Watch: Holidays With Hunter S. Thompson Involve Setting a Christmas Tree on Fire

The crazed ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ writer turned his tree into a flaming Yule Log from Hell.

One can only imagine what Christmas Day was like at Hunter S. Thompson‘s house. The gun-toting, drug-devouring gonzo journalist probably served guests egg nog spiked with mescaline and held an impromptu target practice in his front yard as they waited for the hallucinogens to kick in. It turns out the legendary Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas writer, who died in 2005, also had a thing for torching Christmas trees. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTprYGJPhmU

Behold this gloriously strange video of Thompson stuffing a festive tree into his fireplace and setting it ablaze in 1990, before blasting it with a fire extinguisher as the flames lapped perilously high above the hearth. While igniting a Christmas tree is one of the few things not listed on HST’s famously debauched—and probably apocryphal—daily routine, it seems like an excellent go-to move for holiday grinches everywhere.