You know that old saying about how artists must suffer for their art.

Well, Michael R. Oddo is taking things to a different extreme: He's making his art out of making Santa Claus suffer.

Oddo, an internationally recognized oil painter based in Moorpark, Calif., has a side job making wooden Christmas ornaments that show the jolly fat man being tortured, executed, beaten, electrocuted and -- coming soon, kids -- hanged by an evil dwarf.

Michael R. Oddo

For the last four years, artist Michael R. Oddo has been spreading Christmas cheer by hand carving ornaments of Santa Claus being tortured.

No, this is not part of a sequel to "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas." It's Oddo's comment on how Christmas has become a commercial nightmare.

"People are going broke for this holiday," he said.

Oddo came up with the idea of knocking around St. Nick about four years ago when he was invited to a Christmas party at the last minute.

"I am very busy around Christmastime, but some dear old friends invited me to an ornament exchange and told me, 'Everyone has to make one,' " he said. "I realized I didn't have time to make one, but I made the time. I stayed up all night creating a wood ornament showing Santa on a guillotine with his head in the basket."

Oddo didn't spare any expense at making his morbid holiday tribute as artistic as possible.

"I used real human hair on Santa and a lot of red paint for the blood," he said with a laugh.

The work definitely got a reaction, but not necessarily the way Oddo expected.

"When I showed up, the piece caused a ruckus," he said. "People shared my feelings and I immediately started getting orders."

In fact, Oddo is able to charge upward of $100 for hand-crafted ornaments that show Santa being decapitated. In fact, he has created a whole series of "Suffering Santas" that depict Kris Kringle being fried to a crisp in an electric chair, being stretched on a rack and even engaging in S&M.

"I have him tied to a cross with his pants down," Oddo said.

His latest mistletoe masterpiece has the fat man being hanged by the evil dwarf -- but his personal favorite may be the one where Santa is roasted over a spit.

"I had to charge more for that -- it was very difficult," he said.

All in all, Oddo has made fewer than 100 gruesome Santas, and, while the idea might seem like it's geared toward adults, he's found that the outrageous ornaments appeal to people of all ages.

"A fair percentage of these are done for people under 20," he said. "To be honest, I see my version of Santa as a combination of [silent film star] Buster Keaton and ['Saturday Night Live character'] Mr. Bill. Bad things happen to them, but nobody seems to mind."

For now, Oddo has more than enough orders to keep him busy. In fact, he's so successful that he hasn't felt a need to get a website, relying on a Facebook page for orders.

Still, he is open to make his "Suffering Santas" available to everyone.

"If somebody like, say, Kmart came to me and wanted to mass market them, I'd seriously think about it, but there will still be a demand for the original ones," he said.