Sleigh bells. Gift wrap. Homicidal gingerbread men and heavily armed snowfolk. Mistletoe. These are the things that the holiday season's made of, at least if you go by the many Christmas expansions video games have to offer. In a bid to wring every precious cent out of the season, developers have long made a point of playing Santa with festive mission packs and candy cane-shaped firearms sold to their holly jolly fanbases.

The memories of these merry offerings may fade with the turning of the seasons, but as that time of year comes 'round again and we troll the ancient Yuletide servers, we wish to honor those jolly Christmas expansions of yore. Don you now your DLC apparel, prepare yourself for some ho-ho-horrible Christmas punnery, and lets dig into those precious holiday memories.

What do you get? A new, Christmas-themed game in the Monty Mole series. Perhaps you kids, with your Ratchet Daxter and your Grand Torino videogame entertainments, don’t appreciate that a new Monty Mole game was a pretty big deal once. Your job is to wrangle the source code for a new Monty Mole game, oversee mastering of said game, and get it to distributors in time for Christmas, even as you play that very game. Remember the season of Seinfeld devoted to the making of a fictional Jerry Seinfeld sitcom? That's nothing compared to the postmodern genius of Moley Christmas.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? By replacing the drudgery of actual games programming and distribution with scenes of hectic Santa-suited platforming and dodging holiday traffic, Moley Christmas pretty much puts a gun to your head and orders you to make with the festive, bitch.

What do you get? Some short demo levels of then-huge Lemmings, in which the suicidal little creatures romp in the snow and wearing Santa costumes. This concept proved to be so popular that two full games were launched around it. Still, it's a bit of an odd bird. Why do the “basher” lemmings have just as much trouble digging through fresh powder snow as they would solid rock? What’s the point of keeping the moronic critters alive through all manner of peril, only to bake them into a Christmas pudding? But meh, they're wearing Santa suits, so we’ll give it a pass.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Christmas Lemmings threatens to succumb to a very merry malaise: it’s so bursting with holiday cheer it could almost make you sick. The game averts this outcome though by providing you with hundreds of Santa-looking merry-makers, all of whom can be exploded at your merest whim.

What do you get? Two levels of cult Saturn-era Sega action-adventure NiGHTS into Dreams, set during Christmas and featuring date-sensitive holiday content. The limited edition of NiGHTS wouldn’t turn into Winter Nights until November, but wait another month after that, and the game would bust out the seasonal festivities. Of course, you could just tell your Saturn every day was Christmas, and NiGHTS would be none the wiser.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? With all those presents, Christmas trees, sleighbells and techno-rearranged Christmas carols on offer, Christmas NiGHTS is a bit like eggnog. It’s great during the appropriate season, but yearly access would probably make you ill.

What do you get? Jazz Jackrabbit is a hare who collects carrots and fights turtles (convoluted Aesop shout-outs FTW). In his three(!) holiday games, he does those things in the snow, set to a sleigh-bell-accented backing track. Audiences were disgusted by the games’ slapdash approach to seasonal biology (neither jackrabbits nor turtles are greatly active in the winter months), which is the only reason Jazz Jackrabbit is never today mentioned in the same breath as Mario or Sonic.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Holiday Hare’s leading speculates the Jackrabbit holiday games “may become part of the next generation’s holiday traditions.” Evidently, adding a “snow on the rooftops” effect to the game’s menu fonts went a long way.

What do you get? A couple of Christmas trees that sit in Station Square and display messages wishing best of the holidays, joining you in waiting with bated breath for then-impending Y2K. You're hardly whisked away to a winter wonderland, though. By and large, the whole affair stays the same, but the sunny downtown Square has a couple ropey-looking trees in it. Being as this isn't even DLC so much as a limited-time key for pre-existing content, you’d think there could be some dodgy late-‘90s snow effects or something.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? You are if you go close to the trees and listen closely: it would play you an acapella version of the music from Christmas NiGHTS.

What do you get? In Star Wars Galaxies, Rebels and their sympathizers join in celebrating the Star Wars universe’s greatest holiday festival. That would of course be Wookiee Life Day, invented for the single most reviled piece of Star Wars media ever produced: the Star Wars Holiday Special. As Wookiee Life Day isn’t actually a celebration of Christmas per se, the game can do whatever it likes with seasonal tradition. What it likes is to expand the mythology of the Holiday Special so that Wookiee Life Day is at once mortifyingly sweet and kind of heartwarming. You know, like Christmas itself.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? How could you fail to be? Just as the Holiday Special enriched the lives of everyone except George Lucas (who probably sleeps OK at night regardless), Star Wars Galaxies’ Life Day brings cheer into the homes of all who participate. Except those playing as the Empire: their official mandate is to grief the whole celebration.

