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My name is Hallie, and this is the Morbid Curiosity Podcast. holiday of Christmas can be peeled back to reveal its origins in more ancient pagan traditions from across Europe. Characters like Santa Claus, Jack Frost, and the elves all have their basis in far more ancient characters of myth and folklore. Some of these characters are far less jolly than their modern counterparts.
One of these darker characters is Krampus. According to lore, the name Krampus originates from the German word Krampin, which means claw, and tradition has it that he is the son of the Norse goddess of the underworld, Hel. In some parts of Austria, he is also known as Bartle, Negobartle, Volbartle, and Klauboff. Krampus is a horned humanoid figure, often described as a half-goat, half-demon.
Although there are many variations of Krampus' appearance, most images share several common physical characteristics. He's covered with brown or black hair or fur, and has the cloven hooves and horns of a goat. He has a long, pointed tongue that lulls outside his mouth, bordered by sharp fangs. He shares some of these characteristics with other folkloric creatures, especially from Greek mythology, such as satyrs and fauns.
These characters were also the inspiration for demons of Christian mythology. More on that later. Krampus carries chains, which are sometimes fastened to his wrists, which he thrashes and slams on objects around him for dramatic effect. The chains are sometimes accompanied by bells.
He also carries ruten, bundles of birch tree branches that he uses to swat at children and adults. The birch branches are sometimes replaced with a whip in some representations. Sometimes Krampus appears with a sack or a basket strapped to his back, which is used to cart off evil children for him to drown, eat, or take away with him to hell. In several European countries, including Austria, Bavaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, South Tyrol, and Northern Italy, Krampus is one of the companions of Saint Nicholas.
In most cases he's technically a servant of Saint Nicholas, but still does as he pleases. While Krampus seems quite terrifying, his job is to battle against evil. He takes away only naughty children, and his whip and bells are meant to drive away the cold and evildoers. The modern feast of Saint Nicholas, which is celebrated in parts of Europe on the 5th of December, is preceded by Krampusnacht, or Krampus Knight.
On this night, people dress up as the wicked hairy devil and roam festivals in city streets, swatting people's ankles and calves with ruten. Sometimes accompanying Saint Nicholas and sometimes on his own, Krampus visits homes and businesses, seeking naughty children to punish. Saint Nicholas is the pre-Coca-Cola version of Santa Claus. He usually wears vestments similar to those of a bishop, and carries a golden ceremonial staff.
Unlike the North American Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas only concerns himself with good children, while Krampus goes after the bad ones. Saint Nicholas dispenses gifts, while Krampus supplies coles and ruten bundles. Similar to presenting Santa with milk and cookies, it's customary for people to offer food gifts to Krampus, but he prefers schnapps, a strong distilled fruit brandy. There are also regional variations of the Krampus figure.
In Syria, in southeast Austria, the ruten bundles are given by Krampus to families. The twigs are then painted gold, and displayed year-round in the house as a reminder to any child who has temporarily forgotten Krampus, and what may be in store for them if they're naughty. In smaller, more isolated villages in Bavaria, Krampus has other beastly companions, such as the Schaubmaner, meaning sweepers. These straw-bound monsters, who resemble men in straw ghillie suits, walk ahead of Saint Nicholas, to symbolically sweep a path for him to walk.
They also carry whips and sometimes bells. Sometimes they have antlers, and resemble wild men instead of bundles of straw. In some villages, Saint Nicholas is nowhere to be seen, and Krampus is the head of the celebrations. A toned-down version of Krampus appears in the popular Christmas markets in Austrian urban centers such as Salzburg.
These tourist-friendly interpretations of Krampus are more humorous than fearsome. In the northern part of the Udine province of Italy, an annual Krampus festival occurs in early December. Just before sunset, people dressed as Krampus come out from an old cave and chase children and adults, punishing them with strokes on the legs with their sticks. To satisfy the anger of Krampus, the children must recite a prayer.
In many parts of Croatia, Krampus is described as a devil wearing a cloth sack as a loincloth, and chains around his neck, ankles, and wrists. A good child receives gifts from Saint Nicholas, as well as a golden branch, to represent his good deeds throughout the year, while a misbehaved child's gifts are taken by Krampus, who leaves only a silver branch to represent the child's bad acts. Krampus celebrations are currently a growing phenomenon in North America, with multiple Krampus-related celebrations being held in cities across the continent, including Washington D.C., Toronto, Chicago, L.A., Dallas, New Orleans, and San Francisco to name a few. Each event focuses on a theme and or cause, ranging from a simple bar crawl to a toy drive or charity fundraiser.
The Krampus of legend whips people with his birch bundle, and the people that dress up as Krampus in Salzburg-Krampusloft do the same. A tourist who was in Salzburg during the festival described fleeing from a fleet of stomping Krampus, who struck out at them with sticks aiming for the thighs and legs. No one at these festivals was seriously hurt, but the beatings did leave bruises. However, the people attending the festival took it all as fun, similar to those that go through extreme haunted houses on Halloween.
