Krampus - Holiday Special

Happy Holidays! For this special, we're coming back over to Europe and looking into the terrifying Krampus from Germanic mythology. What does Krampus do with naughty children in the festive season? How do Germany and Austria still celebrate Krampusnacht to this day every year? Find out who's naughty or nice this week on the last episode of the year!

Transcript

INTRO:

Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

It’s our last week before the holidays hooray! That means it's time for another seasonal special and this year and week, we’re covering the terrifying Krampus from Alpine and Germanic folklore!

DESCRIPTION:

Now most people know what Krampus is or have heard of this monster in some way - and this is the perfect time to bring him up! The Krampus is a Germanic festive demon, who accompanies Saint Nicholas on all of his rounds giving presents, he is considered St Nick’s shadow, reflecting the dark part of the Santa we all know and love, or whatever Santa is based on. 

Krampus is described as a satyr-like being - a satyr being a half-man, half goat, with two large horns growing out of his head, cloven hooves, long fingers and an extremely long tongue and it’s completely covered in hair and shrouded in chains, slightly resembling the Devil in original tellings and on tarot cards. He carries around a large sack, and holds a bunch of birch branches called a Ruten. 

Why does he carry these I hear you ask? This is because the sack is for kidnapping, and the branches are for whipping - who? Well it’s naughty children at Christmas time of course! 

The Krampus’ task in life is to run the naughty list and punish all those on it - rather than St Nick giving you coal for Christmas, you instead would either be beaten with the Ruten, left a pile of sticks for your gift - or worst of all, you would be shoved into a sack and dragged down to hell for the night. If the latter, you would wake up in your bed the next day with the injuries sustained from your night in literal hell with the demon of Christmas and a bed full of sticks. Or if you were good, you’d wake up with a load of presents from Santa, so I know which one I would rather go for.

This monster is mostly from Alpine mythology, which is mostly considered as Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Slovenia and Switzerland - so very very European. However, the Krampus from this culture is actually sometimes mistaken as an American monster, due to its prevalence in American cinema and media.

ORIGIN:

Ah onto etymology, the word Krampus comes from the term krampen in German, which means claw and that’s literally it - so it most likely comes to the term ‘clawed one’. 

Krampus was firstly a pagan mythical figure, who would parade around during the Winter Solstice and the pagan festival of Yule. However, the actual origin of this character is really unclear, we don’t actually know when it started, but they were mentioned from at least the 16th century, so they are bloody old. We do know however that it’s origins are actually not within mainland European myth - as it’s said that Krampus is the son of the Norse goddess Hel, the goddess of the underworld and of death, before venturing through Germanic myth to the mainland of Germany, France and Austria. However, the Norse are technically Germanic language based countries, so it makes sense as to how this spread.

Originally, Krampus was celebrated on December 5th on Krampusnacht, where Saint Nick would give out presents, not dressed in his red and white garb, but with a saintly vestment, a golden staff and tall hat, and Krampus would punish all of the naughty children and take them off to Hell if necessary - then the next day on December 6th, it’s the Feast of Saint Nicholas. Very much like the traditional European Christmas Eve and Christmas day setup. It’s also very traditional in Europe at least to send festive greetings cards, and in the 1890’s, Krampus started featuring on greetings cards in Germany and Austria and some of them either very raunchy or just had flat out child beatings on with the phrase ‘Gruss vom Krampus’ meaning greetings from the Krampus - you can still find these today, they’re called Krampuskarten.

Eventually though, Paganism was pushed out of the mainline religions by Christianity, which was quickly spreading across Europe and replaced a lot of the pagan celebrations, such as Yule with Christmas for example. So when this first started to happen, St Nicholas was pulled into the Christmas celebration due to his title as the Catholic saint of children - so when the pagan figure of Krampus merged with this icon, it was considered a mirror image of St Nick in the form of the devil. Therefore, the legend of the Krampus was suppressed massively by the Catholic church and the legend faded into the background. 

Another fun fact is that actually, just before WW2 in 1932 - Krampus was considered a creation of the social democrats in Germany and so Krampus was once again shunned into the corner of history.  

However in 1975, Krampus started making a comeback thankfully, this is mostly due to a cultural revival and an urge to be closer to their folklore and history. Krampusnacht came back in abundance at the beginning of the 20th century in many European countries, but mostly took off in tourist cities in Austria, Germany and Czech Republic and still continues to this day. They even managed to spread across the pond to the states, and there are loads of festivals in the US every year in big cities to celebrate this side of the holidays. 

During these celebrations, there’s an event called Krampuslauf, which very literally means Krampus run - where people dress up in Krampus costumes and frighten local children whilst having a cheeky schnapps. There are also events called Perchtenlauf, where groups of people would dress up as Krampus, and two teams would group up and beat each other with sticks. Lastly, they also put on plays about the two characters called Nikolausspiel or Nicholas plays - where St Nick would reward good children with presents and were overtly religious in nature, usually coming from more religious areas in Europe.

Nowadays, these celebrations go ahead every year with costumes and contests with glorious food alongside the infamous Christmas markets of Germany and Austria in true Germanic tradition, with plenty of glückwein, stollen und lebkuchen.

QUIZ BREAK

Speaking of which, I’m going to make my favourite festive treats this week for my Yuletide celebrations - which definitely include all three of those, but also the Danish æbleskiver, churros, a bit of panettone and a good hot chocolate are my faves. 