What do you get? An installment of Sam and Max in which every Christmas trope is rehashed, subverted and twisted into a plot that also involves demonic possession, corporate meddling and the imminent Apocalypse. It's pretty seamlessly done, so it makes us wonder how game designers until 2007 to capitalize on the fact that Santa is an anagram of Satan. Puns and video games – who knew those tastes could go together?

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Sam and Max could take Tax Day and turn it into an occasion for festive merriment. By the time you’ve digested the , you'll be forgiven for just not having any idea what to do with yourself.

What do you get? Santa costumes. You could dress your characters up and use them to traumatize viewers too young to have their notions of Kris Kringle marred by the film Silent Night, Deadly Night. For a series that's endured the bolting-on of everything from bug-catching nets to diminutive Jedi warriors, the ability to make your characters dress like a pissed-off mall Santa is par for the course. As long plenty of ludicrous ass-kicking remains, the spirit will endure.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Like fun you are. A couple measly red suits cost two bucks! Charging for this kind of frippery is basically forcing hardscrabble penny-pinchers to choose between seeing new outfits or eating Christmas dinner.

What did you get? The same juicy, slashy goodness you've come to expect from Fruit Ninja, but now there's a snow globe! To be precise, the snow globe is you, and as you flail your arms in a desperate attempt to reach that escaping coconut, your silhouette is replaced with a lovely, snowy landscape. Plus, your ninja-bladed hands have become candy cane blades, the most fearsome of all Christmas weapons. Everything else is pretty much the same, except that the master of fruit is wearing a Santa hat and instead of getting the multi-slice pomegranate, you get a fruitcake. I've always wanted to destroy one of those.

Were you filled with holiday cheer? Sometimes it's the little things that make the season special. Yeah, you're still slice and dicing tropical fruits, but the wintery hints are just so whimsical you'd have to be a Scrooge not to crack a smile.

What do you get? A lot of weirdness, which is good, because it wouldn't be Saints Row otherwise. While the Saints are decorating their base of operations with all sorts of holiday livery, a cybernetic Shaundi from the future appears and claims that the boss must defeat a corrupted Santa Claus with nothing but some pop-guns and the joy of the season. The boss isn't huge on that idea at first, but after blowing away Santa's gingerbread army, s/he inevitably gets into the spirit. You might say that his/her heart grew three sizes that day.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? This much holiday merriment in one place would be as cloying as a mug of melted candy canes, if it was at all serious. As it is, the Saints make their cybernetic, trigger-happy holiday hijinks just funny enough that ending on a cutesy Grinch reference is entirely tolerable.

What do you get? Two missions in an inexplicable Christmas town full of murderous, gun-totting snowmen. In How Marcus Saved Mercenary Day, arms dealer Marcus calls on the vault hunters to travel through a wardrobe to the annoyingly whimsical land of Gingerton and check on a lost gun shipment. That explanation creates way more questions than it answers, but there's no time to think about that as you're thrown into an adorable winterland where everything is out for your blood. There you meet the unnervingly shirtless Smaller-than-average Timothy and defeat a vicious snow-overlord named Tinder Snowflake.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? If you spend the entire game trying to figure out what a holiday about contract killers could possibly have to do with awkward Dickensian knock-offs, probably not. But if you think a Psycho singing Carol of the Bells is hilarious, you'll probably love this whole thing and get some sick loot out of the deal. And in the end, isn't that what Mercenary Day is REALLY about? No seriously, that's a real question.

What do you get? A content pack as fat as jolly ol' Saint Nick. The Minecraft Festive Mash-Up Pack contains 36 new avatar skins, as well as a feature that transforms your Minecraft world into the sort of joyful snowscape that Jingle Bells was written about. There's also a new, jollified version of the Minecraft soundtrack, giving the pack that extra holiday tinsel it needs to round it all out. This festive mash-up is currently exclusive to Xbox consoles, though Microsoft has claimed it will appear on other systems in the near future. Still, looks like the corporate overlord might be playing favorites this Christmas. Just a guess.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? With this many semi-square Christmas trees, white blocks replacing brown blocks, and , how can you not get into the holiday spirit?

