Krampus, the Yule Devil

Y’know, I have noticed something interesting about myself: the older I get, the more I seem to appreciate the less-than-cheery Christmas stories. 

I don’t mean the angsty “we have nothing to eat and we’re freezing to death” type of stories… they’re all too real and depressing, and I don’t want to hear that fucking story about the little match girl again, thank you. No… I mean the horror stories about malicious winter spirits and monsters, the nasty creatures of folklore that makes Christmas seem like Halloween. 

I have spoken before about how I’m not a big fan of Christmas, but being a folklore nut, I do find the stories about the many spirits and supernatural creatures associated with Christmas very fascinating. Especially the fact that, well… so many of them are kind of evil. Or at least extremely dangerous.

For every jolly and generous Santa Claus and cheery Christmas elf, there’s a child-eating Yule Cat, a murderous Lussi accompanied by wicked demons, or a shapeshifting Karakondjul… most of them being there to scare children into being good or punish people who don’t follow the holiday traditions. And the king of them all — or at least the one who seems to be getting the most modern attention —  is Krampus, the Yule Devil.

Krampus is described as half devil, half goat. On the 5th of December, also known as “Krampusnacht”, he stalks the night on one goat hooves (or in some versions one human foot and one hoof), carrying chains and bells that he uses either to announce his presence or to lure the bad children to him… and when he gets his hands on them he beats them with birch rods. And the VERY bad children, he stuffs down into the wicker basket he always carries on his back, and then he takes them off into the night — according to some stories he takes them to his cave to eat them, while other stories claim he takes them straight to Hell. 

And in some stories it’s not just the kids he’s after… he’s also got this fondness for luring hot young women to him… arising a few speculations as to just how he uses that impossibly long tongue of his. Hmmm… 

Ahem. But I digress. 

Now, like so many figures of folklore, Krampus has tons of very different versions and contradicting stories out there. There’s some disagreement about his exact origin, but it’s generally agreed that he hails from the Alpine regions in Central Europe, and like many ancient Christmas spirits he was a fixture of pre-Christian pagan traditions. (There is this story going around that he’s the son of Hela, the Norse goddess of the underworld, and hence the grandson of Loki… but while that is a pretty neat idea I can’t find any myths to back that one up, so this sounds more like someone’s crossover fanfiction.)

What is certain is that like so many pre-Christian Yuletide figures and celebrations, Krampus survived the advent of Christianity and Christmas by adapting and pretending he’d been part of the Christmas traditions all along: Now he was presented as the servant/helper of St Nicholas. When St Nicholas went around with presents for good children, Krampus tagged along with punishments for bad children. This slightly sanitized, don’t-worry-he-only-goes-after-the-bad-kids-and-besides- Saint-Nick-has-him-under-control version of Krampus got pretty popular in several parts of the world; from the 1800s he regularly featured on Christmas cards, or “Krampus cards”, where he was usually depicted in the middle of beating or kidnapping a naughty child… or in some cases ogling a hot woman. Occasionally you even got a Lady Krampus in on the act, who in addition to kidnapping bad children also had some, mmm, discipline ready for wicked adult men.

Of course Krampus isn’t the only “evil sidekick” St Nicholas or his equivalent Santa Claus has had over the years… Another well-known figure, especially in the Netherlands, is Zwarte Piet, or “Black Pete”… who over the years have wavered between being depicted as an actual black person and a guy covered in soot from climbing up and down chimneys, and who after repeated accusations of racism and wearing blackface eventually gave up and changed his name to “Sooty Pete” in an only partially successful attempt at avoiding controversy. Like Krampus, Pete traditionally brought the punishments while Saint Nick brought the presents, but he softened a lot over the years and eventually became more of a clownish figure who amused the kids with his antics and handed out cookies. 

And then there’s others, like Knecht Rupecht, Père Fouettard (“Old Man Whipper”) and Belsnickel… all of them with fairly similar roles and motives, and all of them with interesting folklore roots. They could all have deserved articles of their own, really; there’s a lot of interesting things to look at here, when it comes to similarities and differences, and just how widespread the idea of giving Santa an “evil sidekick” has been.

But Krampus holds a special position even among these colourful personages. For one thing, he seems to be the one who enjoys the most widespread fame. He’s by far the most likely to show up in Hollywood or American-dominated pop culture… usually with a somewhat altered role from his traditional one; here he’ll be an evil “anti-Santa”, or Santa’s estranged brother or something… more inclined to play the villain who opposes the kind and heroic Santa. Sometimes he’s depicted as a decent guy who never ACTUALLY hurts children, just scares them… one memorable video has him show up one Christmas to kidnap a pair of abusive parents because “children who are bad simply don’t know any better, but adults who are bad DO know better and are bad anyway”.

Among his more noticeable roles after the turn of the century has been as in the Christmas horror movie Krampus, where he torments and kills a family who have lost their Christmas spirit, a novel titled Krampus: The Yule Lord by Gerald Brom; he’s rumoured to be in an upcoming Kevin Smith movie, and pretty much any “urban fantasy” series with even a hint of horror, who have Christmas-themed episodes will sooner or later have Krampus appear in SOME form. 

And of course Krampus, along with other Yule Devils AND Lady Krampus, appears in Jim Balent’s much-maligned nudie comic Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose. Here, the Krampus demons are recurring villains who shows up every Christmas issue, usually to kidnap and kill some children… and Tarot generally TOTALLY fails to stop him because he uses the sound of his bells to hypnotize her, and she ends up naked and fucking.

I MAY have taken a bit of inspiration for my own version of Krampus, who may show up in a Chibi-Dina comic before long, from the Tarot comic. But then, what’s a figure of folklore that you can’t make your own version of and shamelessly borrow from dubious sources?

Because Krampus, with his horns and claws and long tongue, is more than anything a subversion of the classic “holiday cheer” cliches, a subversion that doesn’t even have to lapse into the almost-as-cliched complaints about overcommercialization and forced sentimentality. Krampus doesn’t go “Bah, humbug” like an Ebenezer Scrooge, or wallow in bitterness like a Grinch, all ready to be shown the miracles of the season. He doesn’t whine about the superficialness and empty glamour of modern Christmas, you won’t hear him grumble about materialism and shopping obsession… unless if course he happens to feature in one of those preachy Christmas stories and is being used as an author’s mouthpiece, but we won’t hold those times against him. 

No… Krampus stalks the night, whether trailing Saint Nick or on his own, with chains and bells, ready to remind you of the darker parts of Christmas lore, and that horror, monsters and creepy spirits (or sexy versions thereof!) aren’t just for Halloween. And I can respect that.