On my way home from work last night I came across a Santa toy disfigured by multiple burns. Most of his face had gone, leaving a nightmarish wound, the mutilation made more ghoulish by the jolly swagger the plastic would otherwise have embodied.

From time to time I come across similar things on my wanderings: decapitated soft toys with the stuffing ripped out of them, limbless Barbie dolls, My Little Ponies scalped of mane and tail… All of us have carried out comparable acts of abuse at some point in our lives. It’s no use denying it, even if once as a toddler you demanded the head of the jelly rabbit, or watched with fascination as the features of the Christmas candle figurine slowly liquefied at it burned down, you are guilty to a degree. Perhaps it’s a way of saying “I have put away childish things, I am bigger than this now”? Or maybe it’s just that children really can be murderous.

Anyway, on arriving home I decided there had to be a term for these ritual killings. Yet, despite a lot of searching I came up with nothing. It’s too significant a practice to not have a name so I’ve decided on:

‘Crepundicide’.

From the latin: ‘Crepundia’: rattle, plaything, toy. And ‘-cide’. Word-forming element meaning “killer,” from French -cide, from Latin -cida “cutter, killer, slayer,” from -cidere, comb. form of caedere “to strike down, chop, beat, hew, fell, slay… [or] from Latin -cidium “a cutting, a killing.”*

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*Online Etymology Dictionary http://www.etymonline.com/