Arguments and Christmas go together like Turkey and Cranberry sauce, but as frustrating as you might find your own flesh and blood, you probably wouldn't go to the extent of trying to burn the house down.

The same, however, cannot be said for 29-year-old Christina Paz, who did exactly this, when she torched her childhood home in El Paso, Texas on Christmas Day.

It's a shocking story and a huge relief that no one was hurt, but what's most bizarre is how exactly Marilyn Manson has come to find himself entwined in these dark events.

Although technically still only a suspect in the case, a document released last week, detailing what Paz told investigators, claims: "She was angry at her mom and dad for trying to kill her on Christmas Day, that they had planned to sodomize her and chop her up with the help of a neighbor."

When an investigator pressed her on how she knew her parents wanted to kill her, she replied that it was “through the music of Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails.”

It's been a quiet few years for the 'God of f*ck.' He's kept such a low profile since the days when he was blamed for pretty much everything, that you couldn't help but chuckle when the NME re-brandished him as the 'God of f*ck all.'

Never shy of controversy throughout the late '90s, Manson somehow found himself cast as a scapegoat in the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre. Though it was later reported that neither of the gunmen were fans of his music – and in fact, claimed to dislike it – none of this seem to be of much interest to the media.

There has long been a history of rock music finding itself on the receiving end of a sea of pointing fingers. As far back as 1971, Led Zeppelin were accused for spiking Stairway To Heaven with the message: “Here's to my sweet Satan,” using a recording technique known as backmasking - and some two decades before that, Elvis 'The Pelvis' Presley and the rest of the rock n' roll revolution were met with claims of making the devil's music.

These kinds of stories are, as any right-minded person would tell you, utterly unfounded. They're the type of paranoid conspiracy theories that clutter fundamentalist websites such as the worrying Jesus-Is-Savour.com. Led Zeppelin have, of course, fervently denied the recording of hidden messages – as have ELO, Queen and Styx, who have all found themselves accused of similar practices. And whilst Slayer have never been able to protest to the same claims of innocence (their 1985 album Hell Awaits starts with a backwards recording of "Join us" over and over), they have always made it clear that their allegiances with the Devil have been strictly for financial reasons.

But before we get carried away with such a staunch defence of rock music against allegations from some of the wilder factions of our society, let's not pretend that it's whiter than the white. For starters, Marilyn Manson didn't do himself any favours when he released a batch of T-shirts bearing the slogan 'Kill your parents.'

And whilst we're on the subject of 'whiter than white,' how about black metal? The Norwegian-based genre-turned-cult is the literal antithesis of such a concept and throughout the '90s it was responsible for the organised burning of more than 50 churches, a handful of bloody murders and a hate-fuelled feud with the Swedish death metal scene. Here, it is impossible to separate the music from the crimes, because the most violent acts were often carried out by the hands of the genre's most prolific artists themselves.

It's inevitable that rock music – and perhaps more frequently, rap music – will always take the blame for some things that go wrong in the world. But that's OK, it's understandable, because largely rock music has always existed to shock, from Jonny Rotten swearing on live TV to Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat.

As Marilyn Manson pointed out in an op-ed for Rolling Stone, violence existed a long time before there was music, films or video games, and violence will continue to exist with or without them. What we have to remember is that as as much as we immerse ourselves in music, it is first and foremost a form of entertainment. It's a multi-million pound industry and there are times when we shouldn't take it so seriously.