The Most Iconic Santa Sleighs in Movie History

Image via Complex Original

Leave it to the animation kings at Aardman (of Wallace and Gromit fame) to create what is probably Santa's most high-tech sleigh to date: the S-1, a supersonic sleigh that measures one mile wide and utilizes a elf-manned command center to ensure that Santa doesn't miss a single chimney.

It's not the most heartwarming of plot lines: Instead of a lump of coal, a murderous Kris Kringle sets out to murder those unlucky folks who end up on his naughty list in yuletide-themed ways. You may not agree with his methods, but the old-school sleigh he uses to chimney hop—driven by a single hell-deer—is a handsome piece of wood-carved machinery.

Daggers and arrows and swords, oh my. It's raining weaponry when Father Christmas arrives in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first installment in The Chronicles of Narnia film series. The bearded guy shows up in his reindeer-driven sleigh just in time to clue Lucy, Susan and Peter into how it all goes down in Narnia and hand over the gear they need to protect themselves.

Though it was a pioneering piece of motion capture filmmaking, the end result of Robert Zemeckis' CGI experiment ended up making everything (including the animated version of Tom Hanks' many characters) look, well, kind of creepy. What it did get right was the proportion of Santa''s sleigh to his bag of toys.

Okay, so Willie T. Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton) is only a mall Santa. And he's also a small-time conman. But he also happens to be one of our favorite small-time conman mall Santas. And his ride—a used-and-abused 1969 Chevy Impala Sport Sedan—couldn't be more apropos.

The sleigh may be a prop in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But the man in the fuzzy red suit—a.k.a. Kris Kringle—is 100 percent real. Which makes this sleigh 100 percent authentic, too.

Jack Skellington's desire to bring the spirit of Christmas to the people of Halloweentown is admirable. But a lifetime of being immersed in much spookier traditions lead all of his efforts to have an unintentionally ghoulish twist, including his approximation of Santa's sleigh. In Jack's version of the holiday, shrunken heads make a great gift for kids and the fastest mode of transportation is a coffin chassis led by a ghost dog named Zero, whose nose is an illuminated jack-o-lantern.

Buddy the Elf (Will Ferrell) has one job at the North Pole: to assist his father in maintaining the Kringle 3000, a 500-reindeer power jet turbine engine that Papa Elf engineered when the spirit of Christmas was no longer powerful enough to keep Santa’s sleigh airborne. Which makes it extremely convenient that when Santa’s sleigh crashes into Central Park on Christmas Eve, Buddy is nearby to fix the problem.

Okay, so the Grinch isn’t really Santa. But if he’s going to play the part in order to ruin the holiday for all the Whos in Whoville, he’s got to have the appropriate ride. It might not be fancy, but this simple sled gets the job done. And he doesn’t need a team of fancy reindeer to do it either. One mangy mutt will do.

It doesn’t look particularly comfortable, and we’re not sure how that tiny little bag can possibly hold toys for all the kids in the world, but few films or television specials have put as much emphasis on the importance of Santa’s sleigh—or his red-nosed secret weapon—as this stop motion classic.