December 5, 2006: Krampus

[Undertoad]

St. Nicholas, also known as Santa Claus, has companions in some cultures, and often these companions are as evil as Claus is depicted as good. This shot from the 20minutos.es daily gallery is taken in Austria, where on December 6 the Krampus appear in parades, with the goal of punishing children who behave badly.

I had never heard of this before, the Companions of St. Nick, but Wikipedia solves it:

Often the subject of winter poems and tales, the Companions travel with St. Nicholas or his various equivalents (Father Christmas, Santa Claus), carrying with them a rod (sometimes a stick, bundle of switches or a whip, and in modern times often a broom) and a sack. They are sometimes dressed in black rags, bearing a black face and unruly black hair. In many contemporary portrayals the companions look like dark, sinister, or rustic versions of Nicholas himself, with a similar costume but with a darker color scheme.

Some of the companions take on more monstrous forms. Krampus and Klaubauf are variously depicted as horned, shaggy, bestial, or demonic. In many depictions the Krampus looks like popular images of the Devil, complete with red skin, cloven hooves, and short horns.

It is unclear whether the various companions of St. Nicholas are all expressions of a single tradition (likely Knecht Ruprecht), or a conflation of multiple traditions. Various texts, especially those outside the tradition, often treat the companions as variations on a single Knecht Ruprecht tradition.

And referring to Krampus itself:

In parts of Austria, Krampusse, who local tradition says are (typically children of poor families), roamed the streets and sledding hills during the festival. They wore black rags and masks, dragging chains behind them, and occasionally hurling them towards children in their way. These Krampusumzuge (Krampus runs) still exist, although perhaps less violent than in the past.

Today, Schladming, a town in Styria, over 1200 "Krampus" gather from all over Austria wearing goat-hair costumes and carved masks, carrying bundles of sticks used as switches, and swinging cowbells to warn of their approach. They are typically young men in their teens and early twenties and are generally intoxicated. They roam the streets of this typically quiet town and hit people with their switches.

I'm in favor. If there are Santas in every mall, there should be roaming Krampusses as well, hitting passers-by at random and scaring the children into being good.

In other news, I did not realize before this morning that almost certainly Santa Claus is a re-pronunciation of Saint Nicholas, particularly if you drop the long O and pronounce it "ethnically". Sant-Nick-Loss. Sant-Ti-Closs. I get it now. Took me 43 years to figure that out.