In all of these Krampus celebrations, costumes characters are key. The characters include Krampus himself, St. Nicholas, woodsmen, angels, sweepers, and old women. As Krampus is a half-goat-half-demon, the costumes usually share certain elements such as fursuits, horns, demon masks, and hooves.
Props are also commonly used and include bells, birch whips, baskets worn on the back, chains, and walking staffs. The most traditional Krampus costumes are made from goat or sheepskins, animal horns, and hand-carved wooden masks. Traditionally, the masks are made by specialist artisans, and are so well-made that antique masks often wind up in museums of folklore, or collections explicitly devoted to Krampus. The towns of Kitzbühel and Stahlhofen both have Krampus museums that collect old costumes and masks.
Nowadays, Krampus costumes are often made with less costly materials, such as faux fur, latex, and EVA foam. There are actually several instructional YouTube videos on how to create your own Krampus cosplay. These are awesome, and I highly recommend watching them just to see how the costumes are constructed. Europeans have been exchanging greeting cards featuring images of Krampus since the 1800s.
Krampus is often featured looming menacingly over children. In some cards, Krampus is pictured pursuing buxom women. Over time, these representations of Krampus on the cards have changed, with the older versions showing a more frightening Krampus, while modern versions have a more humorous or Cupid-like creature. The true origin of Krampus is unclear, with many folklorists and anthropologists hypothesizing about its pre-Christian origins.
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You'll have my eternal gratitude. Krampus' appearance and his behavior seem to have been derived from pre-Christian pagan legends. Our knowledge of the pre-Christian pagan pantheon in Europe is incomplete. The Druids and other ancient peoples didn't write anything down, and the places of worship, including the symbols and rites they used, were often taken over and assimilated into Christian traditions.
This was done by missionaries in an attempt to wipe out pagan traditions entirely. Many times it was easier to incorporate pagan traditions with Christian ones rather than destroy it completely. Krampus and the Horned God or Satan is a good example of this phenomenon. According to most historians, horned devils first appeared in medieval plays from around the 11th century CE.
These plays were usually adopted into the narrative of Christianity in attempts to reuse symbols that the native people were familiar with. Over time, the deity that Krampus originated from was corrupted into the mischievous, child-terrorizing ghoul we see today. As I mentioned, the horns, tail, and shaggy goat legs are very similar to the attributes of fawns or satyrs from Greek and Roman mythology. Satyrs are generally associated with lust, but also represent barbarism, willfulness, and bad behavior, more or less because goats are willful and cannot be trained.
In a short 1958 article about Krampus, Maurice Bruce suggested that he was none other than the horned god of witches or Satan, who in our modern imagery also shares some physical characteristics with Krampus, such as horns and goat legs. He states that the birch branches may be connected with initiation rites of certain covens, and the chains might have been introduced by Christians in attempt to bind the devil, but could also be a remnant of pagan initiation rites. In 1975, anthropologist John J. Honigman wrote that masked devils acting boisterously and making nuisances of themselves have been known in Germany since the 16th century.
He also states that animal masked devils that combine dreadful and comic antics have appeared in medieval church plays. Austrians in the community he studied said they were quite aware of quote heathen end quote elements that were being blended with Christian elements in the St. Nicholas customs and other traditional winter ceremonies. They believe Krampus derives from a pagan supernatural creature who was assimilated into the Christian devil.
The Krampus figures persisted through history, and by the 17th century, Krampus had been incorporated into Christian winter celebrations by pairing him with St. Nicholas. Punishing children was not a very saint-like activity, and St. Nicholas needed a foil to help him with his duties.
Most folklorists agree that Krampus got grafted onto Christian tradition as a sidekick of St. Nicholas. In fact, there are several figures who have been included in the St. Nicholas celebrations that may have origins in earlier pagan traditions, such as the controversial Soarte Piet from the Netherlands, who appears in blackface in the weeks before the St.
Nicholas feast and amuses children, scattering sweets for those who come to meet the saint as he visits schools, stores, and other places. In Germany there is Knescht Luprecht, who asks children whether or not they can pray, and if they can, they receive apples, nuts, and gingerbread, while those who can't are hit with a bag of ashes. And Belsnickel, a raggedy companion to St. Nicholas, who visits children on his own, carrying a switch in one hand for naughty children, and pockets full of cake and candy for good children.
In the Alsace region, Hans Trapp, a character that is an embellishment of a real person named Hans von Trolde, frightens children as a companion of St. Nicholas. Another St. Nicholas character from France is Père Fouetard, or Father Whipper, who gives out lumps of coal and whippings to naughty children.
Père Fouetard, like Hans Trapp, is said to originate from a real person, with legends that date from the 12th century, suggesting he was an innkeeper who drugged and murdered schoolchildren and made stew out of them. The legend goes that St. Nicholas brought the kids back to life and made Père Fouetard his companion. Whatever his origin, Krampus has appeared with St.
Nicholas since the 17th century, acting as the saint's dealer of punishments. The Krampus legend, however, has been around for much longer, and the evidence of this lies in an attempt made by the Catholic Church in the 12th century to banish Krampus because he resembled the devil. This is not the only time Krampus was banned. In 1923 in Austria during World War II, the Krampus tradition was prohibited under the Fatherland's Front, the fascist ruling political organization, and the Christian Social Party, a major conservative political party.
