7 Awesome Holiday Fanart Pieces

The holiday season is in full swing in almost all fandoms: cute fics about your favorite characters cooking up feasts, decorating their homes, and snuggling up in front of warm fires. Fan artists are also stretching their wrists and massaging their fingers, ready to get creative or recovering from a holiday themed art-binge. Here, I’ve put together a collection of amazing Christmas and Hanukkah themed fanart for you to enjoy and be inspired by—I know I’m feeling the itch to pick up my graphics tablet pen!

Starting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we have Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, enjoying a DS he got as a Hanukkah present. We can all imagine him playing Animal Crossing, right? While he might not be Jewish canonically, the majority of the fandom has adopted this headcanon and has been running with it ever since the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Very fitting too, since Bucky’s creators, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, were themselves Jewish and would definitely have headcanoned him as such!

Over in the Pokemon fandom, we’re treated to a very special Christmas sight: the Arctic’s cool, blue ice is lit up by the northern lights in Arctic Christmas by arkeis-pokemon. All the ice type Pokemon up to generation 5—from a flying Kyurem to an Articuno—are gathering round a Christmas tree at the North Pole. Maybe they’ll take the place of Santa’s little helpers this year?

In the beautiful and detail-rich watercolor Christmas Totoro by Simanion, we see Studio Ghibli’s iconic Totoro take on the form of a Christmas tree to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

From movies to video games, in Dawn of Christmas by urbanator, characters from Arkham, Bioshock, Mass Effect, and more are ready to celebrate the festive season. There’s a sectoid from XCOM: Enemy Unknown wearing a top hat, while Max Payne is eating cookies from a plate Ellis is holding. From Saren to the Joker, everyone is suitably dressed for a Christmas walk (or rampage, perhaps?)

In the Sonic fandom, we see a different take on the holiday theme with a twist on Dickens in A Christmas Carol by ade-andario. Sonic is Shadow Scrooge, and Doctor Eggman is the Ghost.

Shadow Scrooge trembled more and more.

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a ponderous chain!”

In The Thing on Christmas by el-grimlock, we see many characters from a variety of fandoms celebrate Christmas who wouldn’t normally be involved with such festivities. Thor looks surprised and confused with Earthling traditions, while the Thing (who is Jewish) even dressed up as Father Christmas for the occasion. Link is very possessive of the nail varnish he was gifted—not quite getting the hang of sharing, I think!

Finally, we have an animated Hanukkah card by thickblackeyebrows showing the master of magnetism, Magneto, controlling a metal dreidel.

This small section of holiday-themed fanart highlights just how many talented artists put their time into creating art of our favorite characters in unique and very creative ways—check out their websites for more of their work and keep your eyes on your fandom’s DeviantArt and Tumblr tags for the latest holiday-themed art!