BUT I’m going to treat you now, as it wouldn’t be a special without a special part in the middle now would it? This episode, we’re going to do a little trivia on Krampus! I’ll read out these questions, and then I’ll post them in polls on the twitter so that I can see your answers! 

Now some of these have not been covered in the podcast, and are general knowledge or modern media questions on Krampus - so it will be tricky!

Ready? Let’s go!

Where is Krampus from? 

1. Austria
2. Finland
3. USA
4. Poland

When is Krampusnacht celebrated? 

1. December 17th
2. December 11th
3. December 8th
4. December 5th

Which Norse god is the supposed mother of Krampus? 

Who is the polar opposite of Krampus?

The word Krampus comes from the German word Krampen, but what does Krampen mean?  

1. Hoof
2. Tooth
3. Claw
4. Whip

Krampus carries a bundle of branches called Ruten - but what tree are they from? 

1. Birch
2. Ash
3. Oak 
4. Pine

What does Krampus leave children when they’ve been naughty? 

1. Bones
2. Stones
3. Ash
4. Sticks

What animal does the Krampus resemble in most tellings? 

What is Krampuslauf?

1. A festival
2. A run
3. A parade
4. A competition

And that’s it! I hope you enjoyed that and I’ll have the questions up by the end of today so you can show off your Krampus knowledge and let you know the answers by New Years Eve.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

As usual, we’ll move onto cultural significance to talk about how this monster, realistically, is in the eyes of people around the world, rather than just in the Alpine and Germanic countries of Europe. 

In art, he’s featured mostly in Krampuskarten, the greetings cards I mentioned earlier - A lot of the art associated with Krampus that is a little older is usually taken from these cards, so there are very few illustrators to put a name to them. However, you can find so many really cool independent stuff as always, and I highly recommend doing that for this really modern and culturally celebrated icon. 

For movies, we for obvious reasons have mostly horror movies, but there are some good ones in here, the biggest and probably most famous being the Krampus film that came out in 2015, which was scary, but also whimsical and fun, so I recommend that one. Others include Night of the Krampus, Krampus: The Christmas Devil, A Christmas Horror Story, Krampus Unleashed, Pagan Warrior, Rare Exports, Krampus Origins and Krampus: The Reckoning. 

There was also a documentary published in 2018 called Gruss vom Krampus about the origins and history behind this monster, that I would highly recommend. I watched it for research and thoroughly enjoyed it - but generally love all the German stuff as it’s in my blood.

In TV, Krampus appears in Scooby Doo, Grimm, The Venture Bros, Bob’s Burgers, American Dad, Phineas and Ferb, Hotel Transylvania the series, Murdoch Mysteries, Supernatural, NCIS, Danger Force, American Housewife, The League and Suburgatory. 

For video games, there are quite a few actually! Including; CarnEvil, Binding of Isaac, Don’t Starve, Medieval 2: Total War, Terraria, Minecraft, Fortnite, Killing Floor 2 and Krampus Quest. At the moment of recording, which was Monday 10th December 2021, Call of Duty Vanguard and Warzone have a Krampus based Christmas event, where he comes and chases you around the maps - so if you’re a COD fan, you’ll probably know about this, but what the hey. 

My book recommendation comes in two parts this week - firstly a book about the history of Krampus itself, which is in The Krampus and the old, dark Christmas by Al Ridenour - which is a really extensive look into the history behind Krampus and the folklore behind him.

The other two recommendations this week are of festive lore - just in case you’re interested, because there’s no better time to learn more about the holidays than by reading a folklore book about them. We have Christmas: tradition, truth and total baubles by Nick Page, which is a really fun and funny book on Christmas folklore and the other is Christmas Traditions: A celebration of Christmas lore by George Goodwin, which explores the topic in a much more scholarly way, but still very informative and very fun.

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed? Now this is an interesting one because Krampus is so heavily linked to Saint Nicolas - so you have to also ask if you believe if jolly St Nick existed. And although our parents tell us from a young age that he indeed does, there is very little proof behind either the good or the bad entity of St Nick actually exists. 

However, you can also take St Nick out of the equation here - and look at Krampus as just a festive Demon. Now if we think of it this way and completely separate them, then sure maybe a Christmas demon would exist and terrorise naughty children, but I think you can kind of get away with this, if you can also get away with demon and devil existence. When I mentioned this to some of my family, and asked them - they said if you think Krampus exists, then you have to then ask if the Devil exists or maybe if you’re stretching it, Yetis (and that started a whole other conversation), and that is linked so heavily to religion that it’s existence comes into question. So the final answer is not really sure - but probably not. Cool monster though.

OUTRO: 

Well I thought that was a brilliant monster to cover this week - really festive and such a cool character to add to the holiday season, especially when it’s usually full of joyful and pure characters, this contrast is just so good! I hope that Krampus doesn’t visit you or your family this year - or any year actually.

We’re off next week but when we’re back on January 6th, we’re back over in Arabia and looking over the mystical Jinn from Arabic mythology. You’ll certainly not have a friend in them in the New Year and speaking of which, I hope you have a fantastic holiday, if you celebrate anything and even if you do not, and either way I hope you have a very happy new year!

For now thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on, including Spotify which came out this week ahh! I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - you can also find us on Goodpods and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast, ya know if you feel like it.

Come join the fun and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.