The Spirit of Christmas (short film)

Jesus vs. Frosty
The boys put a "magic hat" on Frosty.
Release date	December 8, 1992
Running time	3:52

Jesus vs. Santa
A scene from the film showing Santa and Jesus fighting each other.
Release date	December 1, 1995
Running time	5:12

Spirit of Christmas is the name of two different animated short films made by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They are precursors to the animated series South Park. To differentiate the two, they are often referred to as Jesus vs. Frosty (1992) and Jesus vs. Santa (1995).

Jesus vs. Frosty begins with four boys building a snowman and, in the vein of Frosty the Snowman, putting a magic hat on it to make it come to life. Unfortunately, Frosty turns out to be evil and deranged, sprouting huge tentacles and killing the Kenny-named, Cartman-resembling boy by throwing him. This leads one of the boys to utter the first version of a line which recurs in countless South Park episodes: "Oh my God! Frosty killed Kenny!"

The boys go to Santa for help, but he turns out merely to be Frosty in disguise. This time, he kills the Kenny-resembling boy, again by throwing him. The two remaining boys run away, and come across a nativity scene with a baby Jesus, who flies over to the evil snowman and defeats it by slicing off the magic hat with a hurl of his halo. One of the boys says another recurring line from the South Park series: "You know, I learned something today", and he and his friend realize the purported "true" meaning of Christmas: that is, presents. As a deer nibbles on Kenny's corpse they go to their homes to find presents hidden by their parents.

In 1992, Trey Parker and Matt Stone made The Spirit of Christmas (aka Jesus vs. Frosty) while they were students at the University of Colorado under the "Avenging Conscience Films" moniker. They animated the film using only construction paper, glue and a very old 8 mm film camera, and premiered it at the December 1992 student film screening. The film features four children very similar in appearance to three of the four main characters of South Park, including a character resembling Cartman but called "Kenny", a hooded boy resembling Kenny (who remains unnamed) and two other boys similar in appearance and voice to Stan and Kyle.