just know that instinctively.
Unbelievable! I can understand their frustration or disappointment with the commercialization of Christmas but of all the ways to show it, this little display takes the cake. They appear to be very bizarre people, and living in a mansion no less. I wonder how they earned their $.
December 13, 2005 -- EXCLUSIVE Ho, ho . . . no!!!!!
Slay bells are ringing outside a $3 million brownstone on East 18th Street in Manhattan, where, rather than your typical jolly St. Nick, a skinny, bloody-bearded Santa holds a knife in his left hand and the severed head of a doll - blood gushing from its eye sockets - in the other.
This 'tis-the-season-to be-creepy display - which has drawn no small amount of community ire - can be found in the front yard of Joel Krupnik, 58, and his wife, Mildred Castellanos, 43, who said they are protesting the commercialization of the Yule season.
In another touch of Christmas jeer, the Santa dummy is standing behind a tree whose bare branches are adorned with beheaded Barbie dolls.
"Christmas has religious origins. It's in the Bible. Santa is not in the Bible. He's not a religious symbol. Santa Claus has become a piece of Americana," Krupnik explained yesterday.
Krupnik, who dabbles in real estate, said if anyone was offended, they could simply cross the street. Some children have done just that.
Other people have called the cops - only to be told there was nothing they could do. And one woman chased Castellanos down the block, screaming epithets at her.
Outside the home - also decorated with gargoyles, lizards and dragons - there were many who accused the couple of dreaming of a fright Christmas.
"This is like a nightmare before Christmas. These people are possessed," fumed Laure Levinson, 50. "I thought it was very gory and bloody. Christmas is not supposed to be gory," said Jimmy Crevier, 9, who was passing by. "It's bad," agreed Sean Conlon, 5. "Santa's face and hair are red - Santa shouldn't look like that."
His brother, Ryan, 9, chimed in, "Santa makes toys and he lives in the North Pole. He doesn't have a haunted house like that."
"It's weird," said Javin Bose, 7, who lives next door.
The Krupniks, who have three children and have owned their home for 16 years, are nonpracticing Jews who don't celebrate any holidays, but like putting up decorations for them.
"We definitely have holiday spirit," insisted daughter Darla, 16.
The couple introduced their kids to horror films at an early age - and Darla and her brothers, Ariel, 18, and Charleston, 20, love them.
In fact, Darla came up with the idea for the bloody Santa - basing it on the movie, "Silent Night, Deadly Night," in which a teenager goes on a murderous rampage dressed as Santa.
The beheaded dolls came from Castellanos, who has a collection.
Current Communist Goals (1958)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1272893/posts
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
What a puff piece. The author, of course, fails to mention that the couple are non-practicing Jews, and not Christian at all. Instead, he spins it as if their sick display is a religious statement on the true meaning of Christmas.
BUMP! Best explanation I have seen yet.
Secular Jews= Atheists-
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