"...with boughs of trauma "

Christmas...the season of high hopes and great disappointment...commerce and media driven drivel reminding us once a year that our childhood wasn't Norman Rockwell perfect. It's all so nuts - considering it's just a winter solstice celebration that Spring is on the way. The "Sun" is coming (early popes changed it to mean "Son") and the rest is misery, err history.

You won't find a more haunting and outrageous Christmas memory than this one devised by Lorimar for the TV film Sybil (1976).

Martine Bartlett is INCREDIBLE as sad & sadistic schitzophrenic mama Hattie. Her long stage and screen career ended at age 58 - just 7 years after Sybil aired. I guess she was too closely associated with that crazy bitch with a bun. She died in 2006.

Postscript: JoBeth Williams reprised the Hattie role in the recent Jessica Lange SYBIL remake for TV, but she was NOWHERE near as memorable or HIDEOUS.