Krampus is making a comeback this Christmas and he's not bringing cookies.
Holy shit, you better not pout. Den of Geek’s fearless leader shot me a chat message asking what I could tell him about a thing called Krampus. I had never heard the word. I told the man who signs my checks (editor's note: I sign no checks!) that I thought he was a hallucination and that I never respond to words that pop up in front of me while I'm having an obvious flashback while I looked it up.
Okay, remember the heat miser from the seventies Rankin/Bass Christmas specials? Krampus is worse.
Krampus is a Christmas character, like Kris Kringle. But instead of feeding his diabetes with nibbles of butter cookies and milk, Krampus eats the heads of children as a Yuletide snack. Mm, mm, throw in a little Who Hash and we got a new course after the antipasto.
Krampus was bad santa before Bad Santa. Jolly Saint Nick scrunched his paunch down the chimney to empty bags of toys. Krampus would show up empty on Christmas Eve and leave with his bag filled with the bad kids. The pouters.
Krampus comes from Germanic folklore. Krampus looks like a demon and sticks bad kids in a bag. When the bag is full he brings the kids, not to Never Neverland or The Netherlands, but to the netherworlds.
According to artistic representations, Krampus is hairy, with cloven hooves, horns and a long pointed tongue. He carries around bells, chains and a very phallic birch branch. At some point in the Twentieth Century he found the S&M shops in Hamburg and traded the birch branch for a whip.
Krampus comes the German word krampen, which means claw. I wonder if that’s where Sandy Claws comes from in Nightmare Before Christmas. Krampus is just a demon who into his father’s business. His father was Hel in Norse mythology. Krampus is called Klaubauf in Austria, but also goes by the aliases Bartl, Bartel, Niglobartl, Wubartl, Pelzebock, Pelznickel, Gumphinckel and Krampusz.
Krampus actually predates Santa, which would make him just a touch older than Mick Jagger, who’s a week younger than dirt. In 1975, anthropologist John J. Honigmann wrote that “Nicholas himself became popular in Germany around the eleventh century. … Masked devils acting boisterously and making nuisances of themselves are known in Germany since at least the sixteenth century while animal masked devils combining dreadful-comic (schauriglustig) antics appeared in Medieval church plays ... Austrians … believe Krampus derives from a pagan supernatural who was assimilated to the Christian devil.”
The Krampus figure is pre-Christian. In a 1958 article about the Krampus, Maurice Bruce wrote “There seems to be little doubt as to his true identity for, in no other form is the full regalia of the Horned God of the Witches so well preserved. The birch—apart from its phallic significance—may have a connection with the initiation rites of certain witch-covens; rites which entailed binding and scourging as a form of mock-death. The chains could have been introduced in a Christian attempt to 'bind the Devil' but again they could be a remnant of pagan initiation rites.”
Whips and chains instead of tinsel and trains, nutcrackers not included.
The Krampuslauf is a run where local men traditionally try to get Krampus to drink some schnapps. On Dec. 5, which is also called Krampusnacht, but better known as the Eve of Saint Nicholas Day, while Nicky’s asleep, drunken old men in Austria, Romania, Bavaria, South Tyrol, northern Friuli, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia dress up like Krampus and chase neighborhood kids off their lawns with rusty chains.
On the morning of Nikolaustag, Dec. 6, German kids check to see if the shoes they left on the stoop have any presents in them. If their shoes are empty, the kids have to boil and eat the tongue while their parents point and laugh.
For years, the Catholic Chuch tried to keep a lid on Krampus. It was lascivious and kind of seedy. Fascists weren’t too thrilled with it either. During World War II, the nasties and the brown shirts thought it had something to do with Social Democrats.
Austria tried to make money off Krampus by selling chocolate-covered Krampuses (Krampii?), ornaments and toys.
In the early Twentieth Century, Krampus Christmas cards were a big seller from the norseland to Romania and Bavaria. Maybe not so much with the Hallmark crowd, but in Germany, where they had Sink-the-Bismarck cards, the mailman delivered rhymed cheer sneered by this hungry monster. If you look at the cards, Krampus seems to also have a thing for top-heavy women.
Krampus is having a bit of a renaissance. Right now there are two movies in production about it. Kevin Smith dropped the next Clerks movie to make a feel-good holiday photoplay starring the curmudgeonly but cuddly Christmas character. American Dad ran an episode called "Minstrel Krampus."
Smith explained it in an interview, saying “When I was a kid, if they wanted to make a Christmas horror movie, they’d stick an axe in Santa’s hands. In Anti-Claus, we leave Santa alone and creep with the Krampus through twisted tales of holly-jolly murder, desire, desperation and despair. Just in time for the holiday season.”
Smith will only direct one section of the Comes the Krampus anthology horror movie.
Michael Dougherty, who made Trick r' Treat, is also making a Krampus Christmas movie, set for release in 2015. Dougherty also co-wrote X2 and Superman Returns. The Krampus screenplay is reportedly being co-written by Todd Casey and Zach Shields.
So set a place for Krampus this Christmas. But hide the kids and the silverware, he's got a bag.
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