They found Krampus despicable because it was considered a creation of the Social Democrats. The newspaper of the Austrian Catholic Union called for a Krampus boycott, and the government of Linz, the capital of East Tyrol, forbade Krampus' dances and further mandated that all aspiring St. Nicholas's must be licensed by the city. They also pledged to arrest Krampus whenever they saw him.
Later in 1953, the head of Vienna's kindergarten system published a pamphlet calling Krampus quote, an evil man, end quote, and warning parents that celebrating Krampus not could scar their children for life. Near the end of the 19th century, a popular resurgence of Krampus celebrations occurred, and still continues today in Austria. The Krampus tradition has revived in Bavaria as well, along with a local artistic tradition of hand-carved wooden masks. There are still public debates in Austria about whether Krampus is appropriate for children, as he does represent cruelty toward them.
In 1977, anthropologist John J. Honigman witnessed and documented the Krampus' traditions in a small town in Syria. On December 5, a person dressed up as St. Nicholas, followed by a person dressed up as Krampus, visited the homes of everyone in the village to perform a traditional play that parents were all a part of.
The two characters confronted the children in their homes, St. Nicholas asking them to recite their prayers and if they'd been good that year, and Krampus standing just over his shoulder, clutching his ruten and growling, waiting for his chance to take a naughty child away. The parents would sometimes rat out their children and say they were naughty, but when Krampus moved in to take them away, the parents would beg for mercy for their child. When it was clear the child had been spared just this once, St.
Nick gave all the children presents, and both St. and Eden left. As with many Halloween traditions, this pantomime was performed with an air of tea. and humor a child's first experience of it may have been truly frightening and parents were meant to judge whether their child was ready for this type of thrill once they were ready however many children cherished the thrill and fright as much as they would a haunted house why is krampus making a comeback now some researchers say that it's thanks partly to a bah humbug attitude toward christmas in modern pop culture which slurs people to search for ways to celebrate the yuletide season in non-traditional ways some companies in austria are actually attempting to commercialize the harsh persona of krampus by selling chocolates figurines and collectible horns there have already been complaints that krampus has become too commercialized commercialization is not the only concern however for most people the annual festival is fun but there have been some concerns that refugees living in the alpine towns that celebrate krampus might find the tradition frightful smithsonian magazine reported in 2022 that krampus's scheduled arrival coincided with an influx of refugees from syria and afghanistan though the festival is well loved it gave rise to concerns that the new neighbors might be scared of the tradition and its nightmare fueling costumes however rather than canceling the parade town officials decided to educate the newcomers refugee children in lens were invited to a presentation where they learned about the props costumes and customs of krampus so that they too could join in the celebration without fear the character of krampus has been included and sometimes modified for various forms of media he appeared in a 2012 novel by gerald brahm called the yule lord he's appeared on popular television shows such as the league the venture brothers grim supernatural the colbert rapport and american dad he's also appeared in video games such as carnival in 1998 and the 2014 game the binding of isaac rebirth and of course there's a dark comedy horror film called krampus which came out in 2015 so why does a tradition of scaring children with a demonic pagan monster exist some folklorists suggest it may have deep socio-cultural roots that spring from a desire to be part of a community simply put parents use these creatures to threaten their children into behaving in a way that is socially acceptable so that they don't become an outcast between the ages of two and six children begin to develop their imaginations and to the mind of a susceptible child the tale of krampus seems real and possible stories of krampus and other boogeymen for that matter are used as a threat to ensure that children follow the rules the shape of these child punishers is fluid so it can be used against the child anywhere at any time the transmission of these types of tales over and over generations form a sort of guideline for a lasting social code it educates and reinforces the expectations held by other members of the community folk tales are local to the people who tell them and reveal much about their perceptions of the world around them folk tales grow change and are adapted for the time in which they are told these tales of krampus and saint nicholas tell us that people during the 17th century who didn't follow the rules of the community were likely to pay for it in some way or another possibly by disappearing or becoming an outcast these characters are teaching tools designed to maintain the social order up until the point that children begin to believe in such characters their parents are the great force behind their lives they deal with most issues for their children but krampus and other boogeymen are said to come when the parents aren't around this is the child's moment to see how they themselves are acting and assert themselves as members of the social order by correcting the behavior the community deems as bad in effect they gain an understanding of their own actions and the fact that they can change them this is a developmental milestone at an age when children are making sense of the world and their place in it the metaphor of krampus and other boogeymen represents fear anxiety and danger though these folktales seem to empower krampus they also empower the child who's listening to the story the child can defeat krampus by following the social norms of their society by being a good person so there you have it the winter saint and the winter devil their stories tap into a subconscious macabre desire to frighten and to be frightened but also showcase the deep roots of community and social order these deeper layers and the process of peeling them back is the reason that krampus brings out our curiosity the morbid curiosity podcast is produced by h lloyd if you'd like to get in touch or suggest a morbid topic you can do so on facebook and instagram at morbid curiosity podcast or on our website www.morbidcuriositypodcast.com if you like the podcast 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