What do you get? It's the most wonderful time of the year, and what better way to show it than with completely impractical festive costumes? Whether it's a sexy snowman, a sexy angel, or a sexy badly-wrapped present (seriously, someone get these girls some gift paper before they die of hypothermia), this Christmas costume set has you covered. Heck, even Hayate and Ein join the party as sexy reindeer, so there's something here for everyone. Except maybe people who don't want to sit in their living rooms shivering in empathy. Can't help you there.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Just like with Soulcalibur, the idea of laying down hard-earned holiday money for a bunch of costumes is painful, especially when the pack costs a whopping $18. Holy mother of mistletoe! And yes, it only contains the costumes (a seasonally appropriate twelve of them), so you must really want to see the Dead or Alive cast in barely-there holiday attire to make this one worth it.

'Tis the days before Christmas, and all through the 'net, devs are offering expansions you may want to get. But take heart: memorable as they may be, there's only a few you'll want under your tree. Which of these expansions do you think is the best? Is there something much better you'd like to suggest? Say so in the comments, and have no fear - if you hate all of these, there's always next year!

Is it beginning to feel a lot like Christmas? Keep that feeling going with .

Santa Claus. Kris Kringle. St. Nick. Just the name brings to mind a benevolent and loving father figure who cranks the joy dial up to 11. He's the human embodiment of the generosity, joy, and Olympic-level eating that Christmas is all about. His very presence reminds us to be good and kind to our fellow man (with a little bribery on the side, but still), bringing out the best in everyone who celebrates Christmas during this most wonderful time of the year.

So naturally, we mortals have a morbid fascination with dragging Santa's sterling reputation through the slushy Christmas mud. You want to see the bad Santa, the creepy mall Santa, the Santa who's gone mad from his gift-giving burden and is trying to destroy the world. Nowhere is that more apparent than video games, where you are often charged with fighting the evil Father Christmas, or at least the corruption that has overtaken his holly-jolly soul. In these twelve games Santa Claus comes to town, and he's got a sleigh full of whoopass with your name on it. Read on, and remember, it's better to give than to receive!

How and why are you fighting Santa? In the Saints Row 4 DLC How the Saints Save Christmas, after revealing that s/he doesn't care all that much about Christmas, the protagonist is warned by a fashionable Terminator reference that s/he has less than 24 hours to learn the reason for the season before the universe is conquered by a demon warlord Santa. You know, that old Christmas chestnut. Dubbed Santa Clawz following years of mind-bending torment by antagonist Zinyak, his main goal is to ruin Christmas by putting everyone on the naughty list and stuffing a big ol' lump of murder in their stocking.

Thankfully, the protagonist decides to get into the holiday spirit and deliver presents to the people of Steelport in Santa's stead, weakening evil's grip on St. Nick's soul. He makes a last ditch effort to go full demon and send the universe to holly jolly hell, but it's nothing a little impalement on a giant Christmas tree star topper can't fix.

Is he the real Santa? It sadly looks like it, but don't worry, he gets better!

How and why are you fighting Santa? You may be shouting at your screen this very moment, telling me that the Krampus is a separate Christmas creature and he's totally different from Santa Claus, duh! To that I say 1) stop talking to your monitor, I can't hear you, and 2) this guy's the Krampus in name only. While the Krampus of Alpine folklore is a demonic man-goat with an impossibly long tongue and a basket full of naughty children, the Krampus from CarnEvil is just an evil-looking Santa with reindeer horns, pine claws, and inexplicably thorny ice skates. Because evil is pointy?

In any case, this freakishly evil St. Nick is another abomination that rules part of the CarnEvil park, and he wants nothing more than to "stuff your stocking" (no really) with his Santa cla - talons. The clear answer to this problem is just filling his jelly belly full of lead until he keels over in a bizarrely comedic fashion. I guess after you go insane from seeing a childhood icon turned into a demon, everything's funny!

Is he the real Santa? He's more like an anti-Santa, so don't feel bad about putting him down. Plus, you bag a ten-pointer!

How and why are you fighting Santa? In Gex 3, the titular Gecko travels through the multiverse inside a TV to save his coquettish and worryingly human love interest from an evil robot dragon (it was the '90s). The first stop on the telly train is a land composed entirely of cheesy Christmas tropes, where Gex inevitably runs into Santa. But apparently our reptilian hero is on the naughty list (surprising no one), and this Santa's vision of gift giving involves a lot of violent box flinging.

