Krampus, Santa’s evil cousin, is legitimately terrifying
You’ll be wishing it was just coal in your stocking
Children misbehaving this holiday season? Never mind the old coal-in-the-stocking routine. If you want your kids to shape up for Christmas, just tell ‘em Krampus is coming.
In Austro-Bavarian folklore, Krampus is St. Nick’s evil roll dog. Half-goat, half-demon, all bad, Krampus’s gig is to follow Santa around while he visits children to check who’s been naughty. Good little boys and girls get gifts—the rest get snatched up by Krampus’s dangly red tongue, stuffed into his rucksack and carried off to a torture cave of undisclosed location.
We all know Christmas is really just an extension of ancient winter solstice celebrations recognized the world over. Krampus and his do-gooder pal Clause are examples of established pagan figures adapted and assimilated to meet the needs of Christianity, in this case the biblical devil and a benevolent saint, likely modeled after the Roman god Saturn. But tradition and culture have a way of bending with time. Today Krampus is still used by parents as deterrent, but his main role is as a continuation of cultural narrative in remote alpine regions of Austria and Germany.
Krampus Night, or Krampusnacht in the original German, is celebrated on December 5th. So watch out, and if you see a cloven-hoofed demon carting away the neighborhood delinquents, rest easy that the dude knows what he’s doing.