On the bright side, Santa may have gift delivery down pat, but he apparently can't handle a Return to Sender. All Gex has to do is pull a rude relative and pass back Santa's present projectiles, and Father Christmas goes down like a sack of coal. Don't quit your day job, Mister Claus.

Is he the real Santa? Nope, since this Santa exists in a mix of bad Christmas movies and is a festive Frankenstein himself. That'd make anybody go a little sideways.

How and why are you fighting Santa? You probably never wanted to think about Santa Claus wearing a thong, but I didn't either, so you and I are going to share this brain-scarring pain. In Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue, the tragically named hero Deathspank must collect the six Thongs of Virtue and destroy them in the Fires of Bacon. How ham-fisted. Santa Claus is corrupted by the Thong of Generosity, and is apparently so huge he can't get up off his back, giving you a nice view of his underthings 100% of the time. Can I get some brain bleach for Christmas?

Though Deathspank is the sole occupant of the Nice List, that doesn't stop the jolly ol' jerkass from trapping him in an exitless dungeon (with one too many exits) or sending a coal golem to kill him. So you don't feel so bad when Deathspank finishes off the North Pole's merry minions and slices Santa like a holiday ham.

Is he the real Santa? I hope not, since if Santa's going to go down, I hope it isn't in the process of removing his thong.

How and why are you fighting Santa? It's generally not advisable to slice mall Santas open with a giant sword, as creepy and demonic as they may be. But when that mall Santa's been infected with a mutant zombie virus? Okay, maybe now the sword's the way to go. In the enthusiastically punctuated Hunter: The Reckoning: Redeemer, Hunter Kylie is forced to fight an undead scourge unleashed by a former companion that is quickly taking over the city and kind of putting a damper on the holiday cheer. She learns that the virus has left one professional Kris Kringle one partridge short of a pear tree, and only she can the innocent civilians he's kidnapped. His ho-ho-hostages? ...No?

While that all sounds relatively reasonable (yeah yeah zombie Santa, you're not wowing me here), things take a turn for the weird when a perfectly normal human being turns into a demon with mouths in his mustache and invites you to sit on his lap. It takes some serious swordplay to crack this nut, but Kylie manages to pull it off, and then no one ever spoke of this moment again. Um, until now.

Is he the real Santa? Thankfully no. This is just a mall Santa with a nasty case of the undead flu.

How and why are you fighting Santa? It's a pre-Christmas apocalypse and this time the Mayans are not involved. Instead, the awesome, fearful power of a long out-of-use stone calendar is replaced by the slightly more effective threat of a DNA warping zombification virus. It's early December. The streets are awash with blood. Chaos and violence erupts from every doorway and back alley. A hackneyed joke about Christmas shopping rears its ugly head, but fear not. We're going to be far too classy to run with it.

Being one of a tiny percentage resistant to the tasty delights of cranial offal cuisine, it's your task to fight your way through the stinking mob in order to find someone who can turn your vein juice into a bona fide cure. Given the time of year, the flesh-hungry masses comprise an influx of bearded, previously jolly men in red coats. But mid-zombie apocalypse, there's no time to be sentimental. He needs detonating into pate just like the rest of them.

Is he the real Santa? We hope not. A world without Santa is not a world worth saving.

How and why are you fighting Santa? Back to the Multiverse uses parallel universes to create a wildly eclectic, thrillingly unpredictable narrative/really cheap method of mixing up the level design without requiring any real attempt at coherence.

In one of those universes, Stewie and Brian discover that due to the rise of online shopping (satire!) Santa has become redundant and has turned his factory into a freelance manufacturing plant for any and all bidders. He's currently building weapons for main antagonist and Stewie's evil(ler) twin Bertram, so the pair ignore that none of this makes the slightest bit of logical sense when you really think about it and head off to take the big man down. Which they do via a rather dull boss fight.

Is he the real Santa? Yes, but only in the universe that this particular level takes place in, so ours remains completely safe. Hurrah!

How and why are you fighting Santa? Because Clayfighter has always been such a 'hilarious', 'quirky' and no doubt quantifiably 'wacky' series, and because its mascot character is a snowman, it was crushingly inevitable that Santa would eventually appear. And in the third game he did. In an explosion of pioneering obviousness he was conceived and realized as a walking fat joke, fighting in a pseudo-sumo fashion and with his belly out because "LOL LOOK SANTA IS FAT!" Oh, and his finishing move is to butt-slam himself on top of his stunned enemy, wedge them up his crack, and fart out their bones. Keep it classy, Clayfighter.

The storyline reason for fighting him? Sumo Santa is sort of an evil version of Santa, and a rival of Bad Mr. Frosty. He's been exiled to the tropical Klaymodo Island since Frosty took control of the North Pole and he now wants it back. So, you know, fighting.

Is he the real Santa? Probably not. Though it' s all a bit vague. Let's say no, because the real Santa couldn't possibly be that crap.

How and why are you fighting Santa? Discovering that the deadly Maimtron 9000 that attacked their street was sent by Santa, Sam Max head to the North Pole and immediately have a defensive Santa stick a gun in their faces. Which, let's face it, is a bit of an upgrade from coal in the stocking. Eventually discovering that one of the elves is possessed by a demon, they perform an exorcism and seal said eldritch nightmare in a jelly. Day saved?

No. Santa then eats the jelly and turns the gun on them once more, this time less as a defensive measure, more as a deliberately murdery gesture. The two eventually knock him out using a Rube Goldberg contraption comprising a cannon, a present and a toy plane. Eventually the source of the demon is revealed as an administration error. He was meant to be sent to Satan, not Santa, so Sam Max box up the bearded fella and post him to Hell.

Is he the real Santa? Unfortunately it seems so, despite looking a lot like Colonel Sanders.

How and why are you fighting Santa? It's basically self-defense. He just turns up halfway through the obligatory ice level and starts attacking you. You see this Santa doesn't have toys in his bag. He has only death, by way of a seemingly infinite supply of bombs. Which makes it rather a shame that we used up the "worse than a lump of coal" joke in the last entry. Damn.

Anyway, given that it's the caring, sharing season of peace, goodwill and forgiveness there's only one way to deal with the little bugger. Through the tried and tested medium of a barrel to the face. Given how cold it is, that's really going to sting. Incidentally, the boss of this level is a naked white-bearded muscle mutant with literal claws. We think we see what they did there.

Is he the real Santa? Possibly. Don't let the color of his suit fool you. Traditionally Santa doesn't have to wear red. Though we can only justify his behavior by theorizing that someone swapped the sherry and biscuits for PCP this year.

How and why are you fighting Santa? Very little reason other than that it's Christmas. Literally. Every year, brutal co-op arena shooter Killing Floor has a special Twisted Christmas event, bringing a themed festive map and the gift of new high powered weaponry for all. During the event, the game's enemies are reskinned as evil Santas and evil cyborg Santas, as well as mutant elves, drill-handed nutcrackers, murderous carolers and the most horrific snowman ever to ruin the Christmas dreams of an innocent child.

In 2010, the event took place in a sinister grotto. In 2011 the festive fragging occurred in an ice cave. In 2012? Space. Obviously. Seriously, what did you expect? Weirdo.

Is he the real Santa? We like to assume not, given that 1) there's more than one of him and 2) the thought of this guy having nocturnally snuck into our bedrooms year after year makes us want to hose our childhoods down with bleach.

How and why are you fighting Santa? Because you don't realize he's Santa until you've defeated him. You see the boss of Secret of Mana's Ice Palace is the Frost Gigas, the coldest and most blue of the world's three elemental giants.

Once he goes down though? Santa. He turns into Santa. Or rather he turns back into Santa. You see he's not really one of the Giga bros. What actually happened was that after becoming disheartened by children starting to lose faith in the true meaning of Christmas, Santa hatched a plan to grow an epic Christmas tree using one of the world's mythical Mana seeds. The idea backfired and the seed turned him into the Frost Gigas. But now he's saved! Because you, er... tried to kill him.

Is he the real Santa? Yes! His grand, selfless plan for the benefit of the world's children proves this, as does the appearance of Rudolph after the fight. So not only have you liberated the Ice Country and taken another step towards saving the world, you've also saved Christmas as well, probably for all worlds in the multiverse. Consider yourself coal-exempt for the rest of your life.

Congratulations, you saved Christmas from the dark machinations of evil Papa Noel! And/or ruined Christmas by brutally murdering its wayward patriarch. Either way, happy holidays! Which of these is your favorite Santa beatdown, you monster? Or is there another Santa-wrecking game that you prefer more, because you are a sick, sick soul? Tell us in the comments below, and remember, he sees you when you're sleeping…

Did those tales of Christmas carnage get you in the holiday spirit? Then you'